The People of Hadiyya
From the 13th to the 16th centuries the Hadiyya constituted one of the most important political entities of Northeast Africa. Their coherent territorial block was then shattered by outside forces and its inhabitants were absorbed by peoples of heterogeneous ethnic stock. At present, descendants of the old Hadiyya can be identified in five different linguistic clusters: the Hadiyya proper, to which they themselves, however, object. Their subtribes, the Maarako, Leemo/Baadoogo, Sooro, Shaashoogo, and Baadawwaacco, occupy a territory between Lake Zway and the river Omo (Gibe). Their number amounts to about 8-1,000,000.1. The Kabeena and Alaba, who speak dialects of the Kambaata language and number some ten thousand people in the western parts of Gurageland and in the lowlands between Lake Shaala and the river Bilate (Waara); the Sidama in the highlands between the upper Ganale and Lake Abbaya, who number more than 600,000. Linguistically they belong to the cluster of High land Cush are related to the Hadiyya proper and to the Kabeena/Alaba; the wide-spread Oromo people who contain a considerable percentage of Hadiya descendants among their various sub-groups. The Hadiyya clans of the Ar(us)si (c. 2,000,000) even outnumber those of the "Oromo" proper;
2. The East Gurage, who are called Adare by their neighbors. They constitute seven sub-groups; Silti, Ulbarag, Azernet, Berbere, Wuriro, Wolanne and Gadabano, with c. 200,000 people and speak a Semitic language closely related to that of the Harari (town population of Harar).
The whole number of people who can be identified as descendants of the ancient Hadiya may amount to 2-3,000,000. They inhabit a large territory in the central part of South Ethiopia on both sides of the Rift Valley in the provincial divisions of Šawa, Arsi (Arussi), Bale, and Sidamo.
Source: Ulrich Braukamper, Geschichte der Hadiya Sud-Äthiopiens (Wiesbaden, 1980)