The Habesha people (Ge'ez: ሐበሻ Ḥabaśā, Amharic (H)ābešā, Tigrinya: ? Ḥābešā; Arabic: الحبشة al-Ḥabašah), also known as Abyssinians, is the name given to three distinct ethnic groups and some minor ones inhabiting the Horn of Africa. They are the various related ethnic groups in the Eritrean Highlands and Ethiopian Highlands who speak languages belonging to the South Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Members' cultural, linguistic, and in certain cases, ancestral origins trace back to the Kingdom of Dʿmt (usually vocalized Diʿamat) and the later Kingdom of Aksum.
On why some Jamaican Rastafarians associate themselves as with Habesha culture and ethnicity,
according to ancient Ethiopian manuscript in Geez discovered by Meri Ras Aman Belay, in the ruins of an Ethiopian church in Nubia, a part of the Ethiopian Empire, both the Amara (Amhara) and the Oromo are the descendants of one man or father- Melchizedek, King of Salem the highest priest of God on Earth, founder of Jerusalem to whom Abraham and other kings bowed and paid tithes to receive his blessings. It continued that Deshet a descendant of Shem gave birth to four sons, one of which was named Maji. It is said that "Maji begat Mara (Amara) and Jema or Jama (the people who settled at the River Jema in today's Shoa, a river they named after their tribe. The Jamacans of Jamaica were captured by Ahmed Gragn when they fought him fiercely, taken from there, sold as slaves to Arabs who sold them to European slave traders, who sold them in Jamaica)."
Historically, the entire Ethiopians irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic or historical origins were erroneously referred to as Habesha or Abyssinians, but the people who were really Habesha were/are these three major ethnic groups: the Amhara, the Gurage, the Tigray-Tigrinya and other satellite groups like the Agew, and the Beta Israel who are from the North part of Ethiopia.
It was documented that around first century A.D., some Hamitic-Semitic peoples (Sabaean traders) from South Arabian came into contact with native people and intermarried. Their off-springs were referred to as “Habesha”, which means “people of mixed blood”. Their land (Tigray, Begemdir, Gojam, Northern Shewa, and Welo) was later termed Abyssinia. It was only when the Abyssinia state exhausted its scarce resources that its leaders expended its frontiers South and Westward in order to amass the resources needed to feed their subjects. Per advice from Count Pietro Antonelli, an Italian with geographic Society mission in Abyssinia, the state of Abyssinia combined with the newly added states of the South and the West, were later referred to as “Ethiopia”
The Kingdom of Aksum was situated in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea with its capital city in Northern Ethiopia. Axum remained its capital until the 7th century. The kingdom was favorably located near the Blue Nile basin and the Afar depression. The former is rich in gold and the latter in salt: both materials having a highly important use to the Aksumites. Aksum was accessible to the port of Adulis, Eritrea on the coast of the Red Sea. The kingdom traded with Egypt, India, Arabia and the Byzantine Empire. Aksum’s "fertile" and "well-watered" location produced enough food for its population. Wild animals included elephants and rhinoceros.
From its capital, Aksum commanded the trade of ivory. It also dominated the trade route in the red sea leading to the gulf of aden. Its success depended on resourceful techniques, production of coins, steady migrations of Greco-Roman merchants, and ships landing at Adulis. In exchange for Aksum’s goods, traders bid many kinds of cloth, jewelry, metals and steel for weapons.
At its peak, Aksum controlled territories as far as southern Egypt, east to the Gulf of Aden, south to the Omo River, and west to the Nubian Kingdom of Meroë. The South Arabian kingdom of the Himyarites and also a portion of western Saudi Arabia was also under the power of Aksum. Their descendants include the present-day ethnic groups known as the Amhara, Tigray and Gurage peoples.