Solate definitely sounds like an early reference to Somalis IMO, keep in mind this text is from the 3rd century.
The Northern Highlands(Eritrea and Tigray) were dominated by small Kingdoms who often wrestled with each other for power. You can see this in the Adulis and Aksum inscriptions where they mention conquering regions in Eritrea and Ethiopia using terms they still use today.
“I waged war on the following peoples: I made war on the Gaze, then, having conquered
Agame and Sigyene, I seized half their property and peoples. Aua, Zingabene, Aggabe, Tiamaa, Athagous, Kalaa and the people of
Samen who live across the Nile in inaccessible and snowbound mountains where storms and icy cold persist and the snowfall is so deep that a man sinks in it up to the knees; I subdued them after crossing the river.”
Agame is a place in Eastern Tigray, Gaze(Agazi) is most likely a reference to Akele Guzai in South East Eritrea, this term later on became an identifier among all Tigrinya speakers. Aua was a place in between Aksum and Adulis based on Byzantine accounts. Samen is a clearly somewhere in the Simien mountains.
There is also a stele in the Eritrean highlands called Hawulti in Matara dating back to the 3rd century.
“This is the obelisk which had (
caus) made Agaz for his fathers who have carried off the youth of “W”, “LF” as well as of “SBL.”
Matara was a city on the route between Aksum and Adulis and this proves they engaged in conquest with neighbours too, W, LF and SBL are all believed to be place names.
So we can clearly see the Northern Highlands were made up of multiple polities, polities which often warred with each other, they weren’t all as united as many people here think, they were often independent, the inscriptions in Adulis were from an independent local ruler there’s no evidence of him being directly from Aksum. We have foreign texts that mention Adulis alone completely independent of Aksum. After a certain point though the highlands were unified under the King of Kings who was based in Axum and allowed for petty kings who still had some power over their kingdoms. A similar system was applied in medieval Eritrea and Ethiopia. We can even see this in pre Axumite times in D’mt the system was a federation.
I mostly agree with you that Axum would claim land they didn’t own but those regions of Arabia they claimed weren’t random there is good evidence they had previously conquered those areas so they probably still felt like they had a right to it or something which motivated them to continue to claim it. Also the Sabean settlement of the Eritrea and North Ethiopia happened from around 900BC to 500BC, so that would still be within there historical memory, I wonder if that also somehow made them feel like they had a right to claim South Arabia, the “Ethio-Sabean” period only ended around 7/800 years before Ezana was around.
Axum generally wouldn’t interfere with local affairs in the areas they conquered. They’d collect tax and thats pretty much it, the only exception was 6th century Yemen where Axumites repaired the Marib dam, built a church and maintained a community. Some elements of Yemeni architecture can be traced back to Axumite influences.
Commanding Somalis to guard the seas would have been the extent of Axumite control aswell as calling on soldiers/mercenaries.
“whom I ordered to guard the coasts of the sea.”
