I have no idea what happened with the quote I tried to put in from Encylopedia Britannica. But it disappeared and the rest of what I wrote was italicized so it looked like the quote that didn’t make it in. Here is the actual quote from Encylopedia Britannica:
“Although the early Beta Israel remained largely decentralized and their religious practices varied by locality, they remained faithful to Judaism after the conversion of the powerful Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum to Christianity in the 4th century CE, and thereafter they were persecuted and forced to retreat to the area around Lake Tana, in northern Ethiopia. Coming under increased threat from their Christian neighbours, the disparate Jewish communities became increasingly consolidated in the 14th and 15th centuries, and it was at this time that these communities began to be considered a single distinct “Beta Israel.” Despite Ethiopian Christian attempts to exterminate them in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Beta Israel partly retained their independence until the 17th century, when the emperor Susenyos utterly crushed them and confiscated their lands. Their conditions improved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at which time tens of thousands of Beta Israel lived in the region north of Lake Tana.”
