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EveryHairstyle

Culture region, Ethiopia

Jimma

The old Oromo kingdom of south-west Ethiopia, whose women's braided styles were recorded by travellers from the 1870s.

Jimma, in the coffee country of south-western Ethiopia, was the capital of the Kingdom of Jimma, an Oromo state ruled from the late 18th century until 1932. Its king, Abba Jifar II, lived in a wooden palace that still stands above the town. Travellers in the 1870s and 1880s described and photographed the dress, jewellery and finely braided hair of Jimma Oromo women.

Braids of Jimma

The earliest written and photographed records of Jimma Oromo women's hair come from the Italian explorer Antonio Cecchi, who travelled through the Gibe region in 1879 and 1880, from Jules Borelli in the mid-1880s and from the photographer Leopoldo Traversi. They show hair braided in fine rows and arranged with butter, and styles that differed with age and marital status. Such braiding, called shuruba in Amharic, is still common across Ethiopia.

Ethiopian braiding today

Across Ethiopia, cornrows running back from the forehead in many slim rows are worn for weddings, holidays such as Timket and Meskel, and everyday life, and girls' styles differ from those of married women. Butter is still used in some regions to dress the hair. In cities, braiding salons work alongside barbers and blow-dry salons, and diaspora Ethiopian braiders run salons in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

Hairstyles of Jimma

CornrowsShuruba, the fine rows of Ethiopian braidingBraidBraids marked age and marriage

Still to be written: Jimma Oromo women cultural clothing and hairstyle.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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