Tigray Province
The oldest inscriptions and texts referring to the population of the Aksumite kingdom and its neighbors do not know the term Tigray yet; they show an ethnic diversity, which has partially disappeared today. A variant of the term Tigray, first appears in a 10th-century gloss to "Cosmas Indicopleustes", i.e. after the Aksumite period; according to this source important groups of the region were the "" and the "" (i.e. the Agʿazi), the latter being the Aksumites. The toponym Tigray is probably originally ethnic, the "" then meant "the tribes near Adulis". They correspond to the Tigre groups living in the same area today; however, a historical identity between today's sub-groups and the 10th century groups cannot be supposed, as this could not explain the existence of the toponym "Tigray" for the Aksum-Adwa area. It should be concluded that Tigray groups lived along the main route between Aksum and the coast, and later separated, both ethnically and linguistically. There is no indication that the term Tigray could be explained through Ge'ez ("subdue"), with the meaning "the submitted" (in supposed contrast to the "free" Agaziyan linked with the rulers of Aksum), as this could not explain why the most important province took the name Tigray. The term might even not be Ethiosemetic and predate the Sabaen presence in Ethiopia. It is not excluded that the term ("Tekaru") from a list of southern peoples and countries allegedly subdued by Pharaonic Egypt in the 15th century BC may already be linked with the term Tigray; in this case it should mean a region within or in the vicinity of Punt.
Tigrayans
A usually urban and semi-urban sub-group are the Muslim Tigrayans, who form around 5% of the Tigrayan population (in Eritrea called Jeberti, a term often rejected, however, by Muslim Tigrayns). Most are merchants, but some are peasants with traditional land rights, such as in their sacred town Negash in eastern Tigray, and in a few other street settlements, e.g. Wukro Meray near Aksum (with the mosque used by the Muslims of Aksum) or Enticho. In the past, many Muslim Tigrayans also acted as servants for wealthy farmers and nobles. Most settled near trade routes and in important towns, such as Asmara and Keren in Eritrea, or Adwa, Enticho, Adigrat, Wukro, or Mekelle in Tigray. Arabic inscriptions prove a Muslim presence in eastern Tigray along trade routes (in Enderta and Sera) already starting from around the 9th or 10th century. Islam as practiced by Tigrayans has barely been studied yet, but seems to be marked by influences of diverse origins, from the Sudan, Egypt, and Muslim communities of the Yemen and the Hijaz. According to tradition, the festival of Ashura, on 10th Muharram, was introduced in 1664/65 by a council chaired by a Muslim of Tembien, which decided to make Negash a pilgrimage center with Ashura as the annual day of pilgrmage; suppressed later, the festival was revived in the 1990s. The Tigrayan Muslims are Sunnis, and Ashura is celebrated as a day when "prophets" (e.g. Moses) were "relieved from difficulties", which is also an allusion to Negash as the asylum for the persecuted followers of Prophet Muhammed. The festival may have been established as a response against Shi'ite influence, possibly from the Zaydites of the Yemen, whose connection to the coast is known from the 17th century.