Gurage, ethnolinguistic group of the fertile and semi-mountainous region some 150 miles (240 kilometres) south and west of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, bounded by the Awash River on the north, the Gilgel Gibe River (a tributary of the Omo River) on the southwest, and Lake Ziway on the east. The groups that are subsumed under the term Gurage originated in the Tigray region of Ethiopia as the descendants of military conquerors during the Aksumite empire. The Gurage languages, which are not always mutually intelligible, belong to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Some of these have been influenced by neighbouring Cushitic languages. The Gurage are mainly Christian—members largely of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church—and Muslim.
Settled agriculturalists, the Gurage centre their lives on the cultivation of their staple crop, the Ethiopian, or false, banana (Ensete ventricosum), prized not for its “false” (or inedible) fruit but for its roots.
The Gurage have no centralized institutional political power or leadership. Local power is vested in lineages; these descent groups display corporate rights, obligations, and influence. In contrast, the religious or ritual system is highly centralized; ritual officials sanction the authority of the political elders. One of the more interesting aspects of this religious-political asymmetry is the integral place in the system assigned to the Fuga, the local representatives of what are believed to be remnants of earlier inhabitants of the Horn of Africa. This lower-caste group of artisans and hunters are also ritual specialists whose powers are both feared and deemed essential in all major Gurage religious functions. The Fuga share a ritual language with Gurage women, which Gurage men may not learn lest they discern the mysteries of the female initiation ceremonies.