By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
Ethiopian Ecclesiastics and Scholars Abroad
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the period under
discussion in this series of articles, a small number of Ethiopian
ecclesiastics visited Jerusalem, where there was an Ethiopian Convent.
It seldom housed less than a score of Ethiopians, and sometimes at least
twice as many. Most of the inmates knew only their own languages, but
the Rev. William Jowett, an English traveller of the 1820′s describes a
young Ethiopian who had been taken from Ethiopia to Egypt as a slave,
and had subsequently studied in Milan. He therefore spoke Italian, as
well as Arabic, and was known as Moose el Habesh, i.e. Moses the
Abyssinian. A century later the renowned scholar A. Z. Aescoly, writing
of the 92 Ethiopians them at Jerusalem, observed: “the members of the
colony are natives of almost all the provinces of the vast Ethiopian
Empire. Even Kaffa scarcely Christianised is represented. Only Harar is
missing…”
A handful of Ethiopian church scholars in this period also went
abroad in other ways. One of the most interesting, of these early
expatriates was Abi Ruch, a monk and scholar who accompanied the
Scottish traveller James Bruce to Alexandria, and subsequently
translated the New Testament into Amharic for the British and Foreign
Bible Society.
How Many Church Scholars Were There?
There is no means of establishing the number of Church schools, or
the number of students in their care, in former times. Such fragmentary
evidence as is available suggests, however, that they were not
inconsiderable.
Minority Education
Church studies, though of immense cultural importance, were followed
by only a small minority of the population. The Swiss Protestant
missionary Samuel Gobat claimed, in the 1830s, that “very few” people in
northern Ethiopia ever learnt to write. He adds: “Upon the whole, I
should think that, in the country where Amharic is spoken, about
one-fifth of the male population can read a little, and in Tigre about
one-twelfth.” Tigrinya, it should be borne in mind, was not at this time
a written language, so that literacy in Tigre presupposed a knowledge
of either Ge’ez or Amharic.
The illiteracy of the mass of the population, a decade or so later,
is underlined in the memoirs of the subsequent British resident
Mansfield Parkyns. Asking the question: “who can read?” in Tigre, he
replied, “some, but not all of the priests, the scribes, and a very few
men of the highest rank.”
A more critical view of the literacy situation was afforded by the
British traveller Henry Salt. Writing at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, he observed that at Degsa, on the northern edge of the
Ethiopian plateau, above the Red Sea port of Massawa, he met “only a few
persons” who could read the Bible. He adds that “not one in twenty
could write the characters they read”.
Such literacy, it should be emphasised, was not particularly low by
the standards of the day. The visiting Belgian consul Edouard Blondeel
for example observed, in the early nineteenth century, that the
percentage of the population able to read and write in Christian
Ethiopia was about the same as in the Western Europe of the time.
The disturbed conditions of the mid-nineteenth century seem to have
resulted in a significant retrogression in education and literacy in
certain areas. This at least was the opinion of the British Consul,
Walter Plowden, who in a report for 9 July 1854, observed that “the
number of persons that can read is diminishing daily.”
The Swiss missionary Theophilus Waldmeier, discussing the situation
in Begemder a decade or so later, observed that in general “people do
not know how to read or write, this is an art known only to the priest
or debterra.”
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Reports
Some additional information on traditional Ethiopian church education
may be gleaned from other foreign travel and other accounts. The
official history of the British expedition of 1867-8 against Emperor
Tewodros, or Theodore, II thus reports that the expeditionary force
found five or six Church schools in operation at Adwa. The account
states that the pupils included some blind boys, who, we, may assume,
found scholarship easier than farming, but provides no other educational
information. Mention of church education at Adwa was, however, later
made by the early twentieth century German traveller Felix Rosen. He
indicates that the city was an important centre of education, to which
many parents sent their children, to be taught by the priests.
The late nineteenth century German traveller Gerhard Rohfs, who
visited Aksum and Gondar, two of the country’s greatest centres of
learning, recalls that during times of disturbance parents often left
their children in the former city, which, because of its religious
importance, was never attacked. He was more impressed, however, by the
education given at Gondar. He says that most of the city’s priests were
well educated, and that over the years they had taught the sons of many
laymen, particularly among the nobility.
Lesser known church schools were found throughout the Christian
provinces. Mention of a church school at Fendja, near Asoso, is thus
made by the late nineteenth century German traveller Theodor Heughlin.
Another large school, according to Abba Jerome, operated in the early
Menilek period at Dessie where the renowned church scholar Abba
Akalawold had no less than 1,000 students.
Emperor Tewodros
Emperor Theodros, though partially church-educated, was, according to
his Protestant missionary aide Martin Flad, unable to write. The
monarch was therefore obliged to make use of scribes, it being however
his practice on occasion to dictate two or three letters at a time to
different writers.
The Dervish Attack on Gondar
A subsequent decline in education undoubtedly occurred in Gondar,
when the city was attacked by the Dervishes. Rosen states that this
assault resulted in the closing of the principal school, at which
theology, law, music, dancing, painting, calligraphy and history had
earlier been taught.
Falasha Education
Many Falashas, or Beta Esra’el, in the mid-nineteenth century
attended Christian church schools, as Martin Flad records. There were,
however, also specifically Falasha schools, as mentioned by the
Protestant missionary Henry Stern.
TravellingLiving among the isolated Falasha communities in the Gondar
area, the latter observer reported that at two villages, which he terms
Antonius and Atshergee, there was, however, no one who could read or
write, and that at a third, Gorgora Eila, there was no one who could
read fluently. He states moreover that during the whole of his tour of
Falasha-land he found only one Falasha woman who was literate.
The Falashas were, however, were by no means completely without
education, as is evident from the fact that Stern met one debtera, who
ran a school with no less than ninety-four children. Falasha girls,
however, received no education according to Flad, who records the
following conversation:
Flad: “Have you any schools?”
A Falasha: “Yes, but only for boys”.
Flad: “Why not for girls too?”
The Falasha: “Because it is not becoming (to instruct females.)”
The exclusion of women, as we have seen, applied equally, to Christian church schools.
Deterioration in Falasha education is suggested by the subsequent
traveller Jacques Faitlovich, who reported in 1910 that the Dervish
invasion of 1888, together with the subsequent great Famine and other
difficulties, had virtually “devastated” all the community’s old-time
schools. The result was that -the majority of the new generation is
reared without any instruction at all, not even the most elementary, and
they can scarcely understand the prayers which they recite.”
Harar
The educational position in the Muslim walled city of Harar seems to
have been particularly good. The Egyptian observer, Mohammed Moktar, who
visited the city in the second part of the century, found education
“very well developed”. He states that the children of the city learnt to
read and write in small schools during the day, while many of the
adults studied Muslim law with Kadis, or religious leaders, in the
evening.
The Somali and Afar Lowlands
The extent of literacy among the Somali and Afar nomads of the
lowlands was noticed in the early nineteenth century by the British
ship’s captain Charles Johnston. He states that “great numbers” of
Somalis and Dankalis, most of whom had never resided in towns, were
nevertheless able to read and write Arabic, and that several of them had
inscribed their names in his note-books. Half a century or so later the
Italian traveller, Luigi Robecchi-Bricchetti, recorded the existence of
a number of traditional schools in various parts of Somaliland. At
Alula, for example, there were two schools, one with 50 boys and a dozen
girls; the other with about half as many students. The principal object
of such schooling was to enable people to read the Koran. Schooling, he
says, was free, but many students would bring their teacher foodstuffs,
such as rice, and dates; and on completing their studies their parents
would probably give him some Maria Theresa dollars, or else some produce
of the country.
It is interesting to note that besides their smattering of Arabic the
Somalis of the desert also had a system of simple signs for conveying
messages to each other in the sand: for example, a circle to indicate
that a person was near, or an oblique line to signify that he had passed
and would return.
(Somali, it should be emphasised, was traditionally not a written
language, though Shek Awes, who died in 1909, tried to popularize its
expression in Arabic script. Several decades later Osman Yusef of
Mijertain invented a “Somali alphabet” which had vowels, and was
influenced by both Arabic and Latin letters, but was not however
adopted.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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