Chronicle
ዝክረ ነገር
Not translated into English
Mahteme Sellassie · 1950
Synopsis
Nearly a thousand pages of court chronicle, archival documents and recollections trace the government of Ethiopia from Menelik II to the eve of the Italian invasion, through the reigns that follow his and the role of Empress Taytu. A large part sets out in detail the pre-war systems of land and taxation, with tables of the different forms of landholding and of the burdens that weighed on the peasants.
Context
Charged after the liberation with sorting the historical documents kept in the imperial palace, the author drew from them this collection, published in Addis Ababa in 1942 of the Ethiopian calendar, that is 1949 or 1950, and reissued twenty years later. Its title means “things remembered”. For lack of a translation, foreign historians have read it in extracts: the Ethiopia Observer gave the chapter on land in English in 1957, and Richard Pankhurst translated in full its tables of land tenure systems in a 1966 book on the state and land.
Who it is for
In Amharic, never translated in full. A reference work rather than one for continuous reading, it assumes some familiarity with the country's history before the war.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a major source for the administrative and land history of pre-war Ethiopia, it is cited in the country's university textbooks.