As the Dark Ages closed in on the mountain fastnesses of Ethiopia, the once-powerful Axumite empire fell into decline; no strong ruler appeared on the scene and the state disintegrated. Historical records of the period are scanty and much of the available information relies on Muslim writers whose expanding civilisation was competing for dominance with the Christian powers. The hegemony of Axumite rule, controlled by an aristocracy which had adopted both a Semitic language, Ge'ez, and a Semitic religion, Christianity, was coming to an end. Individual tribes set up their kings and rulers. From the north, Islamised Beja tribes, who have been described as 'the people with the closest affinity to the ancient Egyptians', (1) invaded the country in the eighth century and established themselves along the Red Sea coast. The indigenous Agau tribes, too, set up their own independent rulers. Some of them were Christian, some retained their pagan religion, some followed the Jewish religion and some, like the Kemant who still persist in small numbers, developed a combination of all three.

The Jewish Agau, the Falashas, speaking a Cushitic tongue, settled in the area around Lake Tana and in the high Semien mountains where they created their own kingdom. Here, in isolation from the outside world, they developed their own form of Judaism, obeying as faithfully as they knew how the laws and precepts of the Pentateuch. Unaware of the Mishnah and Talmud, which had scarcely been compiled before they were cut off from the outside world, the Falashas knew nothing of the rabbinical fence erected to protect the Jewish religion and people from contamination by gentile philosophy and customs. They did not

(1) Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, p. 40.