Kingdom of Aksum

===Foreign relations, trade, and economy===
[[File:Periplous of the Erythraean Sea.svg|left|250px|thumb|Aksum was an important participant in international trade from the 1st century AD ([[Periplus of the Erythraean Sea]]) until circa the later part of the 1st millennium when it succumbed to a long decline against pressures from the various Islamic [[regional power|powers]] leagued against it.]]

Covering parts of what is now northern [[Ethiopia]] and southern and eastern [[Eritrea]], Aksum was deeply involved in the trade network between the [[Middle kingdoms of India|Indian subcontinent]] and the [[Greco-Roman world|Mediterranean]] ([[Roman Empire|Rome]], later [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantium]]), exporting [[ivory trade|ivory]], tortoise shell, gold and [[emerald]]s, and importing [[silk]] and spices.<ref name="britishmuseum.org"/><ref name="Daily Life"/> Aksum's access to both the Red Sea and the Upper Nile enabled its strong navy to profit in trade between various African ([[Nubia]]), Arabian ([[Yemen]]), and Indian states.

The main exports of Aksum were, as would be expected of a state during this time, agricultural products. The land was much more fertile during the time of the Aksumites than now, and their principal crops were grains such as wheat, [[barley]] and [[teff]]. The people of Aksum also raised [[cattle]], sheep, and camels. Wild animals were also hunted for things such as ivory and rhinoceros horns. They traded with Roman traders as well as with Egyptian and Persian merchants. The empire was also rich with gold and iron deposits. These metals were valuable to trade, but another mineral was also widely traded: [[salt]]. Salt was abundant in Aksum and was traded quite frequently.<ref name="goblues.org" /><ref name="obelisk bekerie"/>

It benefited from a major transformation of the maritime trading system that linked [[Indo-Roman trade relations|the Roman Empire and India]]. This change took place around the start of the 1st century. The older trading system involved coastal sailing and many intermediary ports. The Red Sea was of secondary importance to the [[Persian Gulf]] and overland connections to the [[Levant]]. Starting around 100 BC a route from Egypt to India was established, making use of the Red Sea and using monsoon winds to cross the [[Arabian Sea]] directly to [[South India|southern India]]. By about 100 AD, the volume of traffic being shipped on this route had eclipsed older routes. Roman demand for goods from southern India increased dramatically, resulting in greater number of large ships sailing down the Red Sea from [[Roman Egypt]] to the Arabian Sea and India.<ref name="ruperthopkins.com">[http://www.ruperthopkins.com/pdf/Kingdom_of_Axum.pdf Kingdom of Axum] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200925100701/http://www.ruperthopkins.com/pdf/Kingdom_of_Axum.pdf |date=2020-09-25 }}</ref><ref name="otik.uk.zcu.cz">{{Cite web |last1=Záhoří |first1=Jan |date=February 2014 |title=Review: Phillipson, (2012). ''Foundations of an African civilization: Aksum & the Northern Horn, 1000 BC - AD 1300'' |url=https://otik.uk.zcu.cz/bitstream/handle/11025/15553/Zahorik.pdf?sequence=1 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170107100243/https://otik.uk.zcu.cz/bitstream/handle/11025/15553/Zahorik.pdf?sequence=1 |archive-date=2017-01-07 |access-date=2017-01-06}}</ref> 

In 525 AD, the Aksumites attempted to take over the Yemen region to gain control over The Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb; one of the most significant trading routes in the medieval world, connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Rulers were inclined to establish a spot of imperialism across the Red Sea in Yemen to completely control the trading vessels that ran down the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. It is located in the maritime choke point between Yemen and Djibouti and Eritrea. Because of the ruler of Yemen's persecution of Christians in 523 AD, Kaleb I, the ruler of Aksum (a Christian region) at the time, responded to the persecutions by attacking  the Himyarite king Yūsuf As'ar Yath'ar, known as Dhu Nuwas, a Jewish convert who was persecuting the Christian community of Najran,Yemen in 525 AD, with the help of the Byzantine empire, with whom had ties with his kingdom. Victoriously, the Aksum empire was able to claim the Yemen region, establishing a viceroy in the region and troops to defend it until 570 AD when the Sassanids invaded.

The Kingdom of Aksum was ideally located to take advantage of the new trading situation. [[Adulis]] soon became the main port for the export of African goods, such as ivory, incense, gold, slaves, and exotic animals. In order to supply such goods the kings of Aksum worked to develop and expand an inland trading network. A rival, and much older trading network that tapped the same interior region of Africa was that of the [[Kingdom of Kush]], which had long supplied Egypt with African goods via the [[Nile]] corridor. By the 1st century AD, however, Aksum had gained control over territory previously Kushite. The ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' explicitly describes how ivory collected in Kushite territory was being exported through the port of Adulis instead of being taken to [[Meroë]], the capital of Kush. During the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD the Kingdom of Aksum continued to expand their control of the southern Red Sea basin. A caravan route to Egypt was established which bypassed the Nile corridor entirely. Aksum succeeded in becoming the principal supplier of African goods to the Roman Empire, not least as a result of the transformed Indian Ocean trading system.<ref>The effect of the Indian Ocean trading system on the rise of Aksum is described in [http://www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/interactions/burstein.html State Formation in Ancient Northeast Africa and the Indian Ocean Trade] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090114074953/http://www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/interactions/burstein.html |date=2009-01-14 }}, by Stanley M. Burstein.</ref>

====Climate change hypothesis====
[[File:Balaw Kalaw (metera), stele axumita 06.JPG|thumb|Axumite Menhir in Balaw Kalaw (Metera) near [[Senafe]]]]
[[Climate variability and change|Climate change]] and trade isolation have also been claimed as large reasons for the decline of the culture.{{Citation needed|date=November 2019}} The local subsistence base was substantially augmented by a climatic shift during the 1st century AD that reinforced the spring rains, extended the rainy season from 3 1/2 to six or seven months, vastly improved the surface and subsurface water supply, doubled the length of the growing season, and created an environment comparable to that of modern central Ethiopia (where two crops can be grown per annum without the aid of irrigation).

Askum was also located on a plateau {{cvt|2000|m|ft}} feet above sea level, making its soil fertile and the land good for agriculture. This appears to explain how one of the marginal agricultural environments of Ethiopia was able to support the demographic base that made this far flung commercial empire possible. It may also explain why no Aksumite rural settlement expansion into the moister, more fertile, and naturally productive lands of Begemder or Lasta can be verified during the heyday of Aksumite power.

As international profits from the exchange network declined, Aksum lost control over its raw material sources, and that network collapsed. The persistent environmental pressure on a large population needing to maintain a high level of regional food production intensified, which resulted in a wave of soil erosion that began on a local scale {{circa|650}}, and reached crisis levels after 700. Additional socioeconomic contingencies presumably compounded the problem: these are traditionally reflected in a decline in maintenance, the deterioration and partial abandonment of marginal crop lands, shifts toward more destructive exploitation of pasture land—and ultimately wholesale, irreversible [[land degradation]]. This decline was possibly accelerated by an apparent decline in the reliability of rainfall beginning between 730 and 760, presumably with the result that an abbreviated modern growing season was reestablished during the 9th century.<ref name="butzer1981">{{Cite journal |last=Butzer |first=Karl W. |date=1981 |title=Rise and Fall of Axum, Ethiopia: A Geo-Archaeological Interpretation |url=http://sites.utexas.edu/butzer/files/2017/03/Butzer-1981-Axum.pdf |journal=American Antiquity |volume=46 |number = 3 |pages=471–495 |via=University of Texas at Austin |jstor = 280596 |doi = 10.2307/280596|s2cid=162374800 }}</ref>{{rp|495}}
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