December 6, 2018

The Decline of the Empire

15- 1. The Failure of Resources

By Stuart Munro-Hay

The long period of occupation of the city of Aksum evidently had a profound effect on the surrounding countryside, from which it drew the materials of subsistence. Some of the processes set in the train can be inferred from the present state of the land, and consideration of the various factors involved. The local industries, including the manufacture of glass, faience, brick, and pottery, and metal-working, all needed wood or charcoal for their furnaces. Charcoal was probably in further demand for cooking, and heating when necessary, and wood was used for furniture and other equipment as well as house-building. These activities slowly robbed the surrounding hills of their covering of trees — which, however, survived in a few enclaves on the Shire plateau to be noted by Butzer (1981), — and exposed their topsoil to degradation and erosion.

The expansion of the population, probably adequately coped with at first by enlarging the food catchment areas by improved roads and transport facilities for goods into the city, and more intensive cultivation on the surrounding lands, eventually subjected these to overcropping. The pressure on the land would have shortened the rotation period of the crops, land which should have lain fallow for longer being pressed into use too soon. The subsequent lowering of the fertility level of the land again resulted in degradation and erosion, leaving an exhausted soil in the proximity of the city and the immediate countryside. Difficulties in maintaining the food-supplies may have been a significant factor in removing the capital elsewhere. A certain amount of recovery may have been possible in some areas around the town since the fertility of the hinterland of the much smaller town of later times was noted by travelers a thousand or so years later. Alvares simply mentioned that `its countryside . . . is sown in their season with all kinds of seed’ (Beckingham and Huntingford 1961: 159). Others noted wheat, wine, and vegetables growing at Aksum (Frate Rafaello Francescano, 1522; de Villard 1938: 60), a poor crop of fruit (Bruce 1790: III, 132), or, rather better, `a vast plain richly cultivated with many sorts of grain and near the town grass-plots and meadows’ (Plowden 1868: 391-2).

We cannot be sure for the Aksumite period, but among the natural disasters which in later times reduced the agricultural and animal yield in Ethiopia, cattle plague (Ch. 4: 8.3) and locusts are noted. For example, Alvares observed the desolation caused by the `multitude of locusts . . . and the damage which they do’ (Beckingham and Huntingford 1961: 132). It is not inconceivable that, apart from the steady decline caused by overuse of the land, one or both of these may have occurred to emphasize the need to remove the capital to some better-provided region.