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Family and Property Amongst the Amhara Nobility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Donald Crummey
Donald Crummey
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana
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Extract

Records of Ethiopian property dealings provide insights into the affairs of Ethiopian families. They suggest further, dynamic links between property and family. Amhara rules of descent and inheritance are ambilineal. Each person reckons their ancestry equally through their father and mother and inherits property the same way. Yet, without abandoning their profession of the principles of ambilineal descent and of equal partible inheritance, the Abyssinian nobility subverted these norms, thereby creating ‘families’ out of a welter of ramifying lineages, and ‘estates’ out of disintegrating holdings. Their devices included wills and marriage endowments which privileged one sibling at the expense of others. Another device was the alaqenat, an office which functioned as the head of a family and its affairs. The alaqenat, previously unreported in the Ethiopian literature, appears in a number of documents in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, and the article uses it to trace the affairs of one noble family over a period of six generations. Further comments are made about the links between public office and notions of property. Finally, two wider spheres are addressed. In spite of its radical ambilineality Abyssinian society reveals tendencies common to other societies based on plough agriculture, tendencies towards greater class differentiation based on the accumulation of landed property. And, unlike most other historic societies professing Christianity, Abyssinian society is marked by frequent divorce and marital instability.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 207 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 Hoben, A., Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia. The Dynamics of Cognatic Descent (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar; and ‘Land tenure and social mobility among the Damot Amhara’, in Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa, 1970), III, 69–88.Google Scholar

2 I use Ethiopia to refer to the modern country of that name, and Abyssinia and Abyssinian to refer to the country and culture of which the Amhara and Tegreññā-speakers are historically the creators and today the heirs.

3 Hoben, A., ‘Family, land and class in Northwest Europe and Northern Highland Ethiopia’, in Marcus, H. G. (ed.), Proceedings of the First United States Conference on Ethiopian Studies, 1973 (East Lansing, Mich., 1975), 157–70.Google Scholar

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5 Volker Stitz used the pattern of church foundation dates in northern Shawā to argue for a doubling of the population there since the later thirteenth century: Stitz, V., Studien zur Kulturgeographie Zentraläthiopiens (Bonn, 1974), 224–6.Google Scholar

6 Examples of wills can be found in the British Library manuscripts Orient 549, fo. 96 V and 144 r and Orient 604, fo. 8 r.

7 Thornton's work on Kongo using missionary baptismal records for demographic history demonstrates an early example. Missionary records for Ethiopia either from the seventeenth or nineteenth centuries do not permit a similar exercise. Thornton's case may be unique in Africa: Thornton, J., ‘Demography and history in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750’, J. Afr. Hist. XVIII, iv (1977), 507–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 In addition to Hoben see also Bauer, D. N., Household and Society in Ethiopia: An Economic and Social Analysis of Tigray Social Principles and Household Organisation (East Lansing, Mich., 1977)Google Scholar; and Levine, Donald N., Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture (Chicago, 1965).Google Scholar

9 Two exceptions here are: Clarence-Smith, G., ‘Slaves, commoners, and landlords in Bulozi c. 1875 to 1906’, J. Afr. Hist. XX, ii (1979), 219–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kea, R., ‘Land, overlords, and cultivators in the seventeenth century Gold Coast’, unpublished paper.Google Scholar

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11 BL, Or. 481, fo. 208 r.

12 For Walata Negest see: BL, Or. 604, 2 r and 3 r; for Takla Hāymānot see, inter alia, BL, Or. 508, fos. 282–285 r; Or. 784, I V; and Or. 799, 217 v, 118 V.

13 For this, and other such points, see: Guidi, I., Vocabolario Amarico-Italiano (Rome, 1901), 414Google Scholar; Baeteman, J., Dictionnaire Amarigna-Français (Dire-Daoua, 1929), 45–6Google Scholar; and Kasātē Berhān Tasammā, Ya Amāreñña Mazgaba Qālāt (Ababa, Addis, 1958–1959), 694.Google Scholar

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16 Guidi, , Annales Regum Iyāsu II et Iyo' as (Rome, 1912), 183.Google Scholar Asterisked figures appear on Fig. I.

17 Pankhurst, , ‘Marriage contract’, 463 and facing.Google Scholar

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21 Blundell, Weld, Royal Chronicle, 316, 320.Google Scholar The translation rather obscures this point, suggesting something more like bigamy. But see the text on page 79.

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24 Rossini, C. Conti, ‘Nuovi documenti per la storia d'Abissinia nel secolo XIX’, Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, S. 8, II (1947), 377.Google Scholar

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26 UNESCO/IES Dima 10: 2.6, fo. I.

27 That Abēto Walda Giyorgis was son of Galāwdēwos and Walata Seyon emerges with real clarity only from the genealogy of Eshatē Hāylu in Weld, Blundell, Royal Chronicle, 304.Google Scholar See especially the Ge'ez text on p. 71 for the reading of which, in a separate publication, I am especially indebted to the late Tesfayohannes Fessahaie: Guidi, I., ‘La storia di Hayla Mika'el’, Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, S. 5, XI (1902), 3–79.Google Scholar

28 See the sources cited above in footnote 25.

29 For the relationship of Eshatē and Mentewwāb, see Guidi, , Annales, 9–11.Google ScholarBruce, , who brings out very forcefully the prominence of Eshatē, is incorrect in calling him Mentewwāb's full brother: Travels, II, 609.Google Scholar

30 Guidi, , Annales, 161, 165, 172, 175–8, 184, 191, 194, 203, 206–8, 230, 234, 236–9.Google Scholar

31 UNESCO/IES Dimā 10: 2.6, at end.

32 Guidi, , Annales, 207, 238–9.Google Scholar

33 Ibid. 11; Blundell, Weld, Royal Chronicle, 332.Google Scholar

34 Blundell, Weld, Royal Chronicle, 303et seq.Google ScholarBruce, , Travels, II, 240Google Scholar; III, 365; IV, 35 and passim.

35 Blundell, Weld, Royal Chronicle, 337–8, 340.Google Scholar

36 UNESCO/IES Dimā 10: 2.5, Senkessār readings for Yakātit, fo. 3, column I.

37 Blundell, Weld, Royal Chronicle, 332Google Scholar; see also 220.

38 Various land sales in Cambridge University, Add. 1570: e.g. fo. 261 V, 264.

39 BL, Or. 776, 4 r.

40 BL, Or. 776, 269 r.

41 Cambridge, Add. 1570, 261 r.

42 BL, Or. 673, fo. 2 r.

43 BL, Or. 777, 7 V.

44 BL, Or. 777, 282 V.

45 Rüppell, W., Reise in Abyssinien, II (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1838–1840), 363–402, 421.Google Scholar

46 Abbā Charē, interviewed Waldiyā, August 1972.

47 Fitāwrāri Abāy Marso, interviewed Waldiyā, August 1972. The main literary source for the relations between Aligāz and his nephews is Blundell, Weld, Royal Chronicle.Google Scholar See also Rüppell, , Reise, II, 380.Google Scholar

48 Rüppell, , Reise, II, 391, 394, 396.Google Scholar

49 Rossini, Conti, ‘Nuovi documenti’, 367–8.Google Scholar