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Gondär Land Documents:
Multiple Copies, Multiple Recensions
ABSTRACT
Northeast African Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2. 2011. pp. 1-42. ISSN 0740-9133.
(c) 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.
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2 ■ Donald Crummey
* Wm. Wright, Catalogue of the Ethiopian Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1877)
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Gondar Land Documents ■ 3
« j*î.m m
VP aiy-nv W TV*» >7/"* «"OV** ■flCV*> CilK (Dh9°>
ircif i -ncyj rv¡ i AM- ncntn 4-.n*y° hj t ßt /h?«-* ÍÍ9°K¿ AJB me *AA HA
Híh ¿C ©Hca^f Am^t ®MlA.A+ H ©H-iKC fMiA ©CT4} H -H<-C
H«B I ''<n> AA.Afw ®A+^Cn W ®U-0> U7¿ HVíl¿ ittiß ®£HC ?°AA hW HA*®
7-->*C I A+*Hh¿ 77VV! ®U-fl> U7¿ HJßA</»Jß tl* I ®A<w>*m ®AT> <n>X'i HJSA<n>JB *
Gìvh O/h* tl<*> h^Aì * H7+ ®-V£P+ V 777" h®- 7o?/"* «/»W* ©h<*>V!
ai-HO« I h®*7H* if-Apw tOffl-A* ®</»?°U¿7 a>A.*a>-7t íl,t hCAt ?7 ?°AA MM ®ftftA>
nCAt^Ar ®9»AA <*>?°UCV h0 +hA VJB01! <?* MH JB-Ofr H WH- H7+ /"¿9+
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4 ■ Donald Crummey
MANUSCRIPT
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 5
? • rough hand
• very abbreviated
• one column
• one of numerous documents on the
? • formal
• extensive
• no columns
? • rough hand
• extensive
• two columns
• contains addendum
? • good hand
• extensive
• lacks addendum
? • good hand
• complete
• three columns
• complete
• four columns
? • good hand
• extensive, but abbreviated (?)
• three columns
• addendum uncertain
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6 ■ Donald Crummey
ft/PCfl ®ft®-Ar Ci ®tWH">* rh «PC?* (D-tH A£t>7" a>h!9°S:ái¿' H ®IM1> 9°K¿ Ml>* tD9°jí:¿
-h¿9°<' (D9°K¿ Í1A1 (Df°ñ¿ <frA ®IM1V ti<*> UM Arh¿fl* hA JSftjB rh- <ř<?+ °1JB HJßrt*
[Arabic header:] In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, one God . . .
Behold, we, King of Kings, Iyyasu, whose regnal name is Berhan
Säggäd, and our mother, Queen Wälättä Giyorgis, Berhan Mogäsa, gave
to Qwesqwam Church, which was built in the land of upper Gondär, *
silk vestments; carpets; censers; crowns, gold and silver; a silver paten
and chalice, books of the New and Old [Testament], and all sacred
utensils, that they might use them in sacrifice to God for the salvation of
our soul. To its priests we gave the land called Bagäna, which previously
had Galla in it, and in which subsequently Zâwé had been established,
that it might be for their sustenance. For the Eucharist we gave the land,
which had been in the hands of Wäyzäro Meslänteya, called Gunter.
For the king's commemoration we gave land called Kāč. The dwelling
place [for the clergy] we exchanged with the dwelling place that is called
Qoffaroč. [These things we did] in front of Abunä Krestodolu, Bishop
[pappas] of Ethiopia, and in front of Abunä Täklä Haymanot, abbot of
Däbrä Libanos, and in front of the aqabé sä4 at and the learned men of
the churches, and the teachers, and the nobles, and the learned men of
law. But that they should not nullify this our gift whether they be king
or queen, nobles or people, all the priests, and teachers, and learned
men of the church with Abunä Pappas Krestädolu and with our abbot,
Abba Täklä Haymanot, they said: "If there be anyone who destroys this
ordinance, by the authority of Peter and Paul and all the Apostles let
him be anathematized."
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 7
><P ®IM1 > Ihò *>7-w ìir* HCìffo oowm fl7£ (Dh9°t ti/»* ® A+ VT C
in -n cy*> <p7<ì Aa+ ncAtn jo+ jb k* mx* n 9°k¿ ajb me h+a w- £-n¿
BrhJS hAOft Hrh¿c íDHCn-^t ©°10m7^f ®hhA.At H®C¥ ®H-íl<-C l/h A «îm H-iKC
®£"í¿ 0+ Hf u»C} H*B ® A+*.Cm ©ü-nv U7¿ HVÍ1¿ ilhß ® JSHC ?°A A* W Mo* WÏC
AfHn¿ vvrn. ®imi> y°£v: 7^?°n ©9°^¿ ^A ®IMI> ti<n> JBI>? A^A* *A JBKJBHI- <?<?+
"■ïjb HjBAt h*hAtv! Aat ne ( '±n ®n <n> ça,*® ®+-.cn n*#*» hn->
ncA-ř^A* ®«M. ū*x<n> hn-v frh*>A WÌÌ* HM-r to? ®n*£<"> MM t MA yjB^q** ^9°ÜC
n/h* n<n> h.řAi + H*>t ®-yn+> h*»y typ h®- r?/"* h*»y ®h<">y ;h*Hn<e h®-
7H* tWW*»* +0®-ft* (Doo^UM ® A.*®-**+ at hCA-tn ?°AA g* AM* ílíímU*®- OJJPYIA
<r°9°u Ci hn +HA yjw* MH JB-ilA- >i*»n H>w+ H*>-t /"Ot n/"A"l* ft/PCA ®ft®-frA
Behold, we, King of Kings lyyasu, whose regnal name is Berhan Säggäd,
and our mother, our Queen Wälättä Giyorgis, Berhan Mogäsa, gave to
Qwesqwam Church, which was built in the land of upper Gondär, [and]
which is called Däbrä Sähay, silk vestments; carpets; censers; crowns,
gold and silver; a silver paten and chalice; New and Old [Testament]
books. To its priests we gave the land called Bagäna, which previously
had Galla in it, and in which subsequently Zâwé had been established.
For the Eucharist we gave the land called Gwenter that had been in
the hands of Wäyzäro Meslā Enteya. The dwelling place [for the clergy]
we exchanged with the dwelling place that is called Qoffaroč. And
afterwards we gave the land of Ebennat and the land of Bäläsä. For
the king's commemoration we gave the land of Gweramba. We gave the
land of Çela that it might be for the farmers who clear the water course
that irrigates the plants of the church and so that it might be [a source
of] charcoal for the service of the Eucharist. It is a right [established]
in front of Abunä Krestodolu and again in front of Abunä Yohännes,
Bishops of Ethiopia, and in front of Abunä Täklä Hay manot, abbot of
Däbrä Libanos, and in front of the 'aqabé sä' at and the learned men of
the churches, and the teachers, and the learned men of law. But that
they should not nullify this our gift, whether they be king or queen,
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8 ■ Donald Crummey
nobles or people, all the priests, and teachers, and learned men of the
church with the two bishops, each in his own time, and with our abbot,
Abba Täklä Haymanot, they anathematized, saying, "If there be anyone
who destroys this ordinance, let him be anathematized by the authority
of Peter and Paul and all the Apostles."
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 9
was the land given for the gardeners; and, for the king's commemoration
service, Guramba was granted instead of Kač, which was to serve this
purpose in the earlier documents. From neither the stage II nor the stage
III documents can we infer the purposes for which Ebennat and Bäläsä
were given. These purposes only become clear after reference to the royal
chronicle and to the register ( mäzgäb ) of the lands given to the clergy,
which is held by officials of the church.6
While it is not surprising that the chronicle contains information
that illuminates the grants, in fact, such corroboration is rare, especially
before the later nineteenth century, at the very earliest. The founding of
the Qwesqwam church was an important event in the reign of Iyyasu II
and Mentewwab. It occupies 20 pages of the translation of their chronicle,
which provides us with a number of firm dates, although it compresses
the three stages in the grant's development, and relating the dates to
the stages, insofar as it can be done at all, must be done by inference.?
The chronicle provides a single narrative of the founding of Däbrä
Sähay Qwesqwam, compressing events that must have taken place over
a number of years. Claire Bosc-Tiessé argues persuasively that the act
of foundation itself and, hence, the date of the stage I documents must
have been 1733.8 The documents in Orient 636, Orient 508, Orient 511,
and Orient 799 refer to Abunä Krestodolu, who died in August 1735 AD.
The chronicle gives us little help in determining when the revisions to
the original grant, as represented by Orient 511 and Ill/IES, 88_III_i6,
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10 ■ Donald Crummey
*both Orient 636 and Orient 511 have seals of Abunä Krestodolu and Arabic invocations of the Trinity
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 11
Then Mäl'akä S ähay Hezqeyas and Bäger Wand Zéna Gâbr'él and Liqé
Giyorgis went down to the land of Bagäna as witnesses. They wrote
down all the land of Bagäna and returned quickly after a short time.9
Guramba. See the note on Kāč, above. (The Gazetteer gives several
locations for Guramba, which is in Dämbeya, and i2°22'N 37°22'E is
most consonant with the location as indicated in Crummey, Land and
Society , map 8, page 83.) As Table 5 indicates, Guramba land was
granted by Emperor Fasil and by Emperor Yohännes I to Kwe'eratä
Re'esu and appears in a few land sales.
Qoffaroč. The same, very enigmatic, phrase appears in both stages
I and II of the grant: "The dwelling place [for the clergy] we exchanged
with the dwelling place, which is called Qoffaroč." The interpolation
"for the clergy" is, in fact, feedback from the chronicle account, which
informs us that Mentewwab gave the clergy land, in the vicinity of the
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12 ■ Donald Crummey
Gwenter
Kāč
Qoffaroč
Stage II Bäjäna
Gwenter
Kāč
Qoffaroč
Ebbenät
Guramba
Bäläsa
Gwenter
Qoffaroč
Ebbenät
Bäläsa
Gweramba
church, on which to build their houses. This land was distinct from
those lands given "for the sustenance" of the clergy, which, as we will
see, were allotted on an individual basis. The qoffaroč are "diggers."
Apparently, they had previously lived on this land, which was now
named after them. The qoffaroč were settled elsewhere, presumably
at Çela, for which see below. I have not been able to locate QoffaroÇ.
Ebbenät and Bäläsa. Ebbenät and Bäläsa first appear in stage II, in
the addendum to Orient 511, which does not state their purpose. Field
research has revealed that, in terms of area of land involved, they were
the most important additions to the original grant. The chronicle is
explicit about their purpose: support of the clergy. It also tells us that
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 13
Gänta)
Gunter Eucharist
(PP. 103/112)
(PP. 103/113)
*1. Guidi, Annales Regum lyasu II et lyo'as (Paris: Corp. Script. Christ. Orient., Series Altera, VI, 1912)
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14 ■ Donald Crummey
Baģāna Orient 776, ir, 2r/' 4r, 6r, gr, iov, nr, i2r/v, 268r, 270v, 27iv
[Bäjäna]
Kāč
Orient 636, 3V
Čóela
*G.W.B. Huntingford, The Land Charters of Northern Ethiopia. Translated with an Intro-
duction and Notes. Monographs in Ethiopian Land Tenure, No. i, (Addis Ababa/Nairobi:
Addis Ababa University Press/Oxford University Press, 1965).
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Gondär Land Documents m 15
DATE
_?
Yohännes I
? land sale
individual grant
later 18th century, sales and other transactions involving gaša and rim
early 19th century land, sometimes coupled with Bagäna, and Bäläsa;
several individual grants of Ebbenät land by lyyasu I,
Täklä Haymanot, and Täklä Giyorgis
Gwalu
Téwodros
T éwoflos
Téwodros
**AII of the tax records in Orient 773 were published by Richard Pankhurst and Germa-Selassie
Asfaw, Tax Records and Inventories of Emperor Téwodros of Ethiopia (1855-1868) (London:
School of Oriental and African Studies, 1978)
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16 ■ Donald Crummey
Çela. Çela first appears in the addendum to 511, where its purpose
is somewhat ambiguous. However, the chronicle clarifies that the phrase
"for the gardeners who clear the water course" belongs to it and not to
any of the other lands that first appear in stage II. I have been unable
to locate Çela, which is also mentioned in a grant made by Asé Téwoflos
to the Gondär Church of Hamara Noh.15
For the needs of the sanctuary of Däbrä Sähay, King Iyyasu and Queen
Mentewwab also gave the land of Tegré which is called Dämbäla, a place
with a tribute of twenty gold dinar , which it pays annually.16
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 17
Existing copies indicate two parts and possibly three stages in Täklä
Haymanoťs granting of land to this church. None of the documents
is dated so, again, we have to infer the existence of these stages from
evidence internal to the texts themselves. Before taking up the explora-
tion of this evidence, an excursion to consider the curious case of Orient
549 is in order.
Orient 549 is the oddest of the documents. It is the most truncated
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18 ■ Donald Crummey
and written in a poor hand. It looks like a rough first draft. It is preceded
by four lines of text - "fifi*® h' fl (dwíAIí g hP°AH 77*i" W/»*
Hitan atfìWìì thAy#0?4?* . . "in the name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Ghost, one God, we King of Kings, whose regnal name is
Täklähaymanot [szc]. . . ." Separated from the main body of the grant,
these lines, in which the scribe wrongly inserts the king's ordinary name
instead of his regnal name, appear to be a botched start. The text is,
apart from differences in spelling and the weakness of penmanship, the
same as that of the other texts, but it breaks off at a very arbitrary
point. It does not conclude with the customary anathema that ends the
other documents. Do we have here a first fumbling attempt to draft the
grant? The following discussion revolves around the remaining eight
copies.
Orient 751 (see Document 3) best exemplifies both the two parts and
the first two stages in the granting of land. All the other texts deviate
from it in very minor ways, which are all idiosyncratic to the particular
texts themselves. In this group I would place Orient 604, Orient 635,
Orient 799, and probably Orient 806.23 Except for their minor deviations,
all these texts agree with 751. They are probably the earliest of our
documents. Orient 481 and Éth 112 call for separate consideration.
nil*» MI œ®A£ (dod-ÍM i *3.fi 5 h9°i'ì' ihò rvt» ìir* +hA HA*»
aoYim TÍW1 Ù1SZ W hHm ©®IMÌ> AhU<i+ 4'hï ®*Af at <*>¥£A H*A<w>JS
''(Dh*<n> 9°K¿ íffi t«*>A (Dh¿ ti? OA^I^A I i atMíJ 7i4-*> a* íl£C£
[sic] ®hAh+ -ílH^t MJ7*¿+ ®M"V hlt AUT-C HÍWl fa» Hhtt hlHÍ* HWí
9°kc nn-n íia? 9° t* n-n¿*A z<q%9° íum %%9° na^c
9fl 9° w n nate BEXS?" H7H®- üú¿<p iw° n7¿°i gESB f noi n<?wc
a>hfi fi oofta* h9°K')M >7/"* X'<n> KfilP3* Hlt /"C9+ h®-7lf MM hi»
fA-íl a»ao9°'}¿ £-í1¿ A.n<?A hart +A4- VTCX A a>'Y4too A.*®-f [sic] a+ hCAtn
®h«Hl, A1}* ttlA YfilW
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 19
hrt¿+-> [sīc] AIT-AM AHA ao A*A ffîbWfm- llļļf; %% 9°ftC f-fc ŒC+ l$9° řft-ř
hx°% 8?° ffiA ii. i- %9° +* fnjfcir |s¿c] mi¿ %v° pt> ®»n rum íia? '"icsr 2g 9°
ww SJř° f®£HC hfttnjM.«* ggf mv IAAÍ-A Xf° w> S?° J'n-f MI/.
ih)®®!- 9?° íVňA a* Ï?" fhjťa rt'íi- 1?° x¡;?° roti. igy r%% teti
"Vìka ïgr frn **A nuM» s»° t* ronMiA«?
mH®- ïs 9° n ç"/ «j? m mfw /»n (col. 3] a?" «m jui+¿ 9?° fA«í- ïjy
pmie hfu- 19° ř/"ůA ai- £?° +» ffSJutt
nai n<f>TC n®9°a 19° f-tu-« 2?» ?n fl-gy ť-ř-^hA í?° yo <?-n így m-A r«hirt
í?° f¿°7 10*° +* fh^V 9°h¿Hr 19a fH-C M°0 19° fhjHl OT=ř g?" tt-ťř- 0?° f/"ö A
ftì- īgr +* fM hg HC
t'l¿-1 gg?° fAÄi- $9° +* fhíK> 2?° m*» y°A¿=h %9° +* l%9° «.4-h.A
rm¿<p g9° f*ň ht iūf° f/"ôA aì- IĶ9° m«» py rttMt E?° imï S 9°
m* mí
iMAt> 3?- IM* %9° tí- f®JBHC ®A+ ,+A g 9° +» W> %9° +¥ S'C4- «31 RE?» +*
fffl řů-ř-fl %9° ?M hXao-
folio 173r
fSg <n,<P f('¿J W>A.^" fA/fc fifitr -03= Vfifitf g% fit W1 pafļ flhAr* [sic]
fA/k :">&/*': va. 'S Krwiiì nh.-)- t^A-n* -nAr h<t -i-ha yjs'TfH- Am-vï®- ni * 9 »
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20 ■ Donald Crummey
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, one God,
we, Negusä Nägäst Täklä Haymanot, whose throne name is Tebäb
Säggäd, behold we ordered and we gave to the priests of Bä'ata in the
sanctuary, which is called Däbrä Tebäb, the building of which is within
the confines of Gondär, so that it might be for us for the salvation of
body and soul, many lands [ahägura', which lands [meder] are: Saräqärn
Baša Qämäs, and Aräbiya Balambaras Qämäs and Kwosän Zefan
Bét Bäjerod [sic] Qämäs, and many other lands [ahägurä] and these
[wä'emnä] lands should come into the hands of those priests: in Jäwana,
292 lands [meder täqera]; in Kab Laya Maryam, 715 lands [med tage ];
in Brahila 132 lands [rae];**in Sädda, 27 lands; in Bičāmār, 44 lands;
in An£o and in Jarjar, 455 lands; in Gäzaw, 232 lands; in Säräwa, 104
lands; in Gäräma, 264 lands; in Abagé, in Fenderò, in Wembi 420 lands;
in Dalko, 232 lands; in Abba Nob, 60 lands; in Aräbiya, 352 lands; [col.
2] in Dablo, in Saräba, in Kwami 90 lands; Zäwi Qämäs in Suf Anqära,
180 lands; in Aforgé, 50 lands; in Çelo, 50 lands; in Berbakwes, 50 lands;
in Kosän, 50 lands; in Gum Sârârgé, 30 lands; in Dalko, where terf
land is found, 25 lands. And whoever comes after us [whether] kings or
nobles, that they might not take away this foundation, they pronounced
anathema - our P appas Abunä Yosab and the prior of Däbrä Líbanos,
Eçâgé Täsfa Giyorgis and all the learned men of the church and the
Aqabé Sä' at Täklä Haymanot. From Säräqän [sic] to support [?] the
balägult and the balämäsqäl: in Jäwana, 26 lands, Eté Wârqé's; 15 lands,
Abéto Asmé's;20 lands, the sel béťs; 7 lands [me täq] , Bäjerod Abré 's; 7
lands, Man Wāyš's; in Kab BäLaya Maryam, 95 lands, Sädda däbtärrfs;
27 lands, Wäyzäro Eskenderyawiťs; 25 lands, Säwa Baselyos's; 10 lands,
Natan's; 20 lands, Abéto Gäbrä Heywät's; 40 lands the se1 el béťs ; 10
lands, the aqabé sä'at's; 10 lands, Kidanä Meķrāt's; 13 lands, Koké's;
15 lands, Jaja Qeddus Mika'él's; 12 lands, Jewana Qeddus Mika'él's;
7 lands [me täq], Nebabréna's; in Brahila, 221 lands, Sädda däbtära? s;
14 lands, Qwesqwam's; in Gelgäl Sädda, 235 lands, Çâdda dábtárď s;
30 lands, §ädda Seyon's; 50 lands, Anaçi's; in Gäzaw, 15 lands, Ani
Fesa's; 36 lands, Qän Azmač Atné's; [col. 3] 40 lands, Sädda däbtära1 s;
40 lands, Ledäta's; 16 lands [?], Wäyzäro A dära's; 10 lands, the se1 el
béťs ; 70 lands [me täq], Rufa'él's; in An£o and in Jarjar, 20 lands, Liqé
Bâtré's; 20 lands, Blatén Géta Aykäl's; 225 lands [me täq] , Ledäta's; 5
lands, Abba ÉwosÇatéwos's; 60 lands, Yetégê s; 60 lands, the sé el béťs ; 7
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 21
Orient 481 ■ ■
Orient 549 ■
Orient 604 ■ ■
Orient 635 ■ ■
Orient 638 ■
Orient 751 ■ ■
Orient 799 ■ ■
Orient 806 ■
Ēth 112 ■ ■
TABLE 6.2. Differences from Orient 751 and 799 among the Copies
of the Bä'ata Grant
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22 ■ Donald Crummey
folio iJ3r
25 çâwa [lands] Asé Täklä Haymanot gave Abora, the azmac1 s ļ, only
to Liqé Ņaylu; [but] to both of them - Liqé Ņaylu and Liqé Iyo'aks - [he
gave] Yesaha, asé qolo , [and] Säbagaw, saying that they should serve in
the Mass at Bä'ata; anathema was proclaimed at Bä'ata.
In Orient 751, part I of the grant is analogous to all the copies of the
Qwesqwam grant. It opens with an invocation of the Trinity - "In the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, one God, we,
Negusä Nägäst Täklä Haymanot, whose throne name is Tebäb Säggäd,
behold we ordered and we gave to the priests of Bä'ata . . - and ends
with an anathema - "And whoever comes after us, [whether] kings or
nobles, that they might not take away this foundation, they pronounced
anathema - our Pappas Abunä Yosab, and the prior of Däbrä Líbanos,
Eçâgé Täsfa Giyorgis, and all the learned men of the church, and the
'Aqabé Sä1 at Täklä Haymanot."24 In between it announces that, for the
salvation of his body and soul, the king has granted "many lands," which
it then proceeds to name (for these names, see Table 7). It mentions no
further purposes for granting the lands. Orient 481 consists only of part
I (for the text and translation, see Document 4).
Document 4. Orient 751 , folio 1 72* /1 7?, Bä'ata Däbrä Jebäb, Grant
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 23
(DM 7x9°RW >7/"* œ^m Woo h.JB*>fl+ H*>+ /"C9+ h®-7H- hiV>
©</»ÍPW «-n¿ A/rcn *¿»,7, tři* if ein ®wi, +HA yjB^ì- anww*>
at ucatn-.-'
<®/P MM Wl* M*A¿- ¥Mi ÏM* -nSF ?MV> n Vit fÔQ?®-? fü*A+ ?A/fe
^JBA^ ?A.* h.fhnn nh^ tirft-n* -HA®- h% -HIA v#"?«?* îwpï®- nnh^ ?¿
Ťinwti»
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, one God,
we, Negusä Nägäst Täklä Haymanot, whose throne name is Tebäb
Säggäd, behold we ordered and we gave to the priests of Bä'ata in the
sanctuary, which is called Däbrä Tebäb, the building of which is within
the confines of Gwondär, so that it might be for us for the salvation
of body and soul, many lands [ahäguratä] which lands* 'meder] are:
Säräqärn Baša Qämäs, and 'Aräbiya Balambaras Qämäs and Kwosän
Zefan Bét Bäjerond Qämäs, and many other lands [ahägurä] and these
lands should come into the hands of those priests: in Jewana 292 lands
[meder täqerana ]; in Kab Läya Maryam 615 lands [med täq ]; in Brahéla
132 lands; in Sädda 27 lands; in Bicämär 44 lands; in Anço, in Jarjar
455 lands; in Gäzaw 232 lands; in Säräwa 104 lands; in Gäräma 264
lands; in Gum Safargé 30 lands; in Abaygé, in Fentro, in Wembi 420
lands; in Dalko 232 lands; 60 lands in Abba Nob; in Aräbiya 352 lands;
in Dablo, in Säraba, in Kwami 90 lands, Zawi Qämäs; in Sufanqära, 180
lands; in 'Aforgé 50 lands; in Çelo 50 lands; in Berbakwes 50 lands; in
Kwosän 50 lands; in Dalko, where terf land is found 25 lands.
And whoever comes after us, [whether] kings or nobles, that they
might not take away this foundation, they pronounced anathema - Abunä
Papp as Yosab and the prior of Däbrä Libanos, E çâgé Täsfa Giyorgis and
the 'Aqabé Sä ' at Täklä Haymanot and all the learned men of the church.
25 çãwa lands Asé Täklä Haymanot gave Abora, the azmac? s
half, only to Liqé Haylu; [but] to both of them - Liqé Haylu and Liqé
Iyo'aks - [he gave] Yesaha, asé qolo , [and] Säbagaw, saying that they
should serve in the Mass at Bä'ata; anathema was proclaimed at Bä'ata.
*hereafter, unless otherwise indicated, "lands" is a rendering of either "me" or "meder"
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24 ■ Donald Crummey
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 25
Part II lists in greater detail the lands that appear in part I. While it
adds no new place names, it introduces the names of the recipients, both
individual and group, the latter designated as balägult and balämäsqäl
(for the recipients, see Tables 8.1 and 8.2). Part II of the grant is framed
by "Prom Säräqärn [the following lands] will support the balägult and the
balämäsqäl ..." and concludes, "The balägult will live on all this, except
for the mäsqal land, serving in the Eucharist of Bä'ata. Let judgment
be by the aläqa" We will return to the names of the recipients and their
lands shortly.
Evidence internal to Orient 751 and its peers provide one of our two
clues to the existence of two stages in the grant's development - the adden-
dum. The addendum itself may represent a second, albeit very early, stage,
since it clearly is an addendum. Or 638 omits it. Moreover, the documents
that do include it situate it differently: some placing it immediately after
the main text (Orient 481, Orient 604); others on a facing folio (Orient
751, Éth 112); one (Orient 799) above the main text; and yet another at
the bottom of the first of its two columns (Orient 635). Moreover, the ad-
dendum is different in form from the main text. It mentions two individual
recipients, Liqé Haylu and Liqé Iyo'aks: 11 Asé Täklä Haymanot gave 25
çâwa [lands] Abora, the azmač's half, only to Liqé Haylu; [but], to both
of them - Liqé Haylu and Liqé Iyo'aks - [he gave] Yesaha, asé qollo , [and]
Säbagaw, saying that they should serve in the Mass at Bä'ata, anathema
was proclaimed with Bä'ata."2^
The possibility of a third stage is indicated by an apparently minor
detail in two copies of the grant - Orient 481 and Éth 112. In these
records, the phrase "and the 'Aqabé Sä1 at Täklä Haymanot" appears
not as the conclusion to its mini-section but in the place where, in rank
order, it properly belongs, immediately following the name Ecâgé Täsfa
Giyorgis and before "and all learned men of the church." Was the (aqabé
sä 'at an afterthought to the original grant and properly incorporated into
only two of the documents, which, according to this reasoning, would be
later than all the others?26
What do we know about the recipients and their lands? One of the
puzzles concerning the Bä'ata grant is the number of institutions and
groups listed among its recipients. These are listed in Table 8.1. Four
different offices were beneficiaries of Bä'ata, all ecclesiastical except for
the yetégé (designating her as the holder of an office may be a stretch,
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26 ■ Donald Crummey
Zur Amba
but her name does not appear). More puzzling is the relationship en-
tailed in the group and church beneficiaries. Several are clearly quite
eminent - Qwesqwam, Rèma, and Zur Amba, for example. The status of
others is unclear.2? Perhaps the former were included to tie them to the
new institution for which they would be weighty allies. The latter may
have been churches tributary to Bä'ata, whose clergy would have been
honored by the opportunity to say Mass at Bä'ata.28 No institutions or
groups appear in the list of the holders of Qwesqwam land.
Table 8.2 lists the beneficiaries of the grant. A number of the people
are identifiable in other documents. These individuals, together with the
additional references to them, are noted in Table 9. Täklä Haymanot
himself gets generous treatment in the Royal Chronicle published by
Weld Blundell. A good deal of the coverage portrays him as a tool of Ras
Mika'él Sehul^ However, after Mika'él's fall from power in mid-1771,
Täklä Haymanot acquired more latitude for action. In addition to his
founding of Bä'ata, Täklä Haymanot also granted land to DâfaÇa Kidanä
Mehrät outside Gondär, for which we have a register^0
Among the recipients of DâfaÇa Kidanä Mehrät land was Abéto Asmé,
who may have been the beneficiary of another of Täklä Haymanoťs grants.
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Gondär Land Documents * 27
Abo Natan
Ras Ayadar was a prominent political figure of the 1770s and 1780s. He
held the title of ras behtwäddäd under Täklä Haymanot, Salomon, and
Täklä Giyorgis; was Täklä Haymanot 's leading official in the endowment
of the Dâfâça church; and supervised the building of Täklä Giyorgis's
principal foundation, Däbrä Metmaq Gondär.31 While we have outside
references to Blatta Aykäl, to Abba Éwostatéwos, and possibly to Wayzäro
Wälättä Qal and to Baša Ya'eqob, the three most interesting figures are
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28 ■ Donald Crummey
Liqé Bâtré, Liqé Haylu, and Liqé Iyo'aks. Bâtré, it turns out, was the
father of Hay lu. 32 The earliest reference to Bâtré would appear to be in
reference to his acting as a witness in a land transaction in 1747 AD. 33
Other references place him firmly within the reign of Iyo'as and into the
reign of Täklä Haymanot. 34 He was an active buyer and seller of land and
a witness to land transactions. His son, by contrast, was a good deal less
prominent. We do learn, however, that Haylu had siblings called Täklu,
Wayzäro Dinar, and Wayzäro Wälättä Täklä Haymanot, all of whom, ap-
parently, were beneficiaries of a bequeathal from Bâtré.35 Iyo'aks appears,
like Ras Ayadar, in both the land records and the Royal Chronicle. His
chronicle appearances are mostly as an official of Täklä Giyorgis. He was
also responsible for recording a grant of land to Mäkanä Iyäsus.36 Having
received land from Iyyasu II on behalf of Qwesqwam,37 he provides a link
to this other church, whose endowment we have also been considering.
This information concerning the individual beneficiaries of the
Bä'ata grant and their wider relationships and activities leads to no
revolutionary conclusions, but it does extend our appreciation of the role
that land plays in unveiling the web of relationships among the privileged
in eighteenth-century Gondär.s8 So, too, does consideration of the land
names themselves.
The principal lands that Täklä Haymanot gave to Bä'ata are listed
in Table 9.39 A number of the names also appear in sources other than
this grant. The names appearing in other sources, together with refer-
ences to these sources themselves, their dating, and a brief description
of their content, appear in Table 10. Two aspects of these appearances
are worthy of note. First, a number of these lands appear in the grants
that previous Gondär monarchs had made to churches. For example, like
some of the Qwesqwam lands, land in Gewana, Gargar, Gäzaw, and Säräwa
had already been the object of gifts by Yohännes I to Kwe'eratä Re'esu.
Land in Dalko and Säräba, and in Sufanqära, had already been given by
Iyyasu I to Däbrä Berhan Sellasé. Bäkaffa had given Abagé and Kwosän
land to Qeddus Rufa'él. Iyyasu II and Mentewwab had given Gäräma
land to the benefit of Däbrä Berhan Sellasé and Abagé to the benefit of
Ledäta. Second, after the grant had been made, a number of the Bä'ata
lands, like some of the Qwesqwam lands, became the objects of formal
land transactions.«0 In the case of Qwesqwam, the lands that were bought,
sold, gifted, litigated over, and bequeathed were overwhelmingly lands
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 29
that had been granted to individual members of the clergy. So, too, most
notably were the Bä'ata lands Dalko, Aräbeya, and Sufanqära.
Summary Discussion
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30 ■ Donald Crummey
NAME**
Asme, Abéto
lll/IES 84
lll/IES 84 JL10-13
Bâtré, Liqé Orient 508, 279*, 280^, 28ir/v, 282r/' 283^, 284^
285^, 286r
Ya'eqob, Baša ( Azagl ) Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle , pp. 233-35, 256,
lyo'aks, Liqé Orient 508, 282v, Orient 604, 4V, Orient 776, iov,
Orient 777, 284r; Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle,
pp. 28, 43, 45, 48, 63, 82, 136
* H. Weld Blundell, The Royal Chronicle of Abyssinia, 1769-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922)
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 31
PERIOD
Täklä Haymanot
Täklä Haymanot
_?
Täklä Haymanot
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32 ■ Donald Crummey
from all shurur , subul , and madārr. It is not subject to damra, hasab ,
' ulūq , muzūl, kaliga , sinina , mukhlā , nor any subul. The government of his
estate, in regard to troops and rocks, is in his possession. We command
you peremptorily, all you shaykhs and muqaddams , and the jarāī who are
under them throughout my kingdom, ... let no one trouble this gift of
alms."46 A thirteenth-century Ethiopian grant by King Lalibäla strikes a
similar note: "And I granted all this as gult that it would be without tax
and forced labor and that it not given [?] and that roads may not cross
it and that it would be without zãnabé and abaké and that it may not
be entered by a horse and a lion and that it not be entered by hunters,
without [the permission of] the mother superior ."47
Nevertheless, the differences seem more salient. The Sinnar grants
are invariably accompanied by a seal, while this is rarely the case in
Ethiopia. The Sinnar grants spell out in detail the boundaries of the
lands entailed, whereas in Ethiopian grants geographical references are
rarely at a level more specific than that of the parish.48 As we have seen
in the Qwesqwam case, Ethiopian grants of gult frequently specify in some
detail the purposes for which the lands were granted, whereas the Sinnar
grants were often given simply as "a gift of alms."49
As for the expression of state and class power, the exercise of state
authority in the documents is overt. By contrast, the class implications
of the documents are often implicit. Spaulding and Abu Salim perceive
their documents as entailing an emergent urban "middle class." And, to
be sure, the recipients of both Sinnar and Ethiopian grants held public
or religious offices and enjoyed titles indicative of social rank, but the
powers that the grants gave them over cultivators, and hence their
implications for class relations, are rarely spelled out. At the very least,
the rights of immunity suggest that recipients assumed rights normally
held by the state, in which case they would profit from the tribute paid
by cultivators, tribute being the way most commentators construe these
levies. Kapteijns and Spaulding suggest one way in which to understand
the relations between land and class in a tributary situation: "Land
tenure in the kingdoms of the precolonial Sudan is best understood in
terms of a precapitalist state society in which an hereditary nobility led
by an elected king used their armed mastery of the land to exact politi-
cal payments in many forms from an ethnically diverse class of subject
producers."50 However, as Habtamu Mengistie has persuasively argued,
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 33
And what about the questions with which this article started? What
do we know about the institutional framework of production and archive?
The courts of both Ethiopia and Sinnar had chancery officials, the
relevant Ethiopian official being known as the sahafé te 'ezaz - writer of
the [royal] orders. Such officials also functioned at the courts of provincial
notables. Claire Bosc-Tiessé has also identified a subordinate figure,
the sahafé mäsaheft - the writer of books, which she takes to mean the
writer of the record of court affairs of less weight than those covered
by the sahafé te 'ezaz^ While Spaulding and Abu Salim doubt that the
Sinnar chancery kept copies of outgoing documents, this is less certain
for Ethiopia. However, in neither case has any body of chancery records
as such survived.53 Rather, the Sudanese documents survived through
copies maintained in private hands. Manfred Kropp has established the
existence of a private archive in later eighteenth- and earlier nineteenth-
century Ethiopia. It was sponsored by a nobleman, Däggac Haylu Esâté,
disaffected due to the trend of politics, and designed to preserve the
tradition of Solomonic legitimacy. While the core of the archive was
preserved in private hands in Gondär town and reached us through copies
made by European travelers, documents pertaining to Haylu's secular,
family affairs were deposited in three or four different institutions, all
of which had benefited from endowments by members of Haylu's family,
and which were separated by hundreds of kilometers. 54 However, most
of the Ethiopian texts survived thanks to the practice of placing copies
of them in prominent churches and monasteries using the margins and
flyleaves of service books in common use. Exactly how it was determined
which specific institutions - beyond the church to which the grant was
made, which must invariably have received its own copy - to use as
depositories and the number of copies to be made is unclear. However,
in the great majority of the eighteenth-century cases, these depositories
were prominent institutions in the town of Gondär itself, site of the
court's permanent residence.
While many of the Sinnar documents remain in situ, either in private
hands or in Sudanese national institutions, many of the Ethiopian
documents have reached us circuitously. Some remain to this day in the
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34 ■ Donald Crummey
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36 ■ Donald Crummey
institutions in which they were deposited, but a large body was originally
plundered from the churches of deposit by Emperor Téwodros in the
1860s and then seized as plunder from Téwodros's court by the British
Expedition to Mäqdäla in 1868, much of it eventually finding its way to
what is now the British Library. 55
We can conclude by revisiting three points emerging from our ex-
amples: (1) Ethiopian land grants could undergo development through
time; (2) the documents are original creations following an underlying
template; and (3) lands granted for the benefit of clergy were held on
an individual basis. First, Spaulding and Abu Salim do not remark on
the existence of distinct versions of the same Sinnar document, whereas
this lies at the heart of the present article. We can now see clearly that
Ethiopian grants of land went through several distinct iterations, some-
times spread over the interval of a decade. The existence of variations
within a manuscript tradition has been a stock-in-trade of Ethiopian
studies since the publication by Basset, in 1882, of the first version of
the short or abbreviated chronicle.^6 It has also long been suspected
that some of the shorter grants, most notably those published by Conti
Rossini and Huntingford, are summary copies for "central" deposit, in
this case at the cathedral church in Aksum, of longer versions held by the
institution to which the grant was given.57 However, the Qwesqwam grant
presents an unusually clear example of the development of a document
through successive stages.^8 The extent to which the Bä'ata grant should
be seen as a second example of such development is less clear, since the
existence of shorter and of extended versions may be another example of
the "Aksum" phenomenon. Second, comparing the Qwesqwam and Bä'ata
grants reveals that, while they do follow an underlining template, they are
extempore and original creations. And third, lands granted to churches
for the benefit of clergy were held individually by those clergy members
and were bought, sold, and bequeathed at the will of the holder.
We often have to ferret history out through the close reading of
detailed, and apparently obscure, texts.
NOTES
1. Donald Crummey and Shumet Sishagne, "The Lands of the Church of Däbrä
S'ähay Qwesqwam, Gondär," in Etudes éthiopiennes. Actes de la Xe conférence
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Gondär Land Documents m 37
internationale des études éthiopiennes. Paris , 24-28 août ig88 , ed. Claude
LePage, vol. 1 (Paris: Socitété française pour les études éthiopiennes, 1994),
225-36; Donald Crummey, Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of
Ethiopia: From the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2000), 107-9, 169-75, and 177-8.
2. British Library, Oriental Manuscripts (hereafter Orient), 508, f. iv; 511,
3r; 636, 5r; 799, 3r (reproduced in Wm. Wright, Catalogue of the Ethiopian
Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1877), entry CCCLXV); and
Illinois/IES (hereafter Ill/IES), 88_III_i6 (microfilm on deposit at the
University of Illinois and Addis Ababa University).
3. Orient 481, f. 209v; Orient 549, 2r; Orient 604, 4V; Orient 635, ir; Orient 638,
247r; Orient 751, i72v/i73r; Orient 799, 4r; Orient 806, i44r; and Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris, Éthiopien (hereafter Éth) 112, f. iv/2r. Claire Bosc-Tiessé
notes that the foundation document of Narga Sellasé exists in a comparable
number of copies: Les îles de la Mémoire: Fabrique des images et écriture de
l'histoire dans les églises du lac Tana , Ethiopie, X VIle X Ville siècle (Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008).
4. This is the version that Wright chose to reproduce in his catalogue of the
Ethiopian manuscripts in what was then the British Museum: Wright,
Catalogue , entry LXXXI.
5. In referring to land, the original Qwesqwam documents use the term hagar.
The passages added to Or 511 and Or 799 use meder.
6. For the royal chronicle, see I. Guidi, Annales Regum Iya.su II et Iyo'as (Paris:
Corp. Script. Christ. Orient., Series Altera, VI, 1912); and for the mäzgäb ,
see Ill/IES, 88.I.0-IV.30.
7. Guidi, Iyasu II et Iyo'as, 94-114. By contrast, the chronicle omits any
reference to the founding of Narga Sellasé during the same reign, despite the
degree to which the language of the Narga accounts reflects the language of
the chronicle's account of the founding of the Qwesqwam church.
8. Bosc-Tiessé, îles de la Mémoire , 206-7. This account corrects the chronology
given in Crummey, Land and Society , 107-9 and 167-68, and in Crummey
and Shumet, "The Lands of the Church of Däbrä S'ähay Qwesqwam," 215-16.
9. Guidi, Iyasu II et Iyo'as , 102 (text) and 111 (trans.). This is now a much-
cited passage, originally appearing in G.W.B. Huntingford, The Land
Charters of Northern Ethiopia. Translated with an Introduction and Notes.
Monographs in Ethiopian Land Tenure, No. 1, (Addis Ababa/Nairobi:
Addis Ababa University Press/Oxford University Press, 1965), 14-16;
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38 ■ Donald Crummey
14. Gazetteer , 379 and 116. Lands of Ebbenät and Bäläsa appear very frequently
in land transactions of the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries,
for which see Table 5.
15. Orient 508, 278r. See Table 5.
16. Guidi, Iyasu II et Iyo,asì 105 (text) and 114 (trans.).
17. Gazetteer , 216. The former appears more likely, since Google Earth, the
resolution of which is poor in this area, may show a settlement there. In this
case, "Dembela" would be more or less on a direct line between Edaga Selus
and Weqro, about two-fifths of the way from Edaga Selus. This would place
it some kilometers east of what is now the Adwa-Maqâlé road. As indicated
in Table 5, this location is supported by two additional sources, both of which
locate Dämbäla in Tâmbén, roughly where the Gazetteer also locates it.
18. See Table 5. The Orient 733 material on the taxes of Emperor Téwodros, in
which Dämbäla was mentioned, was published by Richard Pankhurst and
Germa-Selassie Asfaw, Tax Records and Inventories of Emperor Tewodros
of Ethiopia (1855-1868) (London: School of Oriental and African Studies,
1978)-
19. Donald Crummey and Shumet Sishagne, "Land Tenure and the Social
Accumulation of Wealth in Eighteenth Century Ethiopia: Evidence from
the Qwesqwam Land Register," International Journal of African Historical
Sources 24, no. 2 (1991): 241-58.
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Gondär Land Documents m 39
20. These transactions are discussed in Crummey, Land and Society , chapter 8.
2i. For the documents, see Table 2. Relationships among the documents are
listed in Tables 6.1 and 6.2.
22. Täklä Haymanot receives extended treatment in the royal chronicle, which
does not, however, mention the founding of Bä'ata: H. Weld Blundell,
The Royal Chronicle of Abyssinia , 1769-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1922). Two later sources retroactively note that Bä'ata
was Täklä Haymanoťs foundation: C. Conti Rossini, "La cronaca reale
abissina dall'anno 1800 all'anno 1840," Rendiconti della Reale Accademia
dei Lincei , S.5, 25 (1916): 847 (text) and 905 (trans.); and C. Conti Rossini,
"Nuovi documenti per la storia d'Abissinia nel secolo XIX," Atti della Reale
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, S.8, 2 (1947): 372. But see the references to
the founding of Bä'ata in Manfred Kropp, Die äthiopische Königschroniken
in der Sammlung des Däggazmac Haylu (Prankfurt: Verlag Peter Lang, 1989),
238 and 246-47.
23. Orient 638 also belongs to this group. However, it lacks the addendum.
24. Abunä Yosab arrived in Gondär in June 1770 and died in September 1803.
Ecãgé Täsfa Giyorgis is a somewhat shadowy figure. There would appear to
be no references to him prior to his appearance here. He left office sometime
between 1789 and 1792 ad. 'Aqabé Sä'ät Täklä Haymanot was still in office
during the reign of Negus Täklä Haymanoťs successor, Sälomon (1777-79),
into the reign of Täklä Giyorgis, as late as June/ July 1783. For Yosab, see,
for example, I. Guidi, "Le liste dei Metropoliti d'Abissinia," Bessarione , 8
(1900): 13; and Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle , passim. For Täsfa Giyorgis,
see E. Cernili, "Gli abbati di Dabra Libānos, capi del monachismo etiopico,
secondo le liste recenti (sec. XVIII-XX)," Orientalia , NS, 14 (1945): 154.
For the 'aqabé sä'ät , see Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle , 36, 63, 68 (text)
and 253, 293, 299 (trans.).
25. For the personalities appearing in the Bä'ata grants, see below. The ad-
dendum appears in all copies of the grant except for the very truncated
Orient 549 and Orient 638. It is also missing from my copy of Orient 806,
i44r, but the document may continue on to folio i44v.
26. Of course the reverse may be true: that the ( aqabé sä1 at was properly named
originally and that Eth 112 mistakenly left him out and then added him
at the end. According to this reasoning, Orient 481 would then have been
copied from Éth 112.
27. Sädda Egziabehér Ab was a major foundation of Yohännes I. What
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40 ■ Donald Crummey
land.
31. For his appointment as ras behtwäddäd , see Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle ,
65, 82, 88 (text) and 296, 321, 330 (trans.). For his connection with DâfaÇa
Kidanä Mehrät, see Ill/IES, 84
Metmaq, Gondär, see Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle , 47 (text) and 269
(trans.). Täklä Haymanot also granted him 125 gasa of land on behalf of a
church of Abunä Täklä Haymanot, for which see Orient 745, f. 225r.
32. Orient 549, i44r, and 508, 282r.
33. Orient 508, f. 282v.
34. Orient 508, ff. 279v to 283v; Orient 604, 2 r/v.
35. Orient 508, 283r. Ņaylu also bought land: Orient 508, 286v.
36. Weld Blundell, Royal Chronicle , 43, 45, 48, 63, 82, 136 (text) and 263, 266,
270, 293, 301, 397 (trans.).
37. Orient 776, iov.
38. Crummey and Shumet, "Land Tenure and the Social Accumulation of
Wealth."
39. Locating these lands is a problem. The following are in Dämbeya as shown
on map 8, page 83 of Crummey, Land and Society. Dablo, Dalko, Fenderò,
Jarjar, Saraba, and Sufanqära. Sädda appears on map 5, page 75 of Land and
Society. The Gazetteer locates Bičāmār in Dämbeya near Gorgora. According
to Google Earth, the coordinates given by the Gazetteer for Fenderò and
Kosän place them in Lake Tana, which is impossible; and the Gazetteer's
coordinates for "Sereva" (Säräwa?) place it north of Tikil Dingay.
40. These sales may have started very early. A sale of Kosän land occurred as
early as the reign of Täklä Haymanot: Orient 549, 2r.
41. For a recent discussion of literacy in Africa, see Journal of African Cultural
Studies 18, no. 1 (June 2006), special issue edited by Cedric Barnes and Tim
Carmichael.
42. Donald Crummey, ed., Land, Literacy and the State in Sudanic Africa
(Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005).
43. See Jay Spaulding, The Heroic Age in Sinnar (East Lansing: African Studies
Center, Michigan State University, 1985); Jay Spaulding and Muhammed
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Gondär Land Documents ■ 41
Ibrahim Abu Salim, eds., Public Documents from Sinnar (East Lansing:
African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1989); George Michael
La Rue, "Mud on the Belly of the Bull: Land, Power and State Formation in
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Dar Fur," in Crummey, Land, Literacy
and the State ; R. S. O'Fahey and M. I. Abu Salim with M.-J. Tubiana and
J. Tubiana, Land in Dar Fur: Charters and Related Documents from the
Dar Fur Sultanate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and R.
S. O'Fahey, "The Mahrams of Kanem-Borno, " Fontes Historiae Africanae:
Bulletin of Information (Evanston, IL, December 1981), no. 6, 19-25.
44. For the grants of King Lalibäla, see C. Conti Rossini, "L'evangelo d'oro di
Dabra Líbanos," Rendiconti Della Reale Accademia dei Lincei , series 5, 10
(1901): 177 et seq.; also see the discussion in Crummey, Land and Society,
38, 39, 40; and in Spaulding and Abu Salim, Public Documents , 10.
45. The best treatment of the formal structure of the Ethiopian grants remains
G.W.B. Huntingford, The Land Charters of Northern Ethiopia. Translated
with an Introduction and Notes. Monographs in Ethiopian Land Tenure, No.
1, (Addis Ababa/Nairobi: Addis Ababa University Press/Oxford University
Press, 1965), 17-22.
46. Document 8, page 63, in Spaulding and Abu Salim, Public Documents. See
also, for Borno, H. R. Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs (London: Cass, 1967), vol.
3, 22; discussed in Crummey, Land and Society , 16.
47. Conti Rossini, "L'evangelo d'oro," in Crummey, Land and Society , 39. The
horse here represents the power of a warrior elite, the lion represents royal
power. The meaning of zãnabé and abaké is unclear.
48. With, of course, the caveat that the Qwesqwam mäzgäb provides a field-by-
field inventory of lands with details comparable to those in the Sinnar grants.
However, subsequent transactions involving the Qwesqwam grants return to
the general level.
49. Spaulding and Abu Salim, Public Documents , Document 16.
50. Lidwien Kapteijns and Jay Spaulding, "The Conceptualization of Land
Tenure in the Precolonial Sudan," 21-41, in Crummey, Land , Literacy and
the State.
51. Habtamu Mengistie, Lord , Zèga and Peasant: A Study of Property and
Agrarian Relations in Rural Eastern Gojjam (Addis Ababa: Forum for Social
Studies, 2004), No. 1 in the Forum for Social Studies' Special Monograph
Series.
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42 ■ Donald Crummey
53. Body as opposed to fragments, for which see Richard Pankhurst with
Germa-Selassie Asfaw, Tax Records and Inventories of Emperor Téwodros
of Ethiopia (1855-1868) (London: School of Oriental and African Studies,
1978).
54. Kropp, Die äthiopischen Königschroniken. The documents concerning the
aläqenät of Gâlawdéwos, an institution of Hay lu' s family, survived through
copies derived through one or two Gondär churches and the monasteries of
QwäräTa Wälättä PéÇros and Dima Giyorgis: see the discussion in Crummey,
Land and Society, chapter 5.
55. For an inventory of the original British Library collection, see Wright, Cata-
logue. The Illinois/IES collection consists of microfilm copies of documents
recorded in situ.
56. R. Basset, Études sur l'histoire d'Éthiopie (Paris, 1882); J. Perruchon, "Notes
pour l'Histoire d'Éthiopie," 11 separate articles in the Revue Sémitique
between 1892 and 1901; F. Béguinot, La Cronaca Abbreviata d'Abissinia:
Nuova Versione dall'Etiopico e Commento (Rome, 1901); I. Guidi, "Due
Nuovi Manoscritti Relativi alla Storia di Abissinia," Rendiconti della Reale
Accademia dei Lincei , series 5, 2 (1893): 579-605; C. Conti Rossini, "La
cronaca reale abissina dall'anno 1800 all'anno 1840," RR AL, series 5, 25
(1916): 779-923. Later publications in this same tradition are Weld Blundell,
Royal Chronicle ; C. Foti, "La cronaca abbreviata dei re d'Abissinia in un
manoscritto di Dabra Berhán di Gondar," Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 1
(1941): 87-118; and F. A. Dombrowski, Tanasee 106: Eine Chronik der
Herrscher Äthiopiens , 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1983).
57. The documents published by Huntingford were, for the most part, previously
published by C. Conti Rossini, Documenta ad Illustrandum Historiam , vol.
1: Liber Axumae (Paris, 1909).
58. The hagiography of Saint Täklä Haymanot may be an earlier case in point:
see E. A. W. Budge, The Life and Miracles of Takla Haymanot (London,
1906); and C. Conti Rossini, "II 'Gadla Takla Haymanot' secondo la redazione
Waldebbana," Atti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei , series 5, 2, no. 1 (1896);
98-143. Bosc-Tiessé's analysis of the versions of the grant to Narga Sellasé
reveals a contemporary, eighteenth-century case in point: see Bosc-Tiessé,
îles de la Mémoire.
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