Ethiopian History

"This book is the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Ethnography called “Jewish Cultures of the World,” edited by Matti Bunzl and Jeffrey Shandler.

Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity and are today clamoring for the right to ‘Return to Judaism’ and claim citizenship in the State Israel. It focuses on the lived experience of these refugees and on the complex moral and political controversy over their ongoing cultural and religious transformation. This is the first ethnography ever devoted to this group, or to the cultural politics of Ethiopian Judaism. I argue that epistemological limitations in the study of religious experience ought to be taken into account by Israeli policy makers who decide “who is a Jew” based on uncritical assumptions about the nature of religious conversion. I also use the ‘Feres Mura’ dilemma to raise broader questions about the nature of Jewishness and the political role of academic scholarship.
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À partir d'une relecture critique, croisée avec les sources orales et archéologiques, de la description médiévale des antiquités de la ville d' Aksum par le Liber Axumae, il est possible de mettre en évidence chez Zâr'a Ya'qob et Ménélik une politique des ruines, qui s'inscrit chez l'un dans un système théologico-politique faisant du souverain le Christ-roi, fils de la Vierge régnant sur une nouvelle Jérusalem, chez l'autre dans une entreprise de restauration identitaire et nationale face aux pouvoirs coloniaux ; ce qui remet en cause le caractère supposé ahistorique et fondateur du mythe salomonien.

The French (and Latin Monetary Union) Bimetallism; the British (and World) Gold Standard; the Bank of England (and other countries) banknotes; the 19th Century project of Word Currency (1 Gold Sovereign/1 Pound Sterling = 25 French Francs = 5 US Dollars). // El bimetal·lisme francés (i de la Unió Monetària Llatina) confrontat al patró or d'encuny britànic; els bitllets del banc d'Anglaterra (i d'altres països) convertibles en or; la pervivència del patró argent; els països amb moneda fiduciària; el projecte (iniciat el 1867) de moneda universal, fonamentat en l'anivellament del contingut en or fi de la moneda d'un sobirà  (amb valor d'una lliura esterlina), de la peça de 25 francs francesos (mai encunyada, però equivalent a dues peces: 20 i 5 francs), i de la moneda de 5 dòlars (o mitja àguila) dels Estats Units.

The tombs of two kings of the Zagwe dynasty, Yemrehanna Krestos and Lālibalā, are said to be located in churches that they founded. However this information does not figure in the first texts written about these Ethiopian saint-kings. The chronology of these texts and their production are presented; and the eras identified when new symbols emerged for authenticating the sepultures of saint-kings or modifying the perception of them. What processes led to identifying the location of these tombs and considering them to be the graves of saints, and no longer of kings? The tombs of these two kings have become places where pilgrims request these saints to intercede on their behalf.

The donations of King Lālibalā: elements for a geography of the Ethiopian Christian Kingdom at the turn of the 13th centuries – The written documentation on king Lālibalā, produced in the kingdom of Ethiopia when this king was reigning, is composed of three land grants, up to now objects of little scientific interest: the land donation recorded in the gospel preserved in Bēta Medḫānē ‘Alam (Lālibalā) and the two charters of the “Golden Gospel” of Dabra Libānos of Šemazānā. The purpose of this article is to give a new edition of these three texts, with a translation. This work is based on the study of the photographs of the Dabra Libānos gospels taken by Roger Schneider and now available in the Walda Masqal Centre, a department of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, which preserves the archives of Roger Schneider. The geographical information transmitted by those texts will then be discussed in order to sort out the questions of the kingdom’s territory and its management, its extension and its centre.

Tel qu’il est défini par l’Église catholique, le Purgatoire ne fait pas partie de la doctrine de l’Église éthiopienne orthodoxe Täwaḥədo, même si l’on peut déduire, à partir de diverses sources émanant de cette dernière, que la damnation pouvait ne pas être éternelle.  Le texte présenté ici, issu de l’Église éthiopienne, montre que la théologie relative à ce point s’est en quelque sorte immiscée dans un miracle de la Vierge Marie.  Le fait que les manuscrits divergent à un moment crucial de l’épisode raconté indique en effet que les maîtres ne savaient pas trop comment interpréter l’étrange enseignement contenu dans le récit, appelé እሳተ፡ አንጽሖ (ǝsatä anṣǝḥo; à savoir «le feu de la Purification», le «Feu qui purifie» ou Purgatoire).

Research project to be conducted as a Martin Buber Society Fellow at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, from October 2014 onwards. In my coming post-doc research I will look at both Christian and Muslim royal women in the Horn of Africa as influential agents of cultural and political change as well as political actors in their own right. Among others, I wish to trace and evaluate the significance of both Solomonic Ethiopian queens and princesses as well as royal women from various Muslim principalities and sultanates to offer a novel and comprehensive insight into the history of power players in the Horn of Africa between 1300-1650.