Ethiopian Studies

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Ethiopian Studies or Eritrean Studies refers to a multi-disciplinary academic cluster dedicated to research on Ethiopia and Eritrea within the cultural and historical context of the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia Country in East Africa

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country in the northeastern part of Africa, known as the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, the de facto state of Somaliland and Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west and Sudan to the northwest. With over 102 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world and the second-most populous nation on the African continent with a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi). Its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa, which lies a few miles west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the Nubian and Somali tectonic plates.

Eritrea Country in the Horn of Africa

Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa, with its capital at Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeastern and eastern parts of Eritrea have an extensive coastline along the Red Sea. The nation has a total area of approximately 117,600 km2 (45,406 sq mi), and includes the Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands. Its toponym Eritrea is based on the Greek name for the Red Sea, which was first adopted for Italian Eritrea in 1890.

Horn of Africa peninsula in Northeast Africa

The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in Northeast Africa. It extends hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. The area is the easternmost projection of the African continent. Referred to in ancient and medieval times as the land of the Barbara and Habesha, the Horn of Africa denotes the region containing the countries of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

Contents

Overview

The classical concept of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies, developed by European scholars, is based on disciplines like philology and linguistics, history and ethnography. It includes the study of Ethiopian and Eritrean arts and the history and theology of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The classical core of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies is the philology of the written sources of Christian Ethiopia and Eritrea and Ethio-semitic linguistics. While this approach is still alive and has its role, Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies has opened to a wider concept that tries to avoid a bias in favour of the Christian Abyssinian culture (Amhara, Tigrinya; cf. Habesha people). It includes the study of the other Afro-Asiatic languages and cultures of Ethiopia and Eritrea besides those of Ethio-semitic derivation; the nation's non-Afro-Asiatic languages and cultures, including the southern Ethiopian cultures; non-Christian faiths, comprising Islam in Ethiopia and Eritrea and traditional religions; social and political sciences; as well as contemporary issues like environment and development studies.

Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics. Philology is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.

History The study of the past as it is described in written documents.

History is the past as it is described in written documents, and the study thereof. Events occurring before written records are considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians.

Institute of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies

The study of Ethiopian and Eritrean topics had been long been concentrated in European academic institutions. This is seen in such examples as Enno Littmann directing the German Aksum-Expedition in Ethiopia in 1905. [1] When Italy invaded Ethiopia, some Italian scholars such as Enrico Cerulli were active in Ethiopia. As a result, many Ethiopian manuscript collections and other materials from Ethiopia are found in European museums and libraries.

Enno Littmann German orientalist

Ludwig Richard Enno Littmann was a German orientalist.

Second Italo-Ethiopian War 1935–1936 war between Italy and Ethiopia

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a colonial war fought from 3 October 1935 until 19 February 1937, although Addis Ababa was captured on 5 May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and those of the Ethiopian Empire. Ethiopia was defeated, annexed and subjected to military occupation. The Ethiopian Empire became a part of the Italian colony of Italian East Africa. Fighting continued until the Italian defeat in East Africa in 1941, during the East African Campaign of the Second World War.

Enrico Cerulli Italian academic and diplomat

Enrico Cerulli was an Italian scholar of Somali and Ethiopian studies, a governor and a diplomat.

Ethiopian Studies began a new era in 1963 when the Institute of Ethiopian Studies was founded on the campus of Haile Selassie University (which was later renamed Addis Ababa University). [2] The heart of the IES is the library, containing a wide variety of published and unpublished materials on all types of matters related to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

Addis Ababa University state university in Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa University (AAU) is a large, highly residential national university in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The university is the oldest school of higher education in Ethiopia. AAU has thirteen campuses. Twelve of these are situated in Addis Ababa, and one is located in Bishoftu, about 45 kilometres (28 mi) away. AAU has several associated research institutions including the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. The Ministry of Education admits qualified students to AAU based on their score on the Ethiopian University Entrance Examination (EUEE).

Conferences

Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies scholars congregate at the interdisciplinary International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, a series of gatherings that takes place every three years. Traditionally, every third conference is held in Ethiopia. The 19th meeting was in Warsaw, August 24–28, 2015. The 20th conference will be in Mekelle, Ethiopia in 2018. Volumes of proceedings are published after most conferences.

Journals and publications

Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies is served by a few journals and publications specifically devoted to the field. These include:

The Encyclopaedia Aethiopica (EAe) is a basic encyclopaedia for Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. The Encyclopaedia Aethiopica provides access to reliable and state-of-the art information in all fields of the discipline, i.e. anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, history, geography, languages and literatures, art, religion, culture and basic data. Although the main audience is academic, most articles are readable also for non-specialists. The EAe is illustrated with maps and photographs many of which were never published before. It employs an in-house form of romanization of Geez, Amharic, and other languages, which varies greatly from standard formats, such as BGN/PCGN: the emperor Menelek II's name, for example, is written as "Mənilək II".

Notable Ethiopianists

See also

Related Research Articles

Telecommunications in Ethiopia is a monopoly in the control of Ethio Telecom, formerly the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC). As of 2012, 20.524 million cellular phones and 797,500 main line phones were in use.

Foreign relations of Ethiopia

Many historians trace modern Ethiopia's foreign policy to the reign of Emperor Tewodros II, whose primary concerns were the security of Ethiopia's traditional borders, obtaining technology from Europe, and to a lesser degree Ethiopian rights to the monastery of Dar-es-Sultan in the city of Jerusalem. Tewodros' diplomatic efforts, however, ended disastrously with the British expedition of 1868 which concluded with his death. Despite the efforts of his successor Emperor Yohannes IV to establish a relationship with the United Kingdom, Ethiopia was ignored by the world powers until the opening of the Suez Canal, and more important, the Mahdist War, drew outside attention to her once more.

Tigre, better known in Eritrea by its autonym Tigrayit (ትግራይት), and also known by speakers in Sudan as al-ḫāṣiyyah, is an Afroasiatic language spoken in the Horn of Africa. It belongs to the North Ethiopic subdivision of the South Semitic languages and is primarily spoken by the Tigre people in Eritrea. Along with Tigrinya, it is believed to be the most closely related living language to Ge'ez, which is still in use as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tigre has lexical similarity, 71% with Ge’ez and 64% with Tigrinya. As of 1997, Tigre was spoken by approximately 800,000 Tigre people in Eritrea. The Tigre mainly inhabit western Eritrea, though they also reside in the northern highlands of Eritrea and its extension into the adjacent part of Sudan, as well as Eritrea's Red Sea coast north of Zula.

Badme Place in Gash-Barka, Eritrea

Badme is a town in the Gash-Barka region of Eritrea. Control of the town was at the centre of the Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict, which lasted from the end of the Eritrean–Ethiopian War in 1998 to the signing of a joint statement at the Eritrea–Ethiopia summit in 2018, 20 years after the conflict started.

Afewerk Tekle Ethiopian artist

Afewerk Tekle was an Ethiopian artist, particularly known for his paintings on African and Christian themes as well as his stained glass.

The Kingdom of Kaffa was an early modern state located in what is now Ethiopia, with its first capital at Bonga. The Gojeb River formed its northern border, beyond which lay the Gibe kingdoms; to the east the territory of the Konta and Kullo peoples lay between Kaffa and the Omo River; to the south numerous subgroups of the Gimira people, and to the west lay the Majangir people. The native language, also known as Kaffa, is one of the Omotic group of languages.

Afevork Ghevre Jesus writer

Afäwarq Gäbrä Iyäsus was an Ethiopian writer, who wrote the first novel in Amharic, Ləbb Wälläd Tarik, . Bahru Zewde writes, "Few people before or after him have demonstrated such superb mastery of the Amharic language. Few have ventured with such ingenuity into the hidden recesses of that language to come out with a wealth of vocabulary and idiom one scarcely thought the language possessed. Afäwarq is nonetheless a controversial figure for having supported the Italians during both the First and Second Italo-Abyssinian Wars.

National Archives and Library of Ethiopia national archive and library

The National Archives and Library of Ethiopia, located in Addis Ababa, is the national library and archives of the country. The library was inaugurated in 1944 by Emperor Haile Selassie and began service with books donated by the emperor.

<i>Rhamnus prinoides</i> Afrotropical tree species

Rhamnus prinoides, the shiny-leaf buckthorn, is an African shrub or small tree in the family Rhamnaceae. Commonly referred to as “Gesho” it was first scientifically described by French botanist Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle in 1789.

Richard Keir Pethick Pankhurst OBE was a British academic, founding member of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, and former professor at the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. His books have been reviewed in scholarly journals, with Edward Ullendorff calling his The Ethiopians as another testimony to his "remarkable diligence and industry in the service of Ethiopian studies". He is known for his research on economic history and socio-cultural studies on Ethiopia.

Yekatit 12 is a date in the Ethiopian calendar, equivalent to 19 February in the Gregorian calendar, which is commonly used to refer to the indiscriminate massacre, known as the Addis Ababa massacre, and imprisonment of Ethiopians by elements of the Italian occupation forces following an attempted assassination of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Marchese di Neghelli, Viceroy of Italian East Africa, on 19 February 1937. Marshal Graziani had led the Italian forces to victory over their Ethiopian opponents in the Second Italian invasion of Ethiopia and was supreme governor of Italian East Africa. This was one of the worst atrocities committed by the Italian occupation forces and has been described as the worst massacre in Ethiopian history.

Italian Ethiopia Colony of the Kingdom of Italy

Italian Ethiopia, also known as the Italian Empire of Ethiopia, is the shorthand English name given to the Italian possession in the territory of Ethiopia, obtained by expanding the existing Somali and Eritrean colonies in East Africa of the Kingdom of Italy.

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Addis Ababa, Oromia Region, Ethiopia.

Taddesse Tamrat (1935–2013) was an Ethiopian historian and scholar of Ethiopian studies. He is best known as the author of Church and State in Ethiopia 1270-1520, a book which has “dominated the field of Ethiopian studies”.

Arbegnoch

The Arbegnoch were Ethiopian resistance fighters in Italian East Africa from 1936 until 1941. They were known to the Italians as shifta.

<i>Monument to the Lion of Judah</i>

The monument to the Lion of Judah is a statue of the Lion of Judah, symbol of Ethiopian Emperors and Ethiopia is located to Addis Ababa.

The Institute of Ethiopian Studies(IES) was officially established in 1963 to collect information on Ethiopian civilization, its history, cultures, and languages. The Institute includes a research and publication unit, a library, and a museum. It is located at Addis Ababa University, Sidist (6) Kilo campus, which was at the time of the IES's opening, named Haile Selassie I University after the last emperor of Abyssinia.

References

  1. ↑ Biographie, Deutsche. "Littmann, Enno - Deutsche Biographie". www.deutsche-biographie.de (in German). Retrieved 2018-04-10.
  2. ↑ Institute of Ethiopian Studies website.
  3. ↑ Tafla, Bairu (2014-03-09). "ITYOPIS ኢትዮጲስ – Northeast African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 1". Aethiopica. 16 (1): 244–247. ISSN   2194-4024.
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