Amhara

Simon D. Messing and Ian Skoggard

Amara

The term "Amhara" is derived from AMARI, meaning "one who is pleasing, agreeable, beautiful, and gracious." Amhara culture is often identified with Abyssinian culture, which is regarded as the heir to the cultural blending of ancient Semitic and Cushitic (African) patterns; other heirs are the Tigre [Tigray]-speaking people of Eritrea, and the Tigreñña [Triginya] speakers of northern Ethiopia. The Amhara themselves often employ the term "Amhara" synonymously with "Ethiopian Orthodox (Monophysite) Christian, " although their own, more precise expression for this religion is "Tewahedo" (Orthodox). Ethiopia is located in the northeastern part of Africa, roughly between 5 and 16 degrees north latitude and between 33 and 43 degrees east longitude. It is mountainous, separated from the Red Sea by hot lowland deserts; a steep escarpment in the west borders the hot lowland in the Sudan. The mountain-fortress type of landscape has frequently enabled the plateau people to retain their independence against would-be invaders. The provinces of Begemder [Gonder], Gojam, and Welo [Wallo] are Amharic speaking, as are parts of Shewa [Shoa] since Amhara expansion.

According to the 1984 census, the population of Ethiopia was estimated as 42 million. Of these, 28 percent referred to themselves as "Amhara, " and 32 percent stated that they spoke Amharic at home. Hence, about 14 million could be identified as Amhara, subject to qualification, by the effects of Amharization during the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie (1930-1974) and the political strife against Amhara domination since then.

There are three major linguistic families in Ethiopia: Cushitic, Semitic, and Nilo-Saharan. Amharic is related to the ancient Semitic language, Ge'ez, but contains strong influences from Cushitic. Ge'ez ceased to be spoken by the fourteenth century A.D., but it survives in the Orthodox liturgy to this day. Amharic has been important since the fourteenth century A.D., when the earliest Amharic document, "Songs of the Kings, " was written. Amharic, which is the predominant language on the plateau of northwest-central Ethiopia, is now the official national language of Ethiopia.

The Abyssinian tradition of the Solomonid dynasty, as told in the Ge'ez-language book KEBRANAGAST (Honor of the Kings), refers to the rule of Menilek I, about 975-950 BC. It relates that he was the son of Makeda, conceived from King Solomon, during her visit to Jerusalem. Interrupted in AD 927 by sovereigns of a Zagwe line, the Solomonid line was restored in 1260 and claimed continuity until Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974. Christianity came to Aksum in the fourth century AD, when Greek- speaking Syrians converted the royal family. At the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, the theological Monophysites of Alexandria, including the Abyssinians, broke away from the European church; hence the designation "Coptic." Ecclesiastic rule over Abyssinia was administered by the archbishop of Alexandria until 1948. The spread of Islam produced relative isolation in Ethiopia from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries. During this period, the Solomonid dynasty was restored in 1260 in the province of Shewa [Shoa] by King Yekuno Amlak, who extended his realm from Abyssinia to some Cushitic-speaking lands south and east. Amharic developed out of this linguistic blend. Using a vast number of serfs on feudal church territories, ABUNA (archbishop) Tekle Haymanot built churches and monasteries, often on easily defensible hilltops, such as Debra Libanos monastery in Shewa [Shoa], which is still the most important in Ethiopia. With the Muslim conquest of Somali land in 1430, the ring around Abyssinia was complete, and recently Islamicized Oromo (Galla) semi-nomadic tribes from the south invaded through the Rift Valley, burning churches and monasteries. When a second wave of invaders came, equipped with Turkish firearms, the Shewan king Lebna Dengel sent a young Armenian to Portugal to solicit aid. Before it could arrive, the Oromo leader Mohammed Grañ ("the left-handed") attacked and razed Aksum, killing the king in battle in 1540. His children and the clergy took refuge north of Lake Tana. One year later, Som Christofo Da Gama landed at Mesewa with 450 Portuguese musketeers. The tide turned in 1543 when Mohammed Grañ fell in battle. Shewa [Shoa], nevertheless remained settled by Oromo tribesmen, who now took up agriculture. The Portuguese built bridges and castles in and around the town of Gonder [Gondar], and Jesuits began to convert the royal family to Roman Christianity. King Za Dengel was the first royal convert, but the Monophysite clergy organized a rebellion that led to his removal. His successor, King Susneos, had also been converted but was careful not to urge his people to convert; shortly before his death in 1632, he proclaimed religious liberty for all his subjects. The new king, Fasilidas (1632-1667), expelled the Portuguese and restored the privileges of the Monophysite clergy. He--and later his son and grandson--employed workmen trained by the Portuguese to build the castles that stand to this day. But the skills of stone masonry later fell into disuse; warfare required mobility, which necessitated the formation of military tent cities.

The town of Gonder [Gondar] was abandoned by the Solomonid line when a usurping commoner chieftain, Kasssa, chose it as the location to have himself crowned King Theodore in 1855. He defeated the king of Shewa [Shoa] and held the dynastic heir, the boy Menilek II, hostage at his court. Theodore realized the urgency of uniting the many ethnic groups of the country into a nation, to prevent Ethiopia from losing its independence to European colonial powers. He invited foreign technicians and, at first, even welcomed foreign missionaries. But when the missionaries were unable to cast cannons for him and even criticized his often violent behavior, he jailed them. This led to the Lord Napier expedition, which was welcomed and assisted by the population of Tigre [Tigray] Province. When the fort of Magdalla fell, Theodore committed suicide. A conservative Tigre [Tigray] chief, Yohannes, was crowned at Aksum. In 1889 the Muslim mahdi took advantage of the disarray in Ethiopia; he razed the town of Gonder [Gondar] and devastated the subprovince of Dembeya, causing a severe and prolonged famine. Meanwhile, the Shewan dynastic heir Menilek II had grown to manhood and realized that Ethiopia could no longer isolate itself if it were to retain independence. He proceeded, with patient persistence, to unify the country. As an Amhara from Shewa [Shoa], he understood his Oromo neighbors and won their loyalty with land grants and military alliances. He negotiated a settlement with the Tigre [Tigray]. He equipped his forces with firearms from whatever source, some even from the Italians (in exchange for granting them territory in Eritrea). His policies were so successful that he managed to defeat the Italian invasion at Adwa, in 1896, an event that placed Ethiopia on the international map diplomatically. Empress Taitu liked the hot mineral springs of a district in Shewa, even though it was in an Oromo region, and the emperor therefore agreed to build his capital there, naming it "Addis Ababa [Adis Abeba]" (new flower). Menilek II died in 1913, and his daughter Zauditu became nominal head; a second cousin, Ras Tafari Makonnen, became regent and was crowned King of Kings Haile Selassie I in 1930. He had made it possible for Ethiopia to join the League of Nations in 1923, by outlawing the slave trade. One of his first acts as emperor was to grant his subjects a written constitution. He allied himself by marriage to the Oromo king of Welo [Wallo] Province. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Emperor Haile Selassie appeared in Geneva to plead his case before the League, warning that his country would not be the last victim of aggression. The Italian occupation ended in 1941 with surrender to the British and return of the emperor. During succeeding decades, the emperor promoted an educated elite and sought assistance from the United States, rather than the British, in various fields. Beginning about 1960, a young, educated generation of Ethiopians grew increasingly impatient with the slowness of development, especially in the political sphere. At the same time, the aging emperor, who was suffering from memory loss, was losing his ability to maintain control. In 1974 he was deposed, and he died a year later. The revolutionary committees, claiming to follow a Marxist ideology, formed military dictatorships that deported villagers under conditions of great suffering and executed students and each other without legal trials. Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam fled Ethiopia in May 1991 as Eritrean and Tigrean [Tigrayan] rebel armies approached from the north.

Ethiopia is essentially a rural country. Apart from the capital Addis Ababa [Adis Abeba] (1990 estimated population was 1,912,500), few towns have a permanent population in excess of 10,000: Gonder [Gondar] (95,000, 1989 est.), the old caravan town on the way from the highlands to the Sudan; Harēr, the coffee city; and Dirē Dawa (127,000, 1989 est.), the railroad junction to the coast.

The many small towns are essentially marketplaces, serving the farming hinterland. The typical rural settlement is the hamlet, TIS, called MENDER if several are linked together. The hamlet may consist of two to a dozen huts. Thus, the hamlet is often little more than an isolated or semi-isolated farmstead, and another hamlet may be close by if their plowed fields are near. Four factors appear to determine where a hamlet is likely to be situated: ecological considerations, such as water within a woman's walking distance, or available pasturage for the flock; kinship considerations--persons within a hamlet are nearly always related and form a family economic community; administrative considerations, such as inherited family ownership of land, tenancy of land belonging to a feudal lord of former times, or continuing agreement with the nearby church that had held the land as a fief up to 1975 and continues to receive part of the crop in exchange for its services; and ethnic considerations. A hamlet may be entirely inhabited by Falasha blacksmiths and pottery makers or the Faqi tanners. Most of the Falasha have now left Ethiopia.

To avoid being flooded during the rainy season, settlements are typically built on or near hilltops. There is usually a valley in between, where brooks or irrigation canals form the border for planted fields. The hillsides, if not terrace farmed, serve as pasturage for all hamlets on the hill. Not only sheep and goats, but also cows, climb over fairly steep, bushy hillsides to feed. Some hamlets are fenced in by thorn bushes against night-roving hyenas and to corral cattle. Calves and the family mule may be taken into the living hut at night.

Subsistence farming provides the main economy for most rural Amhara. The traditional method required much land to lie fallow because no fertilization was applied. Cattle manure is formed into flat cakes, sun dried, and used as fuel for cooking. New land, if available, is cleared by the slash-and-burn method. A wooden scratch plow with a pointed iron tip, pulled by oxen, is the main farming tool. Insecurity of land tenure has long been a major factor in discouraging Amhara farmers from producing more than the amount required for subsistence. The sharecropping peasant (GABBAR) was little more than a serf who feared the (often absentee) feudal landlord or military quartering that would absorb any surplus. The revolutionary government (1975-1991) added additional fears by its villagization program, moving peasants at command to facilitate state control and deporting peasants to the south of Ethiopia, where many perished owing to poor government planning and support. Among the Amhara, the raising of livestock is traditionally not directly related to available pasture, but to agriculture and the desire for prestige. Oxen are needed to pull the plow, but traditionally there was no breeding to obtain good milkers. Fishing is mostly limited to the three-month rainy season, when rivers are full and the water is muddy from runoff so that the fish cannot see the fishers. Hunting elephants used to be a sport of young feudal nobles, but hunting for ivory took place largely in non-Amhara regions. Since rifles became available in Amhara farming regions, hunting for Ethiopian duikers and guinea fowl has diminished.

Much Amhara ingenuity has long been invested in the direct exploitation of natural resources. An Amhara would rather spend as much time as necessary searching for suitably shaped hard or soft saplings for a walking cane than perform carpentry, which is traditionally largely limited to constructing the master bed (ALGA), wooden saddles, and simple musical instruments. Soap is obtained by crushing the fruit of the ENDOD (PIRCUNIA ABYSSINICA) bush. Tannin for depilation of hides and curing is obtained from the yellow fruit of the EMBWAY bush. Butter is preserved and perfumed by boiling it with the leaves of the ADES (myrtle) bush.

In times of crop failure, edible oil is obtained by gathering and crushing wild-growing sunflower seeds (CARTHAMUS TINCTORUS). If necessary, leaves of the LOLA bush can be split by women to bake the festive bread DABBO. The honey of a small bee (APIS DORSATA) is gathered to produce alcoholic mead, TEJ, whereas the honey of the wild bee TAZEMMA (APIS AFRICANUS MIAIA) is gathered to treat colds and heart ailments.

Although much needed, the caste-like skilled occupations like blacksmithing, pottery making, and tanning are held in low esteem and, in rural regions, are usually associated with a socially excluded ethnic groups. Moreover, ethnic workmanship is suspected of having been acquired by dealings with evil spirits who enabling the artisans to turn themselves into hyenas at night to consume corpses, cause diseases by staring, and turn humans into donkeys to utilize their labor. Such false accusations can be very serious. On the other hand, the magic power accredited to these workers is believed to make their products strong, whereas those manufactured by an outsider who might have learned the trade would soon break. The trade of weaving is not afflicted by such suspicions, although it is sometimes associated with Muslims or migrants from the south.

Land tenure among traditional rural Amhara resembled that of medieval Europe more than that found elsewhere in Africa. Feudal institutions required the GABBAR to perform labor (HUDAD) for his lord and allocated land use in exchange for military service, GULT. In a system resembling the European entail, inheritable land, REST, was subject to taxation (which could be passed on to the sharecroppers) and to expropriation in case of rebellion against the king. Over the centuries, endowed land was added to fief-holding church land, AND DEBBER AGER. Royal household lands were classified as MAD-BET, and MELKENYA land was granted to tax collectors. Emperor Haile Selassie attempted to change the feudal system early in his administration. He defeated feudal armies, but was stymied in abrogating feudalistic land tenure, especially in the Amhara region, by feudal lords such as Ras Kassa. The parliament that he had called into existence had no real power. All remaining feudal land tenure was abrogated during the revolutionary dictatorship (1975-1991), but feudalistic attitudes practiced by rural officials, such as SHUM SHIR(frequently moving lower officials to other positions to maintain control), appear to have persisted.

The extended patrilocal, patrilineal, patriarchal family is particularly strong among holders of REST land tenure, but found, in principle, even on the hamlet level of sharecroppers. When marriage occurs, usually early in life, a son may receive use of part of his father's rented (or owned) field and build his hut nearby. If no land is available owing to fragmentation, the son may reluctantly establish himself at the bride's hamlet. When warfare has killed off the adult males in a hamlet, in-laws may also be able to move in. There are several levels of kin, ZEMED, which also include those by affinity, AMACHENET. In view of the emphasis of seeking security in kinship relations, there are also several formal methods of establishing fictive kinship, ZEMED HONE, provided the person to be adopted is ATTENTAM ("of good bones, " i.e., not of Shanqalla slave ancestry.) Full adoption provides a breast father (YETUT ABBAT) or a breast mother (YETET ENNAT). The traditional public ceremony included coating the nipples with honey and simulating breast-feeding, even if the child was already in adolescence.

The traditional age of a girl at first marriage may be as young as 14, to protect her virginity, and to enable the groom to tame her more easily. A groom three to five years older is preferred. To protect the bride against excessive violence, two best men are sworn to protect her and wait behind a curtain; they can be called upon in later times also.

There are three predominant types of marriage in Amhara tradition. Only a minority--the priesthood, some older persons, and nobility--engage in Eucharist church marriage (QURBAN). No divorce is possible. Widows and widowers may remarry, except for priests, who are instead expected to become monks. Kin-negotiated civil marriage (SEMANYA; lit., "eighty") is most common. No church ceremony is involved, but a priest may be present at the wedding to bless the couple. Divorce, which involves the division of property and determination of custody of children, can be negotiated. Temporary marriage (DAMOZ) obliges the husband to pay housekeeper's wages for a period stated in advance. This was felt to be an essential arrangement in an economy where restaurant and hotel services were not available. The wife had no right of inheritance, but if children were conceived during the contract period, they could make a claim for part of the father's property, should he die. DAMOZ rights were even recognized in modern law during the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie.

When death is approaching, elder kin of the dying person bring the confessor, and the last will concerning inheritance is pronounced. Fields are given to patrilineal descendants, cattle to all offspring. Personal belongings, such as ox hide mats and a SHAMMA (toga), may be given to the confessor, who administers last rites and assigns a burial place in the churchyard.

Socialization in the domestic unit begins with the naming of the baby, a privilege that usually belongs to the mother. She may base it on her predominant emotion at the time, on a significant event occurring at the time, or on a special wish she may have for the personality or future of her baby. Breast-feeding may last two years, during which the nursling is never out of touch with the body of the mother or another woman. In the post-weaning period children are treated with permissiveness, in contrast to the authoritarian training that is to follow. The state of reason and incipient discipline begins gradually at about age 5 for girls and 7 for boys. The former assist their mothers in watching babies and fetching wood; boys take sheep and cows to pasture and, with slingshots, guard crops against birds and baboons. Both can be questioned in court to express preferences concerning guardianship in case of their parents' divorce. Neglect of duty is punished by immediate scolding and beating.

Formal education in the traditional rural church school rarely began before age 11 for boys. Hazing patterns to test courage are common among boys as they grow up, both physically and verbally. Girls are enculturated to appear shy, but may play house with boys prior to adolescence. Adolescence is the beginning of stricter obedience for both sexes, compensated by pride in being assigned greater responsibilities. Young men do most of the plowing, and by age 18 may be addressed as GOBEZ, signifying (strong, handsome) young warrior.

Social organization is linked to land tenure of kinfolk, feudalistic traditions and the church, ethnic division of labor, gender, and age status. The peasant class is divided between landowning farmers, who, even though they have no formal political power, can thwart distant government power by their rural remoteness, poor roads, and weight of numbers, and the sharecroppers, who have no such power against local landlords. Fear of a person who engages in a skilled occupation, TEBIB (lit., "the knowing one, " to whom supernatural secrets are revealed), enters into class stratification, especially for blacksmiths, pottery makers, and tanners. They are despised as members of a lower caste, but their products are needed, and therefore they are tolerated. Below them on the social scale are the descendants of slaves who used to be imported from the negroid Shanqalla of the Sudanese border, or the Nilotic Barya, so that both terms became synonymous with "slave."

In theory, the emperor was the ultimate head of the entire Ethiopian state, head of the army, the church, and disposer of all lands and offices. In actuality, both the power of hereditary feudal lords and the difficulty of travel restricted his authority until the advent of modern communications and air travel in this century. While it was in the best interests of the emperor to appoint as many loyal provincial governors as he could, certain hereditary nobles held traditional control of areas which the emperor, unless he wanted to go to war, had little likelihood of reclaiming. Below the provincial governors were the village chiefs (CHEQA SUM), who also, in theory, represented and were appointed by the emperor. In most cases, however, they were the hereditary leading men of the village. Governors more often had a say in making a choice between contenders, and the emperor's role in most situations was only to settle a dispute or make an appointment official. A CHEQA SUM acted as a judge, presided over meetings of the village council, attended weddings, and was involved in all land transfers and disputes. He is the lowest representative of the emperor and was responsible for communicating all decrees of the central government to his village.

Social control is traditionally maintained, and conflict situations are resolved, in accordance with the power hierarchy. Judges interpret laws subjectively and make no sharp distinction between civil and criminal procedures. In addition to written Abyssinian and church laws, there are unwritten codes, such as the payment of blood money to the kin of a murder victim. An aggrieved person could appeal to a higher authority by lying prostrate in his path and shouting "ABYET" (hear me). Contracts did not have to be written, provided there were reliable witnesses. To obtain a loan or a job, a personal guarantor (WAS) is necessary, and the WAS can also act as bondsman to keep an accused out of jail. The drama of litigation, to talk well in court, is much appreciated. Even children enact it with the proper body language of pointing a toga at the judge to emphasize the speech.

The religious belief of most Amhara is Monophysite--that is, Tewahedo (Orthodox)--Christianity, to such an extent that the term "Amhara" is used synonymously with "Abyssinian Christian." Christian Amhara wear a blue neck cord (METEB), to distinguish themselves from Muslims. In rural regions, the rules of the church have the de facto force of law, and many people are consecrated to church functions: priests, boy deacons and church students, chorister-scribes, monks, and nuns.

Ceremonies often mark the annual cycle for the public, despite the sacerdotal emphasis of the religion. The calendar of Abyssinia is Julian, with the year beginning on 11 September, following ancient Egyptian usage, and is called AMETE MEHRAT (year of grace). Thus, the Abyssinian year 1948 a.m. corresponds roughly with the Gregorian (Western) AD 1956. The new year begins with the month of MESKEREM, which follows the rainy season and is named after the first religious holy day of the year, MESQEL-ABEBA, celebrating the Feast of the Cross. On the seventeenth day, huge poles are stacked up for the bonfire in the evening, with much public parading, dancing, and feasting. By contrast, Christmas (LEDET) has little social significance except for the GENNA game of the young men. Far more important is Epiphany (TEMQET), on the eleventh day of TER. Ceremonial parades escort the priests who carry the TABOT, symbolic of the holy ark, on their heads, to a water pool. There are all-night services, public feasting, and prayers for plentiful rains. The rains mark the end of the GENNA season and the beginning of the GUKS tournaments fought on horseback by the young men. The long Lenten season is approaching, and clergy as well as the public look forward to the feasting at Easter (FASSIKA), on the seventeenth day of MIYAZYA. Children receive new clothes and collect gifts, chanting house to house. Even the voluntary fraternal association MEHABBER is said to have originated from the practice of private communion. Members take turns as hosts at monthly meetings, drinking barley beer together with the confessor-priest, who intones prayers. Members are expected to act as a mutual aid society, raising regular contributions, extending loans, even paying for the TAZKAR (formal memorial service) forty days after a member's death, if his family cannot afford it.

Besides the ecclesiastical function of the QES (parish priest), the chorister-scribe, who is not ordained, fulfills many services. He translates the liturgy from Ge'ez to Amharic, chants and sometimes composes devotional poetry (QENE), and writes amulets. The latter may be unofficial and discouraged by the priests, but ailing persons believe strongly in them and may use them to prevent disease. (Also see Medicine below)

Verbal arts--such as BEDANYA FIT (speaking well before a judge)-- are highly esteemed in general Amhara culture, but there is a pronounced class distinction between the speech of the rustic peasant, BALAGER (hence BELEGE, unpolished, sometimes even vulgar), and CHOWA LIJ, upper-class speech. A further differentiation within the latter is the speech of those whose traditional education has included SEWASSOW (Ge'ez: grammar; lit., "ladder, " "uplifting"), which is fully mastered mainly by church scholars; the speeches of former emperor Haile Selassie, who had also mastered SEWASSOW, impressed the average lay person as esoteric and hard to understand, and therefore all the more to be respected. In the arts of politeness, veiled mockery, puns with double meanings, such as SEMMENA-WORQ (wax and gold), even partial knowledge of grammar is an advantage.

The draping of the toga (SHAMMA) is used at court and other occasions to emphasize spoken words, or to communicate even without speech. It is draped differently to express social status in deference to a person of high status, on different occasions, and even to express moods ranging from outgoing and expansive to calm sobriety, to sadness, reserve, pride, social distance, desperate pleading, religious devotion, and so on. Artistic expression in the fine arts had long been linked to the church, as in paintings, and sponsorship by feudal lords who could afford it, especially when giving feasts celebrated with a variety of musical instruments.

The basic concepts and practices of Amhara medicine can be traced to ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East and can also be attributed to regional ecological links within Ethiopia. Often no sharp distinctions are made between bodily and spiritual ailments, but there are special occupations: the WOGGESHA (surgeon-herbalist) is a pragmatist; the DEBTERA (scribe) invokes the spirit world. The latter is officially or unofficially linked to the church, but the ZAR cult is apart and may even be female dominated. Its spirit healing has a complex cosmology; it involves the social status of the patient and includes group therapy. The chief ZAR doctor is often a matriarch who entered the profession when she herself was possessed by a spirit; she has managed to control some powerful spirits that she can then employ in her battles to overcome the spirits that possess her patients. No cure is expected, only control through negotiation and appeasement of the offended spirit, in the hope of turning it into a WEQABI (protective spirit). By contrast, possession by an evil spirit is considered more serious and less manageable than possession by a ZAR, and there is no cult. An effort is made to prevent it by wearing amulets and avoiding persons, who are skilled in trades like blacksmithing and pottery making. Since these spirits are believed to strike beautiful or successful persons, such individuals--especially if they are children--must not be praised out loud. If a person sickens and wastes away, an exorcism by the church may be attempted, or a TANQWAY (diviner- sorcerer) may be consulted; however, the latter recourse is considered risky and shameful.

The corpse is washed, wrapped in a SHAMMA, carried to church for the mass, and buried, traditionally without a marker except for a circle of rocks. Women express grief with loud keening and wailing. This is repeated when kinfolk arrive to console the relatives of the deceased. A memorial feast (TAZKAR) is held forty days after death, when the soul has the earliest opportunity to be freed from purgatory. Preparations for this feast begin at the time of the funeral: money is provided for the priest to recite the FETET, the prayer for absolution, and materials, food, and drink are accumulated. It is often the greatest single economic expenditure of an individual's lifetime and, hence, a major social event. For the feasting, a large, rectangular shelter (DASS) is erected, and even distant kin are expected to participate and consume as much TALLA and WOT as available.

Documents referred to in this section are included in this eHRAF collection and are referenced by author, date of publication, and eHRAF document number.

The file includes fifteen documents, all but one based on research conducted in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Overall, a more traditional, and rural Amhara culture is portrayed, except for Levine (1965, no. 11) who also discusses modern changes in Amhara culture. Messing's work (1985, no. 20) systematically covers a broad range of culture, circa 1950s, and is the basic source to be consulted. Included in Messing's book is an extensive glossary covering such categories as animals, cultigens, herbs, spirits, and charms. The other works compliment Messing by examining more specific aspects of Amhara culture, such as settlement patterns (Buxton 1949, no. 3), political organization (Perham 1949, no. 7), ethnomedicine (Young 1970, no. 12; 1975, no. 17), land tenure (Hoben 1963, no. 14; 1970, no. 19; 1973, no. 13; Crummey 1983, no. 15) and syncretic religious beliefs and practices (Reminick 1974, no. 21; 1975, no. 22). Examples and discussions of Amhara representative arts, oral stories and literature are found in Young (1967, no. 18), Messing (1956, no. 6), and Assefa (1988, no. 16), respectively. It is evident that Amhara culture varies geographically, although no one study covers this variability. The post-Haile Selassie period (1975 to present) is not covered in the file. For more detailed information on the content of the individual works in this file, see the abstracts in the citations preceding each document.

This culture summary was based on the article "Amhara," by Simon D. Messing, in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 9. 1995. John Middleton and Amal Rassam, eds. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall & Co. Population figures and territorial names were updated by Ian Skoggard, 1996.

• ALAQENAT--head of family and its affairs--592

• BUDA--sorcerers and artisan caste believed by Amhara to possess the evil eye--564, 754

• DEBTERA (DÄBTÄRÄ)--magician-healer--791

• division by allotment--612, 423, 425

• division by father--611, 423, 425

• BÉTESEB--household head--592

• BET--"house, " ambilineal descent group--612

• CHICA SHUM (CÒQA SUM; CHEQA SUM)--reeve, local official--624, 423

• FEJ--manager of a descent group--612, 554

• FELASHA--Jewish iron smiths--564, 563

• GEBBAR--peasant/serf--565

• GULT (GWILT)-- fief-holding rights and income from landed estates--423, 634, 651

• KIBUR--honor--577

• MEHEBER (MEHABBER)--private communion group--794, 571

• MINZIR ABBAT--apical ancestor of descent-group segment--612, 423

• RIST (RÒST; REST)--land-use rights within a cognatic descent-group estate--423, 612

• SHEMMA (SHAMMA)--a long cloth worn over the shoulder--291

• SHUMAT--public office inherited within noble families--647

• TABOT--ark--778

• T'ENGWAY (TANQWAY)--sorcerer-diviner--791

• WEGESHA (WOGGESHA)--surgeon-herbalist--759

• WUQABI--protector spirit--776

• YEDENB--undivided ancestral land--423

• ZAR--spirit--776

Bender, M. L. The languages of Ethiopia: a new lexicostatistic classification and some problems of diffusion. Anthropological Linguistics 13 (1971): 165-288

Hoben, Allan. The role of ambilineal descent groups in Gojjam Amhara social organization. Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, 1963

Hoben, Allan. Land tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia; the dynamics of cognatic descent. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973

Levine, Donald Nathan. Wax and gold; tradition and innovation in Ethiopian culture. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965

Lipsky, George A. in collaboration with Wendell Blanchard, Abraham M. Hirsch, and Bela C. Maday. Ethiopia: its people, its society, its culture. New Haven: HRAF Press, 1962

Messing, Simon David. The highland-plateau Amhara of Ethiopia. Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, 1975

Young, Allan Louis. Medical beliefs and practices of Begemder Amhara. Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, 1970