Abstract
Donald Crummey’s article in this special issue starts by raising several crucial questions: “How documents and archives were created in historical Ethiopia remains opaque. How, physically and institutionally, were documents created in the first place? Did they go through several stages of development? If so, why? What determined the location where they were deposited? What considerations affected whether or not copies were made of a document? And, if copies were made, how were the number and their respective locations determined?” Is it necessary to point out that Crummey is a pioneer in the study and use of these documents by historians? His campaigns during the 1980s and 1990s for the photographing of manuscripts in Ethiopian churches and monasteries established an important collection of documents on microfilm. This collection has been digitalized and is now available for consultation at both the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. This material has been the subject and source of Crummey’s many publications up till his Land and Society in the Christian
Highlights
TO THE SPECIAL ISSUEProduction, Preservation, and Use of Ethiopian Archives (Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)ANAÏS WION and PAUL BERTRAND, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, FranceDonald Crummey’s article in this special issue starts by raising several crucial questions: “How documents and archives were created in historical Ethiopia remains opaque
Physically and institutionally, were documents created in the first place? Did they go through several stages of development? If so, why? What determined the location where they were deposited? What considerations affected whether or not copies were made of a document? And, if copies were made, how were the number and their respective locations determined?” Is it necessary to point out that Crummey is a pioneer in the study and use of these documents by historians? His campaigns during the 1980s and 1990s for the photographing of manuscripts in Ethiopian churches and monasteries established an important collection of documents on microfilm
When were the wängel zä-wärq (Golden Gospels), which were used as places for recording official acts, created and diffused? What are a mäzgäb’s characteristics? What is the scope of the phrases mäṣḥäfä gwelt and däbdabe, two frequently used terms? We should be wary of a priori categories, since they risk stifling the analysis of the documents themselves, of their periodization, their geographical scope, the circles in which they were made, or even the functions assigned to them
Summary
Production, Preservation, and Use of Ethiopian Archives (Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries). An archive was a document produced by a juristic or natural person during the Introduction to the Special Issue n ix course of its activities and formatted with the aim of helping it perform them In this sense, a chartulary was an archival document.[6] The copying of documents for practical reasons or for the sake of institutional legitimation in a depository not initially foreseen for this purpose is an act of “archiving.” A charter is kept as part of an archive by an artificial or physical person, and deemed to be an archive. We must admit, used the word “archive(s)” very much up till It is worthwhile recalling Ignazio Guidi’s seminal work, which led in 1906 to the publication of an extended Gondarine “chartulary,” a collection of legal acts and charters[7] belonging to the Hamara Noh church, which was founded at the start of the eighteenth century. When were the wängel zä-wärq (Golden Gospels), which were used as places for recording official acts, created and diffused? What are a mäzgäb’s characteristics? What is the scope of the phrases mäṣḥäfä gwelt (book of land grants) and däbdabe (letters), two frequently used terms? We should be wary of a priori categories, since they risk stifling the analysis of the documents themselves, of their periodization, their geographical scope, the circles in which they were made, or even the functions assigned to them
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