Slavery in Ethiopia existed for centuries, going as far back as 1495 BC and ending in 1942. There are also sources indicating the export of slaves from the Aksumite Empire (100–940 AD). The practice formed an integral part of Ethiopian society. Slaves were traditionally drawn from the Nilotic groups inhabiting Ethiopia's southern hinterland as well as from the Oromos. War captives were another source of slaves, though the perception, treatment and duties of these prisoners was markedly different. Although religious law banned Christian slave masters from taking part in the slave trade, many Muslim Ethiopian slave traders took part in the Arab slave trade. Slaves usually served as concubines, bodyguards, servants and treasurers.
The abolition of slavery became a high priority for the Haile Selassie regime which began in 1930. International pressures forced action, and it was required for membership in the League of Nations. During Italian rule, the occupation government issued two laws in October 1935 and in April 1936 which abolished slavery and freed 420,000 Ethiopian slaves. After the Italians were expelled, Emperor Haile Selassie returned to power and officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, by making it a law on 26 August 1942. Ethiopia later ratified the 1926 Slavery Convention in 1969. Following the abolition of the slavery in the 1940s, freed slaves were typically employed as unskilled labour by their former masters.
History
Aksumite Empire
The Aksumite Empire seems to have been in contact with a darker skinned people or peoples who lived in its peripheral western territories, from which it captured many slaves from. The Aksumites referred to these people as barya, centuries of slave raiding against the barya peoples would result in the word becoming synonymous for slave in the Amharic and Tigrinya languages. This term is first recorded by Hiob Ludolf in his Lexicon Amharico Latinum of 1698.
The earliest mention of slave raiding against the barya comes from an undated inscription at Adulis, in which an unidentified ruler of Aksum went on an expedition against two different groups on "the borders of Egypt". After successfully defeating them, the ruler writes that he "took what I wished of their young men and young women and of their youths". A later campaign is recording in the inscriptions of Ezana of Aksum which tells of a punitive expedition carried out against the Noba near the vicinity of the Nile. In the course of this campaign 629 slaves were captured. Another indication that the baryas were serving as slaves is found in the fourth century land charter of Abreha and Atsbeha, it states that the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion had been given "baryas". The phrase seems to suggest that baryas were of servile status in Aksum.
Medieval era
During the conquests of Emperor Amda Seyon, he would make use of "black" soldiers in his army who were led by a certain Angotay, but whenever they were slaves or not wasn't specified.
The Ethiopian Christian state was at around this time established contact with another "black" people known as the Shanqellas, who lived around the lower stretches of the Blue Nile. Similar to the baryas, the country of the Shanqellas would become the target of frequent slave raids by the Abyssinians. According to a fifteenth-century soldier's song of Emperor Yeshaq I, the Shanqellas were forced to pay tribute to the Abyssinians. At around this time, a code known as the Fetha Negest (The Law of the Kings), was translated into Ge'ez and had begun to serve as the traditional law for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. Based on this law, freeborn Christians were of free status and off limits, while non-Christians captured in war could be enslaved. Slavery was therefore caused by unbelief, and yet the conversion of pagan slaves to Christianity subsequent to the establishment of the right of ownership by masters did not extinguish slavery. In this way, the code provided the ground for a religiously justified exclusion and enslavement of non-Christians and Christians whose slavery was caused by previous unbelief.
Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi's conquests led to a significant enslavement of Abyssinians. He reportedly captured large groups of Christians, resulting in each soldier in his army possessing no fewer than two hundred slaves. Following the Imam's death and defeat at Wayna Daga, Emperor Gelawdewos initiated a campaign against Adal. During this campaign, he liberated numerous Christian slaves while also taking many Muslim slaves in return.