The city of Gondar in Ethiopia was rocked by religious violence after an attack on a funeral in April 2022. Ensuing riots between Christians and Muslims left 40 dead and many injured. Visiting the city in Ethiopia’s northwest, Jaclynn Ashly speaks with eyewitnesses, researchers and community leaders, to expose the roots of the interfaith violence and unravel a complex religious and cultural history.

Saed Mohammed, 18, was unable to speak for more than a year.

“He just recently started talking again,” says 45-year-old Muntaha Suleiman, his mother, sitting on a crate outside her small mud home in the city of Gondar in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region. The family live in a mixed Christian and Muslim neighborhood. “But he has still never told anyone what he saw that day,” says Suleiman.

About two years ago, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in April 2022, Mohammed, then 17, witnessed his father, 60-year-old Sheikh Mohammed Najaw, get shot and killed by gun-wielding Orthodox Christians during a funeral of a Muslim elder who was beloved by Muslims and Christians alike.

In a city renowned for its centuries-old peaceful — albeit fragile —coexistence between religious communities, the brutal violence seemed for many to have erupted out of nowhere. The funeral was an astonishing target: thousands of mourning Muslims and Christians were in attendance.

A grenade was first thrown, followed by several charging gunmen, who are said to have come from a nearby church. They skipped over the attendees who wore crosses around their necks – typical among Orthodox Christians – and systematically shot down those dressed in Islamic clothing.

The violence spread throughout Gondar city, with hundreds of Christian residents forming lynch mobs. Dozens of Muslims were shot and bludgeoned to death with rocks. Christians turned on their Muslim neighbors. Mosques were set alight and left in piles of ashes. Homes and shops were vandalized, looted, and burned. The unrest continued for days.

“I still feel sick since that day,” says Mohammed. His back slumps over as he takes a seat next to his mother. His skin exudes a pale, grayish tone and his eyes are black and sunken. “I have a lot of anxiety. I feel it when I wake up and it stays with me until I fall asleep. It never goes away.”

Mohammed pauses and then abruptly stands up. “I don’t want to speak about this anymore,” he mumbles, before hurrying back inside the house.

More than two years have gone by since this violence transformed a typical day into one that the city’s Muslim residents can never forget. They remain traumatized and fearful that their Christian neighbors will attack them again. Anxiety underpins daily tasks and distrust lingers behind smiles.

Some still cannot make sense of what drove these Christians to this cruelty. The unpredictability increases the sense of terror, like a ticking time bomb that they cannot hear or locate. But, as this story will tell, others believe that the initial attack was planned, motivated by a dangerous Christian nationalism that has been tightly fastened into the foundations of the Ethiopian state.

PART ONE – The religious history of Gondar

‘Glory of the Kings’ – The history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church

The adhan, or the Muslim call to prayer, reverberates through the canopy of trees encompassing the area of Sheikh Ali Gondar, named after a beloved Muslim scholar who lived sometime between the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. This area, resembling a nature reserve, sits atop a hill in Addis Alem, a historic Muslim neighborhood in Gondar.

Birds chirp from branches and a cool breeze sends green leaves dancing and shaking. Men and women sit peacefully on the hill’s edges, chewing khat, a plant used as a stimulant in the Middle East and Africa. Some amble down the hill’s steep slopes and approach Sheikh Ali’s shrine – a bright turquoise dome nestled into the foliage. They hold out their hands, cupping them, and recite a dua, or Islamic prayer.

Sheikh Ali Gondar’s story embodies the little-known history of Islam in Ethiopia’s northern highlands, which is dominated by Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. Though likely not current, the latest 2007 Ethiopian national census puts Gondar’s population at 207,044 people, with Ethiopian Orthodox comprising 84.2 percent and Muslims 11.4 percent.

Gondar was founded by Emperor Fasilides and served as the first permanent capital of the historic Ethiopian empire, from 1632 until 1855. Cobble-stoned streets wind around charming palaces and old royal buildings. Tourists flock here, lining up to photograph Fasil Ghebbi, a fortress that had once been the residence for the emperors and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Throughout the day, dozens of beautifully decorated churches and monasteries trumpet ancient Ge’ez prayers from loudspeakers, engulfing the urban landscape in an ancient language few now understand. But these sounds barely reach Sheikh Ali Gondar, which remains in a perpetual state of calm, hiding itself from the outside world.

This tranquillity, however, camouflages an ominous shadow that still haunts the city’s Muslims. A short walk from Sheikh Ali’s shrine is a cemetery. This is where most of the 40 or so Muslims who were murdered in the violence two years ago were buried.

Gondar’s history seems to be split in two, both versions running parallel to one another. According to historians, Ethiopia’s Christian emperors suppressed the city’s indigenous Muslims. At the same time, however, Muslim leaders attracted immense respect from the wider community and were integral to building the coexistence between communities for which Gondar is famed.

The Solomonic dynasty, which refers to the line of Ethiopian Orthodox Christian monarchs that ruled Ethiopia from the 13th century until 1974, when Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown, gave the modern country its nationalist and religious coloring. But the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes the source of this monarchy stems back about 3,000 years.

According to Ethiopian biblical legends, the start of the Solomonic empire can be traced to Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who traveled to Jerusalem to meet King Solomon, the son of King David, in what was then ancient Israel and the two had a love affair. In the Kebra Nagast, “The Glory of the Kings,” an Ethiopian Orthodox scripture, the land of Sheba was ancient Ethiopia. Upon her return home, Makeda gave birth to a son, Menelik.

Later, when Menelik was an adult, he traveled to Jerusalem and studied with King Solomon, his father. At this time, the Ark of the Covenant, said to contain the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, was kept at the center of the ancient Israelite Tabernacle. According to the Kebra Nagast, the priest who accompanied Menelik stole the Ark of the Covenant — unbeknownst to Menelik — and brought it to Ethiopia, transferring to Ethiopia the favor God once gave Israel.

Many Ethiopian Orthodox Christians believe that the original Ark currently sits in a church in the city of Aksum in northern Ethiopia. This legend is a central component of Ethiopian Orthodox theology; every Ethiopian Orthodox Church houses a replica of the Ark, its most sacred symbol.

According to the Ethiopian Orthodox, Menelik went on to become the original founder of the Solomonic dynasty and the first emperor of Ethiopia in the 10th century BC. Through this Solomonic bloodline, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church relates itself to the ancient Israelites.

Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church built their religious identities around the Ethiopian empire for thousands of years. The church and state became inextricably tied together, with one reflecting the other. The colors of the Ethiopian flag — red, yellow, and green — mirror the colors historically used by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Gondar was the center of this Solomonic monarchy for hundreds of years, making the city indispensable to Ethiopian Orthodox history. Today, portraits, drawings, and paintings of Ethiopian emperors adorned with embellished golden crowns decorate restaurants and cafes.

But Islam also has ancient roots in the city, shaping its history and culture for many centuries.

‘Asymmetric peace’ – the history of Islam in Gondar

Historians are unsure when Gondar’s residents began converting to Islam, but “there’s been [religious] confluence forever in that region,” says John Dulin, an assistant professor of anthropology at Utah Valley University. Islam was first introduced here through the Arab trade caravans. In turn, trade, both local and international, became the main occupation of Muslims in Gondar.

“Muslim merchants of Gondar dominated the trade of the wider Red Sea region and mastered the techniques involved in long-distance trade and thereby came to preponderate in the commerce of Gondar,” writes Abdussamad Ahmad, a researcher from Addis Ababa University, who has written extensively on the city’s Muslim history. Many Muslims also became weavers and tailors.

But Muslim dominance in these industries was not by choice. In the historic Christian empire, Muslims were prohibited from owning land, giving them no other options but to engage in trade and craftsmanship.

According to Terje Østebø, professor in the Department of Religion and the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida, northern Ethiopian culture was strongly tied to agrarianism, making land ownership extremely important.

“Owning land was connected to a person’s worth,” explains Østebø. “So when the Muslims don’t have land you can get a sense that they were not viewed as decent citizens or even human.”

To this day, Gondar’s economic life is still largely divided along these same religious lines.

For the Orthodox Christians, the Muslims’ landlessness and their relationship to a network of commerce outside the Christian empire meant they were “viewed as foreigners and non-Ethiopians,” Østebø says.

It was not until the 17th century, during the reign of Emperor Fasilides, from 1632 until 1667, that Muslim presence in Gondar became more visible to historians. Fasilides was well-disposed to Islam. Some Muslim writers even suggest that he had at some point converted to Islam.

Fasilides favored the expansion of trade and relied heavily on the city’s Muslims to establish commercial relations with other Muslim communities in South Arabia. Muslim traders who benefited from this commercial expansion were described at the time as being rich.

Fasilides’ successors, however, were less receptive to the city’s Muslims. In 1678, Yohannis I, Fasilides’ son, issued a proclamation that separated Muslims and the Falasha, or Ethiopian Jews, from the Christians, assigning them into segregated neighborhoods. The Muslims were relocated to the lower quarter of the town, which became known as Bet al-Islam; it was later renamed to Addis Alem.

In the following centuries, rulers maintained a hostile and belligerent attitude towards Muslims, according to historians. Emperor Tewodros II, who ruled from 1855 until 1868, and whose statue is erected on one of the main roundabouts in the central Piassa neighborhood in Gondar, issued a decree in 1864 demanding that Muslims convert to Christianity or leave the country.

As time went on, Muslims in Gondar were generally tolerated to conduct trade and weaving “simply because they were useful to the state as well as the wider Christian populace,” Ahmad says. But “they were ignored from the social point of view and held with contempt for their occupation which was undignified in the eyes of the Christian majority.”

Muslims in Gondar became straddled between two seemingly contradictory stereotypes: they were known to possess wealth from trade, but were socially despised at the same time.

The interweaving of Muslim and Christian cultures

But another history was unfolding simultaneously — one in which Muslims and Christians in Gondar weaved their cultures and communities together and Muslim leaders were revered across religious lines. In Gondar, one family can have members that are both Muslim and Christian, so, it was impossible to completely segregate the religious communities.

Ebrahim Damtew, a historian at Gondar University, argues that Islam in Ethiopia developed an indigenous virtue system rooted in a culture of coexistence. Sheikh Ali Gondar was one of the most well-known and influential local figures in this history.

A prominent cleric, scholar, and teacher, Sheikh Ali was known to have assisted in the mediation of conflicts between royal figures during Zamana Masafent, or the “era of the princes,” a period of Ethiopian history, from 1769 until 1855, when the empire was ruled by a class of regional noblemen. At this time, the emperors of the Solomonic dynasty were reduced to figureheads confined to Gondar, which was still the capital city.

Over time, the traditions of the city’s Muslims and Christians became interwoven. The shrines of deceased Muslim scholars and clerics, now considered saints, are visited by both religious communities. The saints venerated at these shrines are believed to be the founders and protectors of the city. Muslims and Christians have long frequented these sites to request assistance with illnesses, family conflicts, fertility, droughts, or to seek blessings.

During Christian weddings and funerals in Gondar, the Christians often observe the Islamic rituals of slaughtering animals out of respect for the Muslim attendees. Muslims also tend to avoid planning weddings during the time of Lent, when Christians abstain from eating meat, so that their Christian attendees can fully enjoy the feast with them.

Muslims and Christians “developed mutual trust and belongingness,” says Damtew, while their interconnected social lives constantly reaffirmed their companionship and familyhood. But Østebø contends that this historical contradiction, in which Christian hostility was exhibited toward Muslims at the same time as the groups forged strong social bonds, reflects an “asymmetric power relationship.”

“These are Orthodox Christian communities with Muslim minorities in which the Orthodox are the dominant constituency and historically connected to the state, whereas the Muslims are considered secondary citizens,” Østebø says. “As long as that system was left intact and everybody recognized and accepted that asymmetry then things were fine between the groups. There is peace, but there is no equality.”

Muslims started to slowly move back into once homogeneously Christian urban centers of Gondar throughout the 20th century, Dulin explains. But things changed dramatically after 1991, when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) — led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) — implemented a system of ethnic federalism, designed to promote minority and ethnic religious rights and freedoms.

Muslims in Gondar began building mosques and asserting themselves in the public sphere.

“Gradually, the Muslim community became more confident and started making demands that their rights should also be respected,” Østebø says. “Over the last 30 years, the Muslim community has become more conscious, with Muslims entering the work force and higher education like never before.”

But as Muslims became increasingly visible, some Christians felt threatened. In a city whose land is viewed as sacred to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and essential to its identity and history, some Christian residents would attribute the social progress of Muslims to their own perceived erasure.

PART TWO – Eyewitness testimonies

‘I saw my best friend bloody on the ground’

Like Sheikh Ali Gondar, other Muslim leaders have also attracted respect and love across religious lines. It was no different for Sheikh Kamal Legas, whose funeral was attacked in 2022, sparking the violence that would kill dozens and injure more than 100.

“My father was loved by everyone — Muslims and Christians,” explains 40-year-old Abdul Kamal Legas, the son of Legas, who was 83 years old when he died. “My father served the people of Gondar from morning until night.”

Legas came from a long line of traditional medicine men, an ancient practice that has been passed down within the family for generations.

Kamal, who inherited his father’s practice, is treating a patient suffering from chest pain. They are sitting on the floor of a dimly lit room at the family’s home, located near the Jamia al-Kbeer Mosque, the largest mosque in Gondar in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Kedema Gebaya, meaning “Saturday Market”.

Kamal lays out several root sticks and a packet filled with leaves ground into a powder on the floor in front of him. He then writes down the prescription. “Mix this leaf powder with Pepsi and drink it once a day for four days,” Kamal directs the patient, who attentively nods his head. “Take the root, burn it, and breathe in the smoke. These combined should heal your chest problem.”

Closing his eyes and raising his palms towards his face, Kamal recites a dua.

“My father treated more than 100 people every day for a very cheap price,” Kamal continues, redirecting his attention towards me. The patient gathers his prescribed medicine and bids Kamal farewell. “Each person was served exactly the same, without any care for their religious affiliation.”

“Any funds received, he would distribute part of it to the needy around the mosque and the rest was used to pay the man who collected the plants for him,” Kamal explains. “He lived a very simple life.”

Indeed, it is difficult to find anyone in Gondar, whether Muslim or Christian, who had not at one point sought his father’s treatment. So, it was no surprise when thousands of Muslims and Orthodox Christians gathered for his funeral on April 26, 2022, a Tuesday.

Legas was to be buried at the Haji Elias cemetery, on the outskirts of Addis Alem. Residents say that the line of mourners making their way to the funeral grounds reached about three kilometers.

Muslims have long used the Haji Elias cemetery as their major burial ground, but it has since been declared a heritage site. These days only well-respected leaders and scholars, along with children, are buried there.

This expansive area, totaling about 84,000 square meters, is separated from the grounds of an Ethiopian Orthodox Church, called Abera Giyorgis — or the “Light of St George” — by the Qeha river, which long served as a natural boundary between the two areas. But, over the years the boundaries of these lands have become a source of dispute between the Muslim community and the church.

On the day of the funeral, hundreds visited the Haji Elias cemetery to bid farewell to the man who dutifully cared for them for decades. Young men carried Legas’ shrouded body over their heads before lowering him into a grave, dug about a hundred meters from the river.

But as a group of Muslim youths hurried to the riverbed to collect stones to place around Legas’ grave, a confrontation erupted between them and a group of Christians, who witnesses say approached from the other side of the river near the Light of St George Church. According to community members, the Christians had accused the Muslims of gathering rocks from the church’s side of the river. Muslim leaders deny that any of the attendees crossed onto the church’s side of the land.

A grenade was thrown, witnesses say, detonating and injuring Muslims. Then the shooting began.

“Everyone started screaming and running,” remembers Kamal. “I heard the gunshots and I started burying my father very quickly.”

According to witnesses, some of the armed Christians were specifically hunting for the Imam, or religious leader, of the Jamia al-Kbeer Mosque.

“I saw my best friend bloody on the ground,” Kamal continues, his voice rising. “I saw a 25-year-old kid get shot in his chest. He died on the spot. I went and found the Imam and then we ran as fast as we could.” He pauses and covers his face in his palms. “I can never forget what I saw that day.” According to community leaders, seven people were killed in this initial attack.

But the violence grew, spreading quickly throughout the city, before anyone had time to diagnose the cause.

‘We were sure we were about to be killed’

A volley of gunshots rang out in the distance, slicing through the city’s peaceful afternoon air, causing 70-year-old Hawa Salih to shudder. “Every time I hear shooting I am scared it’s the Christians killing Muslims again,” she says.

In actuality, the gunfire is from the Ethiopian army clashing with Fano, an Amhara militia group, on the outskirts of the city. Since August 2023, the Amhara region has been under a state of emergency, as the federal government attempts to disarm and root out Fano militants, who receive widespread popular support throughout the Amhara region.

But it is not the ongoing war that Salih fears; it is the possibility of her Christian neighbors turning their guns on her again. Salih lives inside a compound, with about 100 other Muslims.

A few hours after the initial funeral attack, a group of Muslim youths carried the body of an individual killed at the funeral through the streets of Gondar, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” [God is greatest!], according to Ethiopian researchers who produced a report on the violence last year for the Rift Valley Institute, an independent policy think tank. A group of Orthodox Christians attempted to block the demonstrators’ path. The situation quickly exploded.

That evening the violence flooded into Salih’s neighborhood. The windows of the nearby mosque and homes are still shattered from when at least 150 Christians barged into the compound, hurling rocks.

The Muslim youths and men bolted towards the mosque, locking themselves on the other side of its gates, and pelted the rocks back at the Christians, according to witnesses. The Christians began breaking into homes.

Amid the unrest, Salih dragged a large table in front of her door, barricading herself inside, along with her daughter, aged 35, and her 10-year-old grandson, who hid in a cupboard. But about 15 Christians smashed through the wall (a large blue tarp is now draped across the side of her two-room house where the hole remains). Some of them were strapped with AK-47s and others were holding knives, Salih says.

“They came in and started breaking everything,” she recounts, leading me through her home to a cupboard that still has its exterior glass broken. “They stole cash and phones and smashed our television, satellite dish, and the mirrors — everything.” The surrounding homes were also vandalized and looted.

“We were sure we were about to be killed,” Salih says. Luckily, the attackers were only targeting Muslim men and not harming women or children. They left Salih’s home soon after breaking in.

“I have never felt this kind of hatred from them before,” Salih says, shaking her head in continued disbelief. “We used to go to their weddings. We had respect for one another. I don’t know why all this happened.”

According to residents, two children in the compound, six-year-old Hakima and four-year-old Nasiha, who are sisters, were kidnapped by the Christian rioters. When the police finally intervened, they were returned to their family about six hours later. When I asked one of the girls’ relatives why the mobs would have kidnapped them, she replied, simply: “Because they hate us.”

Marim Addis, who lives beside Salih, is still visibly shaken. Worry seems to have permanently settled behind her eyes. Her brother, Abdulkarim Faraj, who was about 50 at the time, was killed in the chaos. When the mobs forced entry into the compound, he ran inside his home, telling his then 17-year-old daughter Faiza to hide under the bed.

Faraj grabbed a Quran from his table, took a seat, and began reciting the holy verses. A group of Christians broke down his door and stormed inside his home. They tackled him to the ground and beat his head with rocks. When Faraj’s body went limp, the mob proceeded to rip up the Quran that Faraj had turned to for solace, witnesses say.

Faraj’s teenage daughter Faiza watched this gruesome scene unfold from under the bed. “She lost her mind for a long time after that,” says 40-year-old Addis. “She was very delusional, always talking about things that weren’t there.” Addis is standing outside Faraj’s home, now abandoned. Faraj’s wife died years earlier. With her father brutally murdered in front of her, on this grisly day Faiza became an orphan.

“We sent Faiza to live in Addis Ababa [Ethiopia’s capital] a few months ago and it was only then she started getting better,” Addis explains. “The environment here reminds her too much of what happened so she can’t live here anymore.”

Ali*, 31, was staying at a Muslim-owned hotel in the same neighborhood at the time, about 200 meters from the mosque. He watched the turmoil unfold from his balcony. “Many people were throwing stones, breaking into people’s homes, and shooting guns,” he recounts. “Then some of them saw me and started throwing stones towards the balcony.”

Hundreds of rioting Christians moved onto the Muslim-owned businesses on the main streets of the city’s center. Windows were smashed and Christian youths overran restaurants and cafes, stealing items and barrels of oil, which they later sold, residents say. A large supermarket was burned into heaps of ash.

“I recognized a lot of them,” Ali says. “Most were Christians from the area.” But Ali also watched as Christian bystanders intervened to save their Muslim neighbors. A mob was beating a Muslim man with iron pipes on the street when a group of Christian tuk tuk drivers saved him, hurrying him into a nearby Christian home to hide.

When a mob of youths targeted the mosque in Ali’s neighborhood, trying to force their way into the Imam’s home within the mosque’s compound, a large group of Christian residents, many of whom were elders, intervened, Ali says. The rioting youths had no choice but to retreat, but not before one of them dismantled the mosque’s loudspeaker.

In another neighborhood, the rioters incinerated the Haj Ahmedin Mosque. It remains that way today, with its charred debris piled in a corner of the surrounding living compound. Its loudspeaker is still scorched and bent to one side, hanging like a menacing umbrella over homes.

“These were people from our village, our friends”

Yusef,* 25, believed his family was safe. “At that point, I thought most of it was just people taking advantage of the chaos to steal from Muslim homes and businesses,” Yusef says. “We are a poor family so I didn’t think we would be targeted because if they came here, they wouldn’t find anything to steal.”

Hours into the turmoil, however, police arrived at Yusef’s family’s home. The police had resorted to transporting Muslim men throughout the city to the police station in an attempt to protect them from the indiscriminate violence. But Yusef was reluctant to go with them.

“I grew up here,” he explains. “This is my community. I didn’t think it was possible that anyone from our neighborhood would attack me.” But when Yusef finally agreed to go with the police, following them to their vehicle, about a dozen neighborhood youths arrived at the same time — and they were marching directly towards Yusef’s home.

Yusef’s mother assumed the youths, who she knew since they were born, had arrived to convince the police not to take her son — to assure the officers they were safe in their neighborhood. But, in reality, the youths were armed with knives, sticks, and rocks, coming for blood.

“These were people from our village, our friends,” Yusef continues, nervously pushing the palms of his hands back and cracking his knuckles. “One of them was someone who a few hours before was calling me, checking up on me, and warning me to stay home. And now they came to attack me.”

“I was really shocked… If the police had arrived just two minutes later, who knows? They may have killed me.”

By Thursday, the violence had spread to Debark, a town about 100km north of Gondar, triggered by a fabricated rumor that a local church had been set on fire. Two mosques were torched and five Muslims were killed by Christian mobs, according to residents.

Hiyat Baye, 20, watched in horror as a mob of about 200 Christians swarmed her small village in Debark. Her two brothers, 19 and 35, were shot and stabbed to death in front of her. The mob then set alight her murdered brother’s home, along with the village mosque. Baye’s other brother, now 29, would have also been killed if it was not for a Christian neighbor hiding him in her home at the last moment.

On that same day, Baye fled Debark to Gondar — never to return. She found shelter at her sister-in-law’s house in Addis Alem, where the violence did not reach. Despite this, her sister-in-law, 30-year-old Batul Suleiman, who is sitting beside Baye on a couch at her home, lost her younger brother, 19-year-old Abderahman Iman. He was among those shot and killed at the funeral.

This reporter was able to independently visit Baye’s village. Walking through the rural terrain, Orthodox Christian men, with wooden crosses dangling from their necks, were busy tilling their farms. On one side, behind the farmers, sat a white Orthodox Church, tall and untouched. Directly across from it — less than a hundred meters away — stood what was left of the village’s only mosque. Its charred skeleton was all that remained.

“I feel a lot of anger,” Baye says, her face unmoving, almost frozen. “I don’t want to live in Ethiopia. Muslims are not safe here.”

As news of the killings spread elsewhere in Ethiopia, enraged Muslims vandalized and torched churches and monasteries in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s (SNNP) and the Oromia regional states.

Some Christians allege that the conflict was inter-religious in Gondar and that many Christians were also killed by Muslims during the violence. But, after several weeks of conducting research there, this reporter found no evidence of this. One resident said three Christians were killed, but they were day laborers from the countryside and their identities were unknown. This statement, however, could not be verified.

But some Christians were certainly injured in the violence.

“Muslims and Christians used to share injera and coffee. But now?”

Amsalu Tamru, 18, is slumped on the edge of a bed at his family’s one-room home. The Christian teen is paralyzed on the right side of his body and has great difficulty speaking. A large dent sits deep in the middle of his head and separates his skull, wounds he sustained when a group of Muslim youths beat him around the head with rocks.

With his 23-year-old sister Salem assisting him, Tamru slowly explains that he was working at a Muslim-owned metal works shop in Kedame Gebeya, the Muslim majority neighborhood which borders Tamru’s majority Christian vicinity, on the day of the funeral attack. As news of the violence spread, Tamru began rushing home. But he was intercepted by a large group of Muslim youths, armed with rocks and shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

It all happened so fast, Tamru says, that he can barely remember anything. But this reporter was able to obtain a video of the incident’s immediate aftermath. The video shows Muslims holding large rocks in their hands as they hastily walk along the street. One of the Muslims is shouting, “Anyone who has a gun, come help us!” Several gunshots can be heard nearby.

Tamru is then seen lying supine on the cobble-stoned street, with blood oozing from his head. One of the youths in the crowd hits what looks like a wooden sledgehammer on Tamru’s foot, as he remains on the ground, motionless.

“He was a student, a very clever student, at the top of his class,” Salem says, taking a seat next to Tamru on the bed. “He was playing football. He loved football. Now, he has stopped going to school. He doesn’t do anything except sit inside all day.”

The corners of Tamru’s mouth twitch into a frown, before floods of tears overwhelm him. He turns towards the wall and pulls his sweatshirt hood over his head. “I don’t want to live,” Tamru mutters, wiping tears from his face. “I dream all day about dying.”

Tamru’s mother, Manalie Tesfu, 50, watches her son from the corner of the room. “I can’t handle seeing him like this,” Tesfu says, shaking her head. “There’s no human you can possibly love as much as your child.”

Tamru’s father, who was a beggar in town, also died a few months after the incident, aged 60. The family says it was “sadness” that killed him — unable to grapple with the trauma of watching his son suffer. Tamru needs more advanced medical treatment, but the family cannot afford it, they say.

“Muslims and Christians here used to intermingle, share injera [traditional Ethiopian bread made from teff] and coffee together,” Tesfu says, glancing up at her children hugging each other on the bed, Tamru’s face buried in his sister’s shoulder. “But now we are all separated. We have become frightened of each other. Muslims remain with Muslims and Christians remain with Christians.”

“I fear for the future generations that won’t have the memories that the older generations have, when we all lived in peace together,” Tesfu continues. “I’m worried this hatred they are feeling will only get worse as time goes by.”

PART THREE – Attempting to unpick the root causes

“The idea of some hardliners is that Muslims are guests in Christian Ethiopia”

The causes of the violence in 2022 remain a blur — a complex web of conspiracy theories, land disputes, mutual allegations of religious “extremism,” and the long, complicated history of a Christian city whose residents feel threatened by a loss of privileges from decades of state political transformations.

“Gondar’s story connects with the wider direction of the nation,” explains Jörg Haustein, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge who specializes in Christianity and Islam in Africa. “In Ethiopia, the [Orthodox Christian] Amharas used to rule. It was an Orthodox country and they have found themselves since the Derg [which overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974] in this unfamiliar space where their privileges are gone. The country has a lot more space for plurality. Muslims are appearing everywhere in the [Amhara] region. So, they carry a sense of being beleaguered under these changes.”

“Sometimes it takes a very little trigger to see these built-up tensions erupt into spats of violence,” he adds.

In Gondar, once the capital of the Christian empire, these feelings of discontent run deep. In 2009, Gondar saw a less serious eruption of inter-religious violence during Timqet, a three-day Ethiopian Orthodox festival that celebrates and reenacts the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan. During the festivities, replicas of the Ark of the Covenant are carried from the churches to rivers or bodies of water in vast processions, where they are laid to rest overnight.

According to Dulin, the anthropologist, the Muslim community received a lease in 1995 to construct a mosque on an open field in the city, near Gondar University. But they had still not been given the green light for construction more than a decade later. So, at the start of 2009, in protest over the delays, some Muslims assembled a temporary mosque of corrugated tin sheets in the field where the future mosque was planned.

While on most days this field is left unused, during Timqet it is transformed into a holy space for the city’s Orthodox Christian residents. Priests from the nearby Lideta Mariam Church transport their Ark to this field, leaving it overnight inside a tent. An angered deacon from the church organized a demonstration at the site. Together with other irate Christians, they chanted: “This year we will segregate,” “Our blood will flow,” and “They [Muslims] came here as guests, once we hosted them, they wanted to build a mosque at the door of the church,” according to Dulin’s research. A group of young men reduced the mosque to rubble.

On the third day of Timqet, as a procession carrying an important Ark of the Covenant back to St Michael Church passed one of the main roads in the city, some khat was dropped on the procession from the second floor of a cafe. Christians claim that a Muslim man had thrown the khat directly on the Ark, in a flagrant act of disrespect to the holiest symbol of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Muslims contend, however, that the khat fell by accident when a woman was cleaning and that it landed far from the actual Ark.

Tensions boiled over and a group of Orthodox men ran to the nearest mosque and threw stones at it, vowing to destroy it in revenge. Muslim shops and residences were also swarmed by stone-throwing Christian men. But, according to Dulin, there were no reports of deaths. One man was shot in his hand, but that seemed to be the most serious case of violence.

Around this same time, there were other smaller inter-religious skirmishes around mosque-building, Dulin says. In one incident, Muslims of an unmarked mosque, only discernible as a mosque by a small crescent on the door and located in a mixed Christian-Muslim neighborhood, attempted to construct a proper mosque with a minaret. But when the construction crew arrived, Christian men hurled rocks at them.

“From the perspective of some conservative Orthodox Christians [in Gondar], Muslims should conceal their religious presence to the point of making it barely visible, so that it does not change the Christian character of the landscape,” Dulin explains.

“The idea of some hardliners is that Muslims are guests in Christian Ethiopia and by being very public and putting up mosques they are being bad guests and trying to take over the house of the host,” he continues. “You must respect the owners of the house, and the owners of the house are Christians.”

Similarly, in 2022, some residents claim that the violence at the funeral was in direct response to an open-air iftar event Muslims attempted to organize during Ramadan, celebrating the evening meal when Muslims break their fasts. While public iftar events were similarly planned in other Ethiopian cities that year, in the historic Christian city of Gondar the event was highly controversial. Rumors spread that Muslims were planning to hold the event on or near Meskel Square, an important location for Christian Orthodox celebrations. Muslim residents have denied this.

Ali goes so far as to contend that some Orthodox Christians had instigated the attack on Legas’ funeral in order to stop the iftar celebrations from happening. “Inside their hearts they hate us,” Ali says. “They believe this is a Christian city and Muslims should not be here.”

Some Muslim leaders allege that the violence erupted owing to the longstanding land conflict between the Muslim community and the Light of St George Church, located on the other side of the Qeha River and from where witnesses say the shooters came to attack mourners at the Haji Elias cemetery. According to them, certain church figures in Gondar have long planned to grab the lands of Haji Elias.

An Ethiopian Orthodox Church, named Meskele Eysus, was built on a hilltop adjacent to Addis Alem a few years ago and now overlooks Haji Elias, increasing already simmering tensions between communities. “They are planning to expand into Haji Elias,” says Hamza*, a well-respected Muslim leader in Gondar who requested anonymity. “They have been planning this for a long time.”

According to Yihenew Alemu Tesfaye, an anthropologist at Dire Dawa University and one of the authors of the Rift Valley Institute report, for years religious leaders had requested that the government properly demarcate the lands in and around Haji Elias to resolve the border dispute. “They were asking the government to establish an official demarcation of the land to show clearly what belongs to the church and what belongs to the cemetery,” Tesfaye says. “But the government failed to do that.”

“In a situation where there is rising inter-religious tension, this kind of dispute should be resolved as soon as possible,” Tesfaye adds. “But that did not happen in Gondar. The government’s failures increased the resentment between communities which can easily be exploited by different actors.”

Hamza and other Muslim leaders believe the funeral attack was premeditated and planned. “They wanted to scare Muslims so they don’t use that land [Haji Elias] anymore and the church can more easily grab it,” Hamza alleges. “It’s part of their goal to push Muslims out of the city.”

If that was indeed the goal of the attack, the plan seems to have worked. Dozens of Muslim families have fled Gondar since the violence and few are brave enough to step foot on the contested lands of Haji Elias. Kamal, the son of Legas, stopped visiting his father’s grave three months after the attack. He says his father appeared to him in a dream and warned him to stay away from the cemetery.

Others say that religious students from Meskele Eysus, the church built on the hilltop that now overlooks the Haji Elias cemetery, pelt rocks at Muslims when they are seen on the land.

What to blame? Extremism? Fano? The hidden hand of the West?

Both religious communities allege that the other is preaching “extremism” in their churches and mosques. Residents tell me that Orthodox Christian leaders, including those at the Light of St George Church, have been preaching anti-Muslim sentiments to their congregations, including sermons on how to upend the expansion of the Muslim community in Gondar.

Conversely, Christians claim that Muslims in Gondar have been influenced by the Salafi movement, which claims to purify Islamic practices by strictly following the first three generations of Muslims and ardently rejects practices such as saint veneration. Christians say this movement has caused the unraveling of the city’s inter-religious coexistence. According to Østebø, from the University of Florida, since 1991 Salafism has become the most significant reform movement in Ethiopia.

Most Orthodox Christians this reporter spoke to attribute the violence to a government conspiracy — always with the intention to divide the Amhara people on religious lines. Some accuse the TPLF, the longtime archenemies of the Amhara. Others conveniently indict Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has become deeply unpopular in the Amhara region after he signed a peace agreement with the TPLF in November 2022, which ended a devastating two-year civil war. This prompted Fano — once government allies — to angrily turn their guns on Abiy.

This reporter met with the head priest of the Light of St George Church, Tsige Sisay, and asked him about the allegations raised against the church in this story. Sisay denied that the violence originated from men who came from the grounds of the church or that there has been anti-Muslim preaching in the church’s sermons.

He then went on to express oft-told conspiracy theories among the Ethiopian Orthodox. “All of this was orchestrated by the hidden hand of the West,” Sisay says. “Some unknown actors took advantage of this argument so they could create a divide between Muslims and Christians in an attempt to destabilize Ethiopia.”

“The aim of the Western governments has always been to destroy the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,” he adds.

A group of young religious students crowd around Sisay, listening in on our interview. One of them chimes in: “It was America that was behind it. They hate us because Orthodox Christianity is the true and original religion of mankind. They want to destroy us so they can make us weak and convince us that their corrupted forms of Christianity are the true ones.” Sisay nods his head in approval.

Sisay then declares that the violence “wasn’t that big of a deal,” and that “all of it has been exaggerated,” before questioning me about why I would feel the need to come to Gondar and ask about it at all.

Muslim residents tend to nod politely when hearing these theories, but roll their eyes and express frustrations over these narratives the moment the Christians are out of sight.

Others, still, blame the violence on Fano for funnelling guns into the hands of scores of Orthodox Christians. Before Fano’s break with the federal government, in 2021, TPLF fighters pushed deep into Amhara and the region was mobilized for war, with thousands of young men given rudimentary military training and sent to the front as militia. According to residents in Gondar, Fano militants extorted the city’s Muslims to purchase guns.

“They went to Muslim homes and told them they needed guns to defend the region from the TPLF,” recounts Ali, who personally knows several families who were targeted and have since fled Gondar. “So, for them to buy weapons the Muslim families should pay. They did this to many Muslims because they believe all of us have money.” The Fano militants threatened violence against the Muslims if they did not pay, residents say.

“All the Christians purchased guns to fight the TPLF and when this violence happened [in 2022] they turned those same guns on us,” Ali contends.

According to researchers and academics, there is no singular cause for the violence more than two years ago. Instead, a complex embroidery of historical tensions with the likely involvement of unknown malicious actors came together to generate one of the deadliest attacks on Muslims in the Amhara region’s history.

“There are various complicated and complex factors that contributed to the violence,” explains Tesfaye, the anthropologist. “There have been decades of politics in Ethiopia in which leaders have attempted to draw divisions between people. At the same time, there are many local narratives. It is not easy to discern the cause.”

This inter-religious violence in Ethiopia, however, cuts both ways. In 2018, violence broke out in the Muslim majority Somali region, with young Somali men going on a spree, looting and burning the city of Jijiga – including churches – leaving dozens dead, including several priests.

“Christians in Gondar can perceive this violence in Jijiga as an attack on them, which heightens their suspicions and paranoia about the Muslims and theories they are attempting to take over the country,” Tesfaye says.

Amid the violence in 2022, 509 Muslims and Christians were arrested. But most have since trickled out of jail. According to an official from the Council of Islamic Affairs in Gondar, about 60 Christians and one Muslim remain in jail today.

Despite more than two years having gone by since the violence, post-conflict reconciliation between religious communities remains elusive. Tesfaye attributes this to an erosion of religious leadership in Gondar and a general decline in respect for religious authority. According to him, the Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia and various grassroots interreligious initiatives have been co-opted by the government, leading to the disintegration of community trust.

PART FOUR – A precarious peace

“I don’t trust them anymore. I’m living in constant fear”

Back where our story began, in the small mud home of Muntaha Suleiman and her son Mohammed, Suleiman clutches a small passport-size photo of her slain husband between her fingertips. “My son doesn’t do anything now except read the Quran and go to the mosque,” she says, referring to Mohammed, who witnessed his father’s murder at the funeral two years ago. “Sometimes when he recites the Quran too loudly, I feel nervous. Maybe he will disturb our [Christian] neighbors and they will attack again.”

Before the massacre, Orthodox Christians would wake up early on Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that follows Ramadan, and clean the city’s stadium for the Muslims who would congregate there later in the day to celebrate the festivities each year. Now, Muslims are too fearful to gather there.

“I haven’t stopped crying since that day,” Suleiman continues. “We were living without any problems. It never crossed our minds that this could ever happen in Gondar. Muslims don’t even like to leave their homes anymore. There is no peace here. There is only fear. Any Muslim who has the means has already left this place.”

This fear is not easily detectable on the surface. In fact, if someone visits Gondar as a tourist or backpacker, they would likely not notice anything is wrong. Many Muslims in the city continue to spend their days at cafes and restaurants with their Orthodox Christian friends. It is only when the Christians leave that the Muslims utter their lingering feelings of insecurity and uneasiness over the violence.

“People are just living like normal now,” Yusef says. “But it’s all pretending. We are a small minority here, so we have to act politely with them. We express friendliness because no one can express what they actually feel inside. So, we just go on pretending with them like nothing ever happened.”

The same neighborhood youths who tried to attack Yusef two years ago now greet him in the streets, he says. “Sometimes it makes me laugh… The same people who were planning to kill me now greet me when they see me. I cannot make sense of it… I grew up in a Christian area so I have many Christian friends. Whenever there was a Muslim holiday, they would all come to my house to spend time with me and my family. But now everything is different.”

“I don’t even like to look into people’s eyes anymore because I don’t know who was involved and who wasn’t. I don’t know who is bad and who is good anymore.” Yusef pauses, looking down and fidgeting with his hands. “Sometimes I think these Christians just always felt this way about Muslims and they just got an opportunity to express it.”

Yusef is always quick to add: “Not all Christians, just some of them.”

This ghastly wound — piercing deep into the heart of the city — has remained open and unhealed more than two years after this unimaginable violence tore through these quaint streets. Day by day, it continues to fester.

Avez Said, 70, is huddled on the floor of her single room in a predominantly Christian neighborhood in Gondar. There are no lights and it is nearly pitch black inside. Before I can ask her a question, she starts to loudly sob. “He was my only one,” she moans. “My only one. They took my only one away from me.” Her body is rocking back and forth as she wails in pain.

She is holding tightly onto a photo. It is the only one she has of her son Maky Adam, who Christian rioters killed two years ago. In the photo, Adam, who was 35, is posing beside his wife on their wedding day. The couple had three daughters together, now aged five, seven, and 13.

Adam was not Said’s only child. He was not even her first-born. But he was the one who cared for her like no one else. “I used to thank God every day for my son,” Said squeaks, her voice getting caught in her throat. She sniffles and wipes away tears. “He was a very good son and the whole family depended on him. He was a pure soul who never fought or argued with anyone.”

According to Said, Adam was working as a tailor near the city center when the violence reached him, on the same day of the funeral attack. Adam was swarmed by a group of Christians, who bludgeoned him to death with rocks, leaving his body in a pool of blood.

Said’s eyes are glued to the photo. She suddenly clicks her tongue on the rim of her mouth and throws it to the side, as if the still, unmoving image is an insult to the lively memories she has of him. “I don’t trust them anymore,” she says, referring to her Christian neighbors. “I’m living in constant fear. Maybe today they will say ‘hi’ to me and then tomorrow they will kill one of my other children.”

Said rarely goes outside during the day. She mostly sits alone in her dark room, her thoughts swimming against tides of emotions — terror, resentment, and anguish eating her up inside. “I go outside only when my neighbors are sleeping,” she says. “The moment the sun rises, I go indoors. I don’t want to see their faces.”

“They are not fighting or insulting us,” Said continues, her face cloaked in darkness. “Everyone is still polite with one another, but none of it is real. No one even came to offer condolences after my son was killed. It’s their silence that makes it so I can’t shed this fear inside me.”

She pauses. In the stillness, I can hear her neighbors outside conversing and laughing, sharing fresh coffee and injera. Said shifts her body towards me, reaching for my hands and holding them in her palms. “None of us are safe here,” she whispers.

*Names changed to protect interviewees.

All photographs by Jaclynn Ashly unless otherwise stated.

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