Shanqella (Amharic: ሻንቅላ šanqəlla sometimes spelled Shankella, Shangella, Shánkala, Shankalla or Shangalla) is an exonym for a number of Nilotic ethnic groups that lived in the westernmost part of Ethiopia, but are known to have also inhabited more northerly areas until the late nineteenth century.[1] A pejorative, the term was traditionally used by the local Afro-Asiatic-speaking populations to refer in general terms to darker-skinned ethnic groups, particularly to those from communities speaking Nilo-Saharan languages of Western Ethiopia. These were regarded as primitive people and slave reserves by the Abyssinians.[2] [3]
The etymology of Shanqella is uncertain. It has been suggested that the appellation may stem from an Amharic epithet meaning "black" (or darker-skinned). However, it is likely that the term is instead of more ancient, Agaw derivation given the Agaw substratum in the Amharic language.[4]
According to the local traditions of the Agaw, the original inhabitants of Gojjam were the Shanqella (likely the Gumuz people), and relate that they originally conquered the land from them.[5]
The Shanqella first appear in a 15th-century praise-song for the Emperor Yeshaq I. The Shanqella are listed at the very beginning of the song when the regions and tribes of the kingdom are evoked. They praise the ruler and refer to their richness in goats (this connotes that they were primarily pastoralists). Historiography reports of ruler Iyasu I leading campaigns against "the Shanqella" on the north-western borders of his kingdom (in this case, the Kunama people). In the 1840s, Negus Sahle Selassie included the Shanqella in his titulature. The southwards expansion of ruler Menelik II, directed against Oromo and Kafa, and peoples further south, was also perceived as a campaign of submission of the Shanqella.[6]
They were regarded as mere savages, without any socio-political order, who were only good for economic and physical exploitation. Consequently, folk paintings show them with drastically exaggerated features as brutish blacks following unholy rituals. This did not stop them, however, from being elevated to positions of importance within the military. With the rise of the Derg in the 1970s, the establishment of new administrative structures inaugurated a second phase of forced cultural change, but also the final disappearance of the term "Shanqella" from Ethiopian discourse.[7]