09/03/2025
Kingdom of Aksum
The Kingdom of Aksum,or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom in East Africa and South Arabia from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, based in what is now northern Ethiopia🇪🇹 and Eritrea 🇪🇷, and spanning present-day Djibouti🇩🇯 and Sudan🇸🇩. Emerging from the earlier Dʿmt civilization, the kingdom was founded in the first century.
The city of Axum served as the kingdom's capital for many centuries until it relocated to Kubar in the ninth century due to declining trade connections and recurring external invasions.
The Kingdom of Aksum was considered one of the four great powers of the third century by the Persian prophet Mani, alongside Persia, Rome, and China.
Aksum continued to expand under the reign of Gedara (c. 200–230), who was the first king to be involved in South Arabian affairs.
His reign resulted in the control of much of western Yemen, such as the Tihama, Najran, Al-Maʿafir, Ẓafar (until c. 230), and parts of Hashid territory around Hamir in the northern highlands until a joint Himyarite-Sabean alliance pushed them out. Aksum-Himyar conflicts persisted throughout the third century.
During the reign of Endubis (270–310), Aksum began minting coins that have been excavated as far away as Caesarea and southern India.
As the kingdom became a major power on the trade route between Rome and India and gained a monopoly of Indian Ocean trade, it entered the Greco-Roman cultural sphere.
Due to its ties with the Greco-Roman world, Aksum adopted Christianity as the state religion in the mid-fourth century under Ezana (320s – c. 360).
Following their Christianization, the Aksumites ceased construction of steles.
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