Gult and the state - 1200-1540; "Man is free; land is tributary"; Gondar, 1632-1721 - order and disorder; Mentewwab, "how beautiful she is!" 1721-1769; the leadership of Galawdewos - family and property in Gondarine Ethiopia; the era of the princes; church, land and society in Gondarine Ethiopia - institutional grants; church, land and society in Gondarine Ethiopia - private transfers; Gult and the reconstruction of the monarchy - 1680-1910; transformations - state, land and society.
This book is a rare event in modern academic publishing, the
culmination of a lifetime's scholarship. Crummey's interest in
Iyasus Mo'a's legacy lies, not in the Gospels themselves, but in
the margins and flyleaves on which were recorded the details of
land transactions affecting the monastery - most of them grants by
successive emperors of the right to collect the land tax known as
gult, which in highland Christian Ethiopia constituted the most
sought-after form of ownership ... Crummey has been able to use
this hitherto barely noticed source of documentation to uncover the
relationships between crown, clergy and aristocracy in Christian
Ethiopia, and in large measure to transform our understanding of
them.
*The TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*
Donald Crummey has assembled an impressive documentation regarding
land issues throughout Ethiopia's Solomonic period. His analysis
carefully documents a developing class society in which the
nobility, and especially the clergy, managed to extract a measure
of the produce from a landed peasantry.
*AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW*
Crummey has .. succeeded in giving our knowledge of Ethiopia's past
an important new dimension. Besides throwing valuable light on the
historic role of the Ethiopian state, and its traditional, and
largely self-perpetuating, hierarchy, he has shown the
sophistication of the elite, and has 'fleshed out' a number of
hitherto 'faceless' personalities mentioned in the marginalia.
*AFRICAN AFFAIRS*
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