The word Habshi is claimed by some to be a corruption of Abyssinian. This is improbable, for the pre-Islamic Arabs already knew the Horn of Africa as Habasat (See the account of the wars of Abrama of Yemen against the Ethiopians).
Moreover, it is not exact to identify the Habshis with Ethiopia, for the Arabic Habasat was originally an indiscriminate term for the entire region including present Somalia, and only later developed into a specific name for Ethiopia.
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