Hadiya was a powerful vassal kingdom of Ethiopia, located in southwestern Ethiopia, south of the Abbay River and west of Shewa. It acquired its name from its inhabitants, the Hadiya people, who speak the Hadiyya language. The historical Hadiya area was situated between Kembata, Gamo, and Waj, southwest of Shewa. By 1850 Hadiya is placed north-west of lakes Zway and Langano but still between these areas.[1]
It was described in the mid-Fourteenth century by Chihab Al-Umari as measuring eight days' journey by nine (which Richard Pankhurst estimates was 160 by 180 kilometers), and although small it was fertile with fruit and cereals, rich with horses and its inhabitants used pieces of iron as money. It could raise an army of 40,000 cavalry and at least twice as many foot soldiers.[2]
The current Hadiya Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region, is located approximately where this former kingdom was.
From the 13th to the 16th centuries the Hadiya 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 Hadiya can be identified in five different linguistic clusters: the Hadiya proper, who have usually been referred to in the ethnographic literature with the nickname Gudela, to which they themselves, however, object. Their subtribes, the Marako, Lemo/Badogo, Soro, Šašogo, and Badawaččo, occupy a territory between Lake Zway and the river Omo (Gibe). Their number amounts to about 6-700,000; 1. the Kabena and Alaba, who speak dialects of the Kambata language and number some ten thousand people in the western parts of Gurageland and in the lowlands between Lake Šalla and the river Bilate (Wara); 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 East Cushitic" and are related to the Hadiya proper and to the Kabena/Alaba; the wide-spread Oromo (Galla) people who contain a considerable percentage of Hadiya descendants among their various sub-groups. The “Hadiya" clans of the Ar(us)si (c. 2,000,000) even outnumber those of the ,,Oromo" proper;
Hadiya is rich in it's history and culture.