Originally named Hirmata, the city owed its importance in the 19th century to being located on the caravan route between Shewa and Kaffa, as well as being only six miles from the palace of Abba Jifar II.

[4] At the very beginning of the 20th century, the German explorer Oscar Neumann visited Jimma on his journey from the Somali coast through Ethiopia to the Sudan.

As he observed, “Jimma is almost the richest land of Abyssinia; the inhabitants are pure, well-built Galla; they are nearly all Mohammedans, as is their king, Abba Jifar, a very clever man, who submitted to Menelik at the right time and, therefore, retained his country”[5] The present town was developed on the Awetu River by the Italian colonial regime in the 1930s.

At that time, with the goal of weakening the native Ethiopian Church, the Italians intended to make Jimma an important center of Islamic learning, and founded an academy to teach fiqh.

[6] In the East African fighting of World War II after their main force was defeated, the Italian garrison at Jimma was one of the last to surrender, holding out until July 1941.

On 13 December 2006, the Ethiopian government announced that it had secured a loan of US$98 million from the African Development Bank to pave the 227 kilometers of highway between Jimma and Mizan Teferi to the southwest.

The city is home to a museum, Jimma University, several markets, and an airport (ICAO code HAJM, IATA JIM).