Migration to Abyssinia Migration to Abyssinia The Migration to Abyssinia (, "al-hijra ʾilā al-habaša"), also known as the First Hegira ( "hijrah"), was an episode in the early history of Islam, where Prophet Muhammad's first followers (the "Sahabah") fled from the persecution of the ruling Quraysh tribe of Mecca. They sought refuge in the Christian Kingdom of Aksum, present-day Eritrea and Ethiopia (formerly referred to as Abyssinia, an ancient name whose origin is debated), in or . The Aksumite monarch who received them is known in Islamic sources as the Negus ( "najāšī") "Ashama ibn Abjar". Modern historians have alternatively identified him with
Name of Georgia (country) with the names גאורגיה ("Gheorghia" with two hard "g"'s) and גורג'יה (Gurjia), when "Gruzia" took over in the 1970s, probably due to a massive immigration of bilingual Georgian-Russian Jews to Israel at that time. In August 2005 the Georgian ambassador to Israel Lasha Zhvania asked that the Hebrew speakers refer to his country as "Georgia" גאורגיה and abandon the name "Gruzia". A similar request was issued by Georgia, in December 2009, to Lithuania, asking to be called "Georgija" instead of "Gruzija"; the request was forwarded to the Commission of the Lithuanian Language. Instead, eventually "Sakartvelas" was adopted as an alternative