Photographic Advances in the Early Twentieth Century Ethiopia: French, British and Italians

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

The Opening Years of the Twentieth Century

The opening years of the Twentieth Century witnessed the advent of increasing numbers of photographer-travellers.

Hugues Le Roux

A Frenchman Hugues Le Roux, who made his way westwards to Wallaga in 1900-1, took pictures showing architectural developments in the principal towns, besides informative pictures of the everyday life of the people, and published them in Menelik et nous (Paris, 1902).

A French Camera

In his preface he draws attention, as a good Frenchman, to the fact that the camera he used was French, a verascope Richard, and declares his utmost admiration for the engineer who had constructed it. It was, he adds, an instrument of “unique precision”, which had enabled him to present the French Government, geographical societies, chambers of commerce, and indeed the whole of France, with a hitherto unknown image of the “real” Abyssinia.

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The British Maqdala Expedition and its Photographed

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

We saw last week that the first photographs to be shot in Ethiopia were apparently shot by the Protestant missionary Henry Aaron Stern. These, as we shall now see, were followed by others, taken by the Napier Expedition of 1867-8, Now read on.

The British campaign of 1867-8 was the first to take advantage of the tremendous technological strides that had occurred in Europe since the Crimean War a decade or so earlier. Among various new inventions, including breech loading rifles, searchlights, and water-pumps, the British military authorities made extensive use of the camera.

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The Advent of the Camera in Ethiopia

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

The camera, over the centuries, made an immense impact in Ethiopia, and the photographic record of the country is one that cannot be ignored.

The Camera Obscura

Optical science made its earliest impact on the recording of Ethiopian images in the late eighteenth century. The first to make use of it was the Scottish traveller James Bruce, who obtained a camera obscura to assist him in sketching the country.

The apparatus, a cumbersome affair, was

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The Half-Falasha Emperor Ya’qob Overthrown, and His Brothers Rebel

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Readers will recall that Emperor Sarsa Dengel’s half Beta Esra’el, or Falasha, son Ya’qob was overthrown by the nobles and army, but was later recalled to power. Now read on!

Yaq’ob’s second reign was even shorter than the first, for his power was shortly afterwards challenged by Abeto, or Prince, Susneyos, the notable future Emperor of that name (1607-1632), who defeated and killed him in battle, in February or March 1607.

His two reigns, though short, were, however, not

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Imperial Dynastic Marriages and the Beta Esra’el, or Falashas

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Dynastic marriage for at least the last half millennium, for which relatively good documentation is available, played a major, and well-attested, role in Ethiopian political life. Imperial rulers effected a number of important dynastic and other unions which freely transcended divisions of religion, ethnicity and class.

The early sixteenth century Portuguese traveller Francisco Alvares, generally a reliable informant, writing of the Shewa-based Christian monarchs prior to the reign of Emperor Na’od (1494-1506), claimed that they “always had five or six wives”. These were chosen, he says, from among “the daughters of the neighbouring Moorish [i.e. Muslim] kings”.

Hadeya and Oromo

One of the most important inter-religious and inter-ethnic marriages of this period took place during the reign of Emperor Ba’eda Maryam (1468-1478), who effected a dynastic union with Ite Jan Zela, the daughter of Garad Mehmad, a Muslim ruler of Hadeya. Converted to Christianity she later became better known as Empress Eleni, the author of two Ge’ez works on theology, the Regent for her grandson Emperor Lebna Dengel, and a stateswoman, who, fearing the advance of the Ottomon Turks, took the imaginative and historic step of opening up relations with the Portuguese.

The Ethiopian State’s involvement in inter-religious and inter-ethnic unions found no less important expression some two and a half centuries later when another great woman Regent, Empress Mentewwab, of Gondar, arranged for her son, Emperor Iyasu II (1730-1755) to marry Wobit, the daughter of Amizo, an Oromo (or Galla) leader from Yajju. The Scottish traveller James Bruce, who visited the country only a generation or so later , claims that their half-Oromo son Emperor Iyo’as (1755-1769) brought many of his mother’s Oromo kinsmen to his court, with the result that “in an instant nothing was heard in the palace but Galla”, i.e. Afan Oromo, and Emperor Iyo’as himself “affected to speak nothing else”. A no less significant dynastic marriage took place between Mentewwab’s daughter,. Wayzero Altash, and Dajazmach Walda Hawaryat, the son of Ras Mika’el Sehul, the great eighteenth century ruler of Tegray.

There is reason to suppose that beside such important, and well documented, dynastic unions connected with the ruling house there were many other inter -religious and inter-ethnic marriages among the lesser nobility and peasantry which were also politically significant, but passed unrecorded.

In this and the two following articles we will examine how far the Beta Esra’el, or Falashas, fitted into the prevailing Ethiopian pattern of inter-religious royal marriage.

Emperor Sarsa Dengel and Emabet Harago of Samen

Contacts between the Ethiopian State, which was based on Shawa in the centre of the empire, and the Beta Esra’el, who lived for the most part in the far north-west of it, were for reasons of geography, fairly restricted until the late sixteenth century. It was then, during the reign of Emperor Minas (1559-1563) that the move of the imperial capital from Shawa to the Lake Tana area, brought the imperial rulers into more direct contact with some of the more important areas of Falasha settlement in and around the high and rugged Samen mountains. The Beta Esra’el country, despite its proximity, was, however, far from easy of access, or conquest.

Emabet Harago

The first Ethiopian ruler to establish himself firmly in the north-west of the country was Minas’s brother, the great Emperor Sarsa Dengel, also known as Malak Sagad (1563-1597), who, it is interesting to recall, had a Falasha, or probably more correctly ex-Falasha wife from Samen. The scholarly Jesuit Pero Paes, who was in Ethiopia at the time, expressly states in his History that she was a “newly converted Christian” of a Judaic background. Believed to have been a sister of Gedewon, the notable Beta Esra’el ruler of Samen, she is referred to in the royal chronicles of the time by the title Emabet or Tegazanyi (honorific titles perhaps the equivalent to Princess), and is variously called Harago or Haragwe, perhaps an abbreviation of Haraga Amlak, i.e. Creeper, or Plant, of God. The union of Sarsa Dengel and Harago, which we must now consider, was on the face of things scarcely less important than the above-mentioned marriages of Ba’eda Maryam and Jan Zela or of Iyasu and Wobit.

Whether the Sarsa Dengel-Harago union was a dynastic union in the normal sense of the word may be a matter of debate. The Jesuits, with their implicit and explicit preoccupation with monogamy, regarded Harago merely as the Emperor’s “concubine”. Several later scholars have therefore tended to dismiss her as a person of little consequence. Her assumed position as sister to the Samen Beta Esra’e leader Gedewon would, on the other hand, suggest that she was a person of some significance, at least locally, in her own right, as was the case of the consorts, official or unofficial, of more than one other Ethiopian ruler. Harago’s role as mother to several of the Emperor’s sons would moreover have given her prominence, and would by itself have justified her being accorded the above-mentioned titles of Emabet and Tegazanyi, if not that of Etege, or Queen.

Emabet Harago, like Jan Zela and Wobit, was not the Emperor’s first or principal wife: Sarsa Dengel’s official consort was Maryam Sena, a woman of Orthodox Christian descent. Harago, we would reiterate, was nevertheless a woman of by no means negligible status: in part because of her believed descent from the ruling Falasha dynasty, and in part because of her apparently long-standing relationship with the Emperor, which caused her to bear him at least four sons. (Whether there were also any daughters is not recorded).

The tie between Sarsa Dengel and Gedewon’s alleged sister Harago, like several dynastic arrangements in Ethiopian history, did not produce peace between the parties concerned, in this case the Ethiopian Christian empire and the Beta Esra’el leadership. The Emperor in fact fought a major, and later well-documented, war against Harago’s Falasha kinsmen. His ties with Harago may, however, have led him to afford Gedewon some personal protection, as Steven Kaplan has suggested. Suspicion of this arises from a curious passage in the royal chronicle, which records that the Beta Esra’el leader, at the close of a disastrous battle, escaped with fifteen armed men, and passed, supposedly unobserved, through the armies of two of the Emperor’s principal commanders. The chronicler protests, at perhaps more than reasonable length, that if anyone asserted that Gedewon and his party had been recognised, and knowingly allowed to escape, such allegation was totally false.

Mother of Four Sons

Be that as it may, Harago was the mother , as we have seen, of four sons by Sarsa Dengel, and this was later a matter of considerable political importance in that Maryam Sena reportedly had given birth only to daughters. This was a great moment towards the end of the reign when the question of the royal succession came to be considered.

The fact that Harago was not Sarsa Dengel’s official consort – but only , as the Jesuits assert, a “concubine” – was, it should be emphasised, entirely irrelevant to the succession issue. This was later clearly, and correctly, stated by James Bruce, who, rebutting any suggestion that “illegitimate sons” had “no right to succeed to the crown”, observes that any such idea was “absolutely contrary to truth”, for in matters of royal succession “no sort of difference” was ever made in Ethiopia between legitimate and illegitimate sons. Harago’s sons were thus fully entitled be considered for the throne, which, as we shall see, one of them duly attained.

We may conclude that Harago, though mentioned only in passing in our records,and, like so many of her community an apparent convert to Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, deserves a significant place in Beta Esra’el biography and history. Thanks to her, Ethiopia was soon to have an Emperor of half-Falasha descent.

Za-Maryam

Towards the end of his life Sarsa Dengel, having, as we have seen, no male heir by Maryam Sena, is said to have contemplated giving the royal inheritance to his nephew Za-Dengel. The latter was the son of the Emperor’s brother ABetahun Lesan Krestos. Shortly before his death, however, Sarsa Dengel, if we can believe Pero Paes, was brought his son by Harago, a child called Za-Krestos, whom he had never previously seen. Moved by his love for the infant the ageing monarch reportedly started to show less honour to his nephew Za-Dengel, whom he made to stand, and, no longer sit, as formerly, in his presence. He also began to criticise his nephew behind his back, saying that he lacked the strong personality which Ethiopia then required of its ruler.

The chief courtiers of the realm, according to Paes, quickly understood their master’s new way of thinking. Not to displease him it had long been their custom to agree with whatever he said. They therefore now began to praise the young half-Falasha Za-Maryam, and showed the Emperor that they wished to have his son as heir to the kingdom. Za-Dengel was in this way soon almost entirely excluded from court activities.

This state of affairs lasted, however, for only about six months, at the end of which Za-Maryam suddenly died. Sarsa Dengel, Paes tells us, was much shocked by his son’s death, and regarded it as a Divine punishment for what he had done to poor Za-Dengel, whom he thereupon once again befriended.

Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org

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Ethiopia’s Half-Falasha Emperor Ya’qob

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Readers will recall that Emperor Sarsa Dengel had four sons by his Beta Esra’el, or Falasha consort (or concubine) Emabet Harago. Now read on.

After Za-Maryam’s death (mentioned in last week’s issue), the aging Emperor Sarsa Dengel informed the great lords that he had once more resolved to give the empire to his nephew Za-Dengel.That at least is what the Jesuit Pero Paes claims, apparently on the basis of information received from the monarch’s son-in-law Ras Atenatwos.

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Debre Tabor

By John Graham:-

Debre Tabor was effectively the capital of Ethiopia during a turbulent period in the 19th Century.

There is not much evidence in the town today of this prestigious past. Unlike Gondar which preceded it, or Addis Ababa which followed (after an interval), Debre Tabor has no surviving castles or palaces. It does have two large churches, one of which is quite remarkable, but the fact remains that there is little evidence of past greatness in the town.

The important period of Debre Tabor’s history is framed by two Gugsa’s. The first, “Big Gugsa” in the parlance of the townsfolk, was the local noble and a dominant figure in the Ethiopia of his day from about 1803-25. The latter, “Little Gugsa” was the husband of Zewditu, the daughter of Emperor Menelik II, who was killed in a battle in 1930 as part of Haile Selassie’s capture of the throne of Ethiopia.

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Maitre Artist Afewerk Tekle

By Indrias Getachew:-

He is among a handful of Ethiopians who have made it to international celebrity status this century. He is one of the definitive figures of contemporary Ethiopian art, a giant recognized in Ethiopia, on the African continent and in fact the world over. His career spans five decades and three political regimes, and he continues to work today in Villa Alpha, his home and studio. He has elevated the social status of the artist in Ethiopian society. He has produced a tremendous body of work amongst which is the magnificent stained glass mural greeting visitors at the UNECA’s Africa Hall. He is the Honorable Laureate Maitre Artiste Afewerk Tekle.

He was born in the North Shoa town of Ankober in October, 1932. At school he demonstrated a gift for mathematics and drawing and in 1947 was sent to England to study mining engineering. His artistic interests and talent, however, led him to drop engineering and pursue studies in art. HMAL Afewerk Tekle studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London before joining the prestigious Slade, Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of London.

In 1954 he returned to Ethiopia and put on a one-man show which was the first major art exhibition in post World War II Ethiopia. The exhibition was a tremendous happening for Addis Ababa society, and in the highly conservative public atmosphere of the time it was also the source of much controversy. The show was the first exhibition of abstract paintings by an Ethiopian artist in Ethiopia,

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The Tragic Fire at Dabra Damo Monastic Library

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Dabra Damo monastery, which stands north of the road from Adwa to Adigrat, is one of Ethiopia’s most important historic sites. It was founded, according to tradition, at the beginning of the sixth century, by Abuna Za-Mika’el Aragawi, one of the famous Nine Saints. This early dating is confirmed by the building’s architecture, which is distinctly Aksumite.

The monastery had a library, thought to have been of considerable importance. It consisted in 1965, according to Dr. Otto Jaeger, of “about 50 manuscripts”, though the monks claimed that it “once contained about 1,000 volumes”. Housed in a traditional-type thatched building, this library has, as far as we know, never been properly studied, catalogued, or microfilmed.

This is now no longer possible, because the

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Visit to the Cannon of Tewodros

By John Graham:-

High up on a plateau in the S. Wollo area of Ethiopia sits an ageing bronze cannon, unmarked by any sign or engraving. This cannon is an enduring symbol of the reign of the Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia.

The 13th of April 1999 marked the 131st anniversary of the suicide of that Emperor, who killed himself to escape capture by an invading British force of 32,000.

Tewodros was a remarkable man, most accurately described as the “Peter the Great of Ethiopia.” He was the first emperor in relatively modern times to reunite the country of Ethiopia, which spent over 100 years up to the middle of the 19th century as an empire divided amongst feudal chieftains. During the years that Tewodros ruled as emperor, 1855-1868, he not only reunited Ethiopia, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to bring it into the 19th century (See Bahru Zewde’s History of Modern Ethiopia, or the many articles of Dr. Richard Pankhurst published in the Addis Tribune and available on the INTERNET for a fuller account of the reign of Tewodros).

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A Tale of Four Chruches

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Last week the first of four old churches off the China Road in Northern Ethiopia were reviewed at Zuramba and Mujja. Today we continue with the tour of the churches.

My personal favourite of the four churches is Bethlehem – although it is also hard to get to. The turn off from the China road is at the edge of Newfas Mewcha closest to Debra Tabor. From there you proceed to the outskirts of Arb Gebeya (Friday Market), about 23 kilometers south, on a much worse road for a further 27 kilometers. After struggling through some atrocious spots on the road (which is being improved – largely through help from the Germans), I really wondered why I was stupid enough to try to make it.

Fortunately, it turned out I wasn’t that stupid. Bethlehem was more than worth the pain and trouble.

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Ernestine Mills and her Enamel Portrait of the Emperor

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Emperor Haile Sellassie, at the time of the Italian Fascist invasion of 1935-6, and for perhaps a decade thereafter, had a major impact on the world. His broadcasts from Addis Ababa, at the beginning of the Italian Fascist war, his desperate struggle in the face of the enemy’s overwhelming superiority in weapons – its use of poison-gas, and above all his historic speech to the League of Nations at Geneva, Switzerland, made him for many throughout the world a symbol of the cause of Collective Security, and resistance to Fascism.

One of those who much admired him, in the second part of the 1930s, was a British artist and feminist Ernestine Mills, who was a renowned enamelist and metal worker. It is she to whom we turn our attention today.

Born 1871

Ernestine Mills (nee Bell) was born in 1871, and, taking a great interest in art, was

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Saint Matthew, and Two Eighteenth Century Italian Artists, and Their Ethiopian Vision

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Ethiopia, over the centuries, made a major impact, as we all know – or ought to know – on European, and especially Italian, consciousness.

Francesco Trevisani and Marco Benefial

This week we turn our attention to two notable eighteenth century Italian artists: Francesco Trevisani, or Trevisan (1650-1740 or 1746) and Marco Benefial, or Benefiale (1688-1764).

Trevisani studied in Venice with the painter Zanchie, and later with another artist, Maratta, in Rome. Trevisani worked not only in the latter city, but also in many other parts of Italy, among them Umbria, Toscana and Romagna. His works are found in numerous European capitals, including Paris, Madrid, Dresden, Vienna, Budapest, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad.

Benefial studied with the Bolognese artist Lamberti, from whom he developed a love of Raphael and the old Italian masters, and rejected the mannerisms of the Baroque art of the time.

But what you may ask, dear reader, is how is this relevant to Ethiopia?

The answer is that Trevisani and Benefial, or those who commissioned some of their art – were both fascinated with Ethiopia, as part of the Christian world.

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Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile: An Historical Fantasy (Part 2)

2. The Portuguese, Ludolf, and Le Grand: The Nile Myth is Shattered:

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

We saw last week that many Ethiopian and foreigners of yesteryear thought that the rulers of Ethiopia could divert the course of the Nile. Now read on:

Waning Belief in the Practicability of Nile Diversion

The arrival in Ethiopia of the Portuguese diplomatic mission, in 1520, and the publication, in 1540, of Alvares’s report on it, represented an important

development. It vastly expanded European knowledge of the country, and led to its steady demystification. European interest in the diversion of the Nile accordingly began to wane. Speculation tended thereafter to focus more on Ethiopia’s military might, which Alvarez had witnessed, than on the country’s reputed control over the river.

European belief in Ethiopia’s supposed ability to divert the river nevertheless died slowly. It was voiced by two notable early seventeenth century travellers to the East. William Lithgow, a Scotsman, claimed, in 1616, that the Turkish sultan paid the ruler of Ethiopia an annual tax of 50,000

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Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile: An Historical Fantasy (Part 1)

1. King Lalibala and the River Nile in Early Medieval Times:

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-

Introduction:-

Ethiopia and Egypt, linked, but also divided, by the Nile, were in contact since the dawn of history. They were mutually inter-dependent. Egypt’s prosperity depended on Nile water – and silt – from Ethiopia. This occurred, most conveniently for agriculture, in the summer. Christian Ethiopia depended on the Coptic Church of Egypt, whence the Ethiopian Abun, or Patriarch, was selected. Egypt was thus dependent on Ethiopia for its material existence; Ethiopia, on Egypt, for its spiritual.

This mutual dependency was, however, unstable. The Nile flow varied, for climatic reasons, from year to year, while the Abun’s arrival depended on the vagueries of Egyptian efficiency and good-will, which, after the Arab conquest in the early seventh century, was problematic. One other element entered the equation: Ethiopia’s supposed ability to control the Nile flow, and thereby pressurise Egypt. This assumed Ethiopian power was long a major international interest, creating pride for Ethiopians, fear for Egyptians, and hope, and wonder, for European Christendom.

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Early Ethiopian Banking History

The Bank of Abyssinia, and its Bank Notes

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst

Ethiopian banking history, in its modern sense, began towards the end of the reign of Emperor Menilek. This period witnessed the establishment, as most readers will know, of the country’s first bank. Called the Bank of Abyssinia, or in Amharic “Ye-Ityopya Bank”, it was an affiliate of the National Bank of Egypt, and was founded in 1905.

Ten years later, in 1915, the bank began issuing bank notes. The issue of this paper money was another notable event in the country’s history.

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How to Forget Your History: Tsehai: Aeroplane or Princess?

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst: -

While awaiting the return of the Aksum obelisk, looted from Ethiopia in 1937 on the personal orders of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and not yet returned in accordance with international agreements, we have perhaps time to look at another interesting question of loot, also still in Italy.

This is the question of the Ethiopian aeroplane Tsehai, which was named after Emperor Haile Sellassie’s daughter Princess Tsehai – who later travelled with her father to England, and became a trained nurse.

A Story Never Yet Told – in Ethiopia

The story of this aeroplane, which is now in the Italian Aviation Museum, has never been told, at least, not in Ethiopia. Yet it is a story that deserves to be told.

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The Ethiopian Aeroplane “Tsehai”: Matter of Unreturned Loot, in Italy

By Dr. Richard Pankhurst

While awaiting the return of the Aksum obelisk, looted from Ethiopia in 1937 on the personal orders of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and not yet returned in accordance with international agreements, we have perhaps time to look at another interesting question of loot, also still in Italy.

This is the question of the Ethiopian aeroplane Tsehai, which was named after Emperor Haile Sellassie’s daughter Princess Tsehai – who later travelled with her father to England, and became a trained nurse.

A Story Never Yet Told – in Ethiopia

The story of this aeroplane, which is now in the Italian Aviation Museum, has never been told, at least, not in Ethiopia. Yet it is a story that deserves to be told.

This plane, which is not mentioned in Professor Bahru Zewde’s otherwise very comprehensive, and important, Ethiopian Airlines book “Bringing Africa Together”, is of particular interest in Ethiopian history, in that it was the first ever to be constructed in Ethiopia. It therefore deserves an honoured place in any future Ethiopian aviation museum!

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Man of the Year: Haile Selassie - TIME Magazine

Monday, Jan. 06, 1936
King of Kings, In 1935 there was just one man who rose out of murky obscurity and carried his country with him up & up into brilliant focus before a pop-eyed world. But for the hidden astuteness of this man, there would not now be the possibility of another world war arising out of idealism generated around the League of Nations in behalf of Ethiopia. But for His Majesty Haile Selassie the year 1935 would have been a distinctly different year. If by some unhappy chance the Italo-Ethiopian war should now spread into a world conflagration. Power of Trinity I, the King of Kings, the Conquering Lion of Judah, will have a place in history as secure as Woodrow Wilson's. If it ends In the fall of Mussolini and the collapse of Fascism, His Majesty can plume himself on one of the greatest feats ever credited to blackamoors.
    Above all, Haile Selassie has created a general, warm and blind sympathy for uncivilized Ethiopia throughout civilized Christendom. In the wake of the world's grandiose Depression, with millions of white men uncertain as to the benefits of civilization, 1935 produced a peculiar Spirit of the Year in which it was felt to be a crying shame that the Machine Age seemed about to intrude upon Africa's last free, unscathed and simple people. They were ipso facto Noble Savages, and the noblest Ethiopian of them all naturally emerged as Man of the Year.

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The Ethiopian- Egyptian War: 1874 –1876

Egypt emerged as a powerful force in Africa during the latter stages of the decline of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. In the second half of the 19th century, an ambitious and energetic new Khedive negotiated with the Ottomans to take control of Egypt. He intended to create an Egyptian African empire by swallowing up Sudan and Ethiopia.

For this purpose he recruited a large army staffed with European officers and Confederate officers from the American Civil War which had ended 10 years earlier. These officers were sent to Ethiopia, and the following accounts of the Battles of Gundet and Gura are drawn in large part from their diaries and other notes. The accounts are extracted from an article published in the Journal African Affairs in 193x by A.E.

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St. Yared – the great Ethiopian composer

By: Ayele Bekerie:-

New York (Tadias) – In his latest song dedicated to the Ethiopian Millennium and entitled Musika Heiwete (Music is My Life), the renowned Ethiopian popular singer, Teddy Afro (Theodros Kassahun) traces the geneaology of his music to classical Zema or chant compositions of St. Yared, the great Ethiopian composer, choreographer and poet, who lived in Aksum almost 1500 years ago.

Teddy, who is widely known for his songs mixed with reggae rhythms and local sounds, heart warming and enlightening lyrics, shoulder shaking and foot stomping beats, blends his latest offering with sacred musical terms, such as Ge’ez, Izil, and Ararary, terms coined by St. Yared to represent the three main Zema compositions.

In so doing, he is echoing the time tested and universalized tradition of modernity that has been pioneered and

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First Ethiopian Delegation to the U.S. in 1919 Made Headlines

By LIBEN EABISA:-

New York (Tadias) – The arrival of the first Ethiopian diplomatic delegation to the United States on July 11, 1919 made headlines in Chicago, where journalists eagerly awaited their opportunity to meet and interview the delegation.

At the time Woodrow Wilson was serving as the 28th President of the United States. In Ethiopia, Empress Zawditu, the eldest daughter of Emperor Menelik, was the reigning monarch.

Dejasmatch Nadew, Empress Zawdituís nephew and Commander of the Imperial Army, along with Ato Belaten-ghetta Hiruy Wolde Sellassie, Mayor of Addis Ababa, Kentiba Gebru, Mayor of Gonder, and Ato Sinkas, Dejamatch Nadew’s secretary, comprised the first official Ethiopian delegation to the United States in the summer of 1919.

The main purpose of their trip was to renew the 1904 Treaty of Amity (Friendship) between the United States and Ethiopia (brokered when President

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African American and Ethiopian Relations

By Tseday Alehegn: -

New York (Tadias) – Ethiopia, also called Yaltopya, Cush, and Abyssinia, stands as the oldest, continuous, black civilization on earth, and the second oldest civilization in history after China. This home of mine has been immortalized in fables, legends, and epics.

Haile Selassie and Duke Ellington

   Homer’s Illiad, Aristotle’s A Treatise on Government, Miguel Cervante’s Don Quixote, the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah are but a few potent examples of Ethiopia’s popularity in literature. But it is in studying the historical relations between African Americans and Ethiopians that I came to understand ‘ Ethiopia’ as a ray of light. Like the sun, Ethiopia has spread its beams on black nations across the globe. Her history is carefully preserved in dust-ridden books, in library corners and research centers. Her beauty is

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Queens, Spies, and Servants: A History of Ethiopian Women in Military Affairs

By Tseday Alehegn

Chronicles of war and military prowess are plentiful in Ethiopia’s historical literature. Growing up we are effortlessly taught the virtues of honor and duty, which have bestowed sovereignty to generation after generation of Ethiopians. Countless retelling of tales depicting the early and decisive victory at the battle of Adwa remain ever fresh in our proud minds and hearts; the feeling only to be outdone by the resoluteness of heroes who ended the Italian occupation of Ethiopia during the Second World War. Indeed, it is as the 17th century writer Almeida wrote of us: “In war they are reared as children, in war they grow old, or the life of all who are not farmers is war.”

Above: These female war veterans are pictured in Addis
Ababa’s Menelik Square in 1973 at a ceremony to commemorate
an early victory against the Italians. Photo by Shemelis Desta (BBC)

The emphasis on military virtues becomes more palpable when we recognize the unique manner in which Ethiopians chose to fight off their external enemies. From earliest times, both women and men were encouraged to participate in mobilization and preparation efforts. Depicting the atmosphere during the battle of Adwa in 1896, historian G.F. Berkeley observes how the Ethiopian army was not merely organized as a segment of the population, but rather as an

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A Visitor from Ethiopia Discovers Harlem in 1931

By Jody Benjamin:-

New York (Tadias) – ON A WINTER NIGHT IN 1931, as many Depression-era New Yorkers prepared for a lean Chanukah or Christmas, a room inside a residential building at 29 W. 131st Street, was filled with an expectant crowd.

Taamrat Emmanuel

Those gathered in the modest sanctuary of Harlem’s Commandment Keepers congregation were anticipating a special visitor from Ethiopia.

     Just before 9 p.m., Taamrat Emmanuel walked into the room. A thin, bearded man in his early 40s, with eyes like deep wells, Emmanuel was a European-educated Beta Israel originally from Jenda, near Gondar Ethiopia. He had traveled far and wide advocating on behalf of his ethnic minority, which had maintained their Judaic beliefs for centuries in

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Ethiopia & Black America: The Forgotten Story of Melaku & Robinson

Ethiopian & African American Relations
The Case of Melaku E. Bayen and John Robinson

By Ayele Bekerie-

New York (Tadias) – In 1935, African Americans of all classes, regions, genders, and beliefs expressed their opposition to and outrage over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in various forms and various means. The invasion aroused African Americans – from intellectuals to common people in the street – more than any other Pan-African-oriented historical events or movements had. It fired the imagination of African Americans and brought to the surface the organic link to their ancestral land and peoples.

The time was indeed a turning point in the relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. Harris calls 1935 a watershed in the history of African peoples. It was a year when the relations substantively shifted from symbolic to actual interactions. The massive expression of support for the Ethiopian cause by African Americans has also contributed, in my opinion, to the re-Africanization of Ethiopia. This article attempts to examine the history

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Leo Hansberry, Founder of Ethiopian Research Council

 By: Ayele Bekerie:

New York (TADIAS) – William Leo Hansberry (1894-1965) was the first academician to introduce a course on African history in a university setting in the United States in 1922. He taught a History of Africa, both ancient and contemporary, for 42 years at Howard University. He gave lectures on African history both in the classrooms and in public squares here at home and in Africa. Thousands of students and ordinary people took his history lessons and some followed his footsteps to study and write extensively about historical issues. Among the seminal contribution of Hansberry is the academic reconstruction and teaching of Ancient African History. His proposal to develop an Africana Studies as an interdisciplinary field not only visualized the centrality of African History, but also laid down the groundwork for eventual establishment of Africana Studies institutions in the United States and Africa.

Photo of William Leo Hansberry

Hansberry, who studied at Harvard, Oxford and University of Chicago, was an exemplary scholar-activist. He firmly and persistently engaged in disseminating historical knowledge on Africa beyond the classroom. Even though he was not able to complete his

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History of Ethiopian Church Presence in Jerusalem

New York (Tadias) – The following piece was first published on the print issue of Tadias Magazine in the context of the July 2002 brawl that erupted on the roof of Christianity’s most holy place between Ethiopian and Egyptian monks.

“Eleven monks were treated in hospital after a fight broke out for control of the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the traditional site of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection”, wrote Alan Philps, a Jerusalem based reporter for the Daily Telegraph.

“The fracas involved monks from the Ethiopian Orthodox church and the Coptic church of Egypt, who have been vying for control of the rooftop for centuries.”

We have republished here part of the original article from our archives with a hope that it may generate a healthy discussion on the subject.

Deir Sultan, Ethiopia and the Black World
By Negussay Ayele for Tadias Magazine

Unknown by much of the world, monks and nuns of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, have for centuries quietly maintained the only presence by black people in one of Christianity’s holiest sites—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus Christ in

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Ancient Ethiopia or Kush

Etymology

The term "Ethiopia" was first used by Ancient Greek writers in reference to the east-central African kingdom that they believed to be not only culturally and ethnically linked to ancient "Egypt" (Kemet), but the source of such civilization as well. Contrary to popular belief, the term was not exclusive to the landlocked modern country of Ethiopia. According to early Greek writers, Ethiopia was an empire originally situated between Ta-Seti in Lower Kemet and the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. Centuries later, however, the name became synonymous with a much larger region that included the present-day countries of South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Central African Republic, Chad, etc.

Emperor Taharqa, the most famous Kushite leaders

Ethiopia is the English transliteration of the Greek word "Αιθιοπα" (or Aithiopia) which originates from the Greek word "Αιθιοψ" or "aithiops" which literally means "charred or burnt." "Aithiops" is in fact composed of "αιθιω" (meaning "I burn") and "ωψ" (meaning face or complexion).

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Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization

A Critical Review of the Evidence of Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Comparative Religion: According to the Most Reliable Sources and Authorities

By John G. Jackson (1939)

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"It is pretty well settled that the city is the Negro's great contribution to civilization, for it was in Africa where the first cities grew up." E. Haldeman-Julius
"Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. … There a people, now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe." Count Volney
"The accident of the predominance of white men in modern times should not give us supercilious ideas about color or persuade us to listen to superficial theories about the innate superiority of the white-skinned man. Four thousand years ago, when civilization was already one or two thousand years old, white men were just a bunch of semi-savages on the outskirts of the civilized world. If there had been anthropologists in Crete, Egypt, and Babylonia, they would have pronounced the white race obviously inferior, and might have discoursed learnedly on the superior germ-plasm or glands of colored folk." Joseph McCabe

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The late Professor George A. Dorsey noted that "H. G. Wells' heart beats faster in nearly every chapter of his Outline of History, because he cannot forget that he is Nordic, Aryan, English British, white, civilized." (Why We Behave Like Human Beings, p. 40.) This patriotic zeal of Mr. Wells' has, in truth, caused him to suppress certain facts that do not fit into his pet theories. In the latest edition of his Outline of History, Mr. Wells ends his chapter on The Early Empires with the following remarks: "No less an authority than Sir Flinders Petrie gives countenance to the idea that there was some very early connection between Colchis (the country to the south of the Caucasus) and prehistoric Egypt. Herodotus remarked upon a series of resemblances between the Colchians and the Egyptians." (Wells' New and Revised Outline of History, p. 184, Garden City, 1931.) It would have been proper for Wells to have quoted the remarks of Herodotus, so as to give us precise information on the series of resemblances between the Cholchians and the Egyptians. Why he did not do so we shall now see. In Book II, Section-104, of his celebrated History, Herodotus states: "For my part I believe the Colchi to be a colony of Egyptians, because like them they have black skins and frizzled hair." (See any English translation of The History of Herodotus. The translation by Professor George Rawlinson is the best. See also W.E.B. DuBois, The Negro, p. 31, and Count Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, Vol. I. pp. 80–81.) After discussing the civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia and India, Wells had already referred to them as a "triple system of white man civilizations." (Outline of History, Chap. XIII, Sect. 5, p. 175) On concluding that the civilization of Egypt was a white man civilization, he naturally would be careful not to quote the above passage from Herodotus.

Most history texts, especially the ones on ancient history, start off by telling us that there are either three, four or five races of man, but that of those races only one has been responsible for civilization, culture, progress and all other good things. The one race is of course the white race, and particularly that branch of said race known as the Nordic or Aryan. The reason for this is obvious; the writers of these textbooks are as a rule Nordics, or so consider themselves. However, prejudice alone will not account for this sort of thing.

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