Shama Books

CityGuidesEthiopian

2

Table of contents

• Introductions p. 4

• Gondar, Four Centuries of History p. 6

• ITINERARY 1 Gondar as an historic capital

1-A Castles of Gondar

p.

p.

12

16

1-B From Debre Berhan Sellasie church to Qusquam p. 20

• ITINERARY 2 Gondar today : religions, traditions, cultures

2-A From the Italians to the Christian quarters

p.

p.

26

30

2-B From the Christian to the Muslim quarters p. 35

• ITINERARY 3 Gondar and its surroundings

3-A From Piazza to Goha Hotel and Woleka village

p.

p.

42

44

3-B From Piazza to Piazza : elevated loop around the city p. 46

• Focuses :

The Castles of Gondar

Arada and Qedame Gebeya (Saturday Market)

Temqat (Epiphany) Celebrations in Gondar

p.

p.

p.

50

56

58

• Important Dates p. 60

• Important Places p. 54

• Readings, Films & Music p. 68

3

Gondar :Four Centuries of HistoryToday, the visitor entering Gondar discovers an expanding town, where the main tourist attractions are stone palaces and churches built during the 17th and 18th centuries. In a country where most towns are recent and the capital city Addis Abeba (“the New Flower”) dates from the end of the

19th century, Gondar is an exception.

Its geographical location explains the town’s success. It nestles between seven protecting mountains and opens onto a large and fertile plain stretching south to the shores of Lake Tana. Two rivers, the Qaha and the Angareb, provide water. If we enlarge the perspective, Gondar is located at the crossing of international trade routes. To the north, the road goes to Tigray and the Red Sea coast; to the west, through Sennar towards Sudan and Egypt; to the south, to the provinces where precious goods such as gold and ivory, as well as slaves, were found. Gondar was probably already a market place before the 17th century, and the Muslim community’s tradition testifies that since the 14th century they were settled here in a place called Godiguadit.

The first castle in Gondar was built by King Fasiladas (1632–1667), who is often considered the founder of the town. But Fasiladas was not innovating when he constructed the first stone castle in Gondar. His father King Susneyos (1607–1632) had already constructed castles, residential complexes, and churches in this province (in Danqaz, then in Gorgora, and finally at Azazo). Susenyos benefited from the technical

6

help of the Jesuit missionaries who were closely associated to his reign. Coming from the western coast of India, they brought techniques that had already been used there. Indeed, comparison of Gorgora or Martula Maryam churches with Jesuit churches in Gujarat province, India, is striking. Fasiladas expelled the Jesuit missionaries immediately after his enthronement, but he kept their masons and the workers they had trained! A Yemenite ambassador visiting Gondar in 1648 reported that the king had built a “stately edifice which ranks amongst the most wonderful of wonderful buildings”, that “it comprises many courtyards and long halls”, and that “the builder of the edifice was an Indian, and the characteristics of his design correspond to the methods of his country”. Fasiladas also built royal residences at other sites; totally ruined today, Yebaba in Gojam and Aringo in Begamder were huge palatial establishments where kings could gather their armies, call for synods, and spend long periods when

they were not visiting their provinces or going to war.

The royal court remained itinerant or “semi-nomadic”. The king had to be present in the provinces in order to re-a!rm his authority over local governors, collect taxes, and prevent any rebellions. He was also fighting against the enemies of the Christian kingdom—mainly against the Oromo clans, who were the most recently migrated populations, but also against long-settled populations in provinces the Christian kingdom wanted to control, such as the Agaw in Gojjam, the Beta Israel around Gondar, and some Sudanic populations who were raided and enslaved. The king fought the Oromo, but they were also integrated. King Susneyos was the first to give them some lands in Dambya, the new heartland of the kingdom, as well as in Begamder and on the eastern shores of the river Abbay. During the 18th century and since the reign of King Baka"a (1721–1730), Oromo clans and their leaders were closely associated with the royal family and the aristocracy, often through intermarriage. In this vast and multi-ethnic kingdom, Gondar became a political centre of power.

Fasiladas spent long periods in his town (madina) of Gondar, at first only during rainy seasons when travelling in the country became di!cult, but

7

sometimes staying the full year in Gondar without leading any military campaigns. When King Yohannes, his son and successor (1667–1682), was enthroned in Gondar, his reign was announced from the upper square tower of Fasiladas castle. The enclosure continued to grow as Yohannes added a palace to his father’s, and also a hippodrome. At the end of the 17th century, Gondar was definitely the capital of the Gondarine monarchy. Yohannes’ son, Iyasu the Great (1682–1706), also reigned from Gondar, even if he left the city every year to visit his kingdom.

One sign of this “centralization” of power is the gradual installation in the city, near the royal enclosure of the most important religious prelates : the Coptic metropolitan (the abuna) and the echege who was originally the head of the powerful monastic order of Dabra Libanos. The Coptic metropolitan is the bishop sent by the patriarchate in Alexandria to head the Ethiopian church. He was given, perhaps as early as Fasiladas’ reign, a residential area in the royal city. During Yohannes’ reign, a synod was held in Gondar and the abuna’s house was an important place in the quarrel between di!erent spiritual orders. During Iyasu’s reign, the abuna had a beautiful palace and a church north of the royal compound. The echege, was de facto the most important native prelate in the Ethiopian hierarchy. He also had a “house” in Gondar, next to the royal enclosure, and the neighborhood around his house benefited from the ancient asylum right of Dabra Libanos monastery. This proved that religious power did not depend totally on the political.

Going westward, up the hill on the other side of the valley, the compound of Qusquam churches and palaces was created by the Queen Mentewabb. As a regent, mother and grand-mother of kings, she dominated the political scene until the 1770s. Then the mighty governor of Tigray, Mika’el Sehul, killed King Iyoas. This assassination came at the end of a long period of loss of the king’s power. A seemingly complicated familial network around Queen Mentewabb slowly eroded their power, and the kings had to ratify decisions not taken by themselves. King Takla Giyorgis fought to restore the authority of the monarchy during his first reign (1779–1784) but failed, and he was subsequently enthroned and deposed several times between

8

1784 and 1799. This failure came to symbolize the end of the Gondarine monarchy, and he was nicknamed Fetsame Mangest, the “terminator of the monarchy”. A new political era, the “Era of the Princes”, or Zamana Masafent, was born when the regional lords gained autonomy and the kings in Gondar, who had followed the so-called Salomonic lines, were deprived of power.

This is when the story of Gondar began to be one of ruins. But before surrendering to the beauty of ruins, the visitor must try to imagine the munificence of courtly life. Only walls remain today, and nothing has survived of the beauty and the luxury of the furniture, mirrors, carpets, clothes, jewelry, weapons, and all the pomp that characterized the royal court. Gondar was full of life, colors, sounds, and smells, as well as of symbolism designed to serve a precise hierarchy.

The hierarchy was not only that of the royal family and aristocracy. One seemingly ancient authority was exerted on Gondar, that of the kantiba. As early as the 14th century, this title was given to the governor of Dambya province. The sources record the name kantiba in Gondarine society at the beginning of the 18th century, showing that the new Gondarine society also respected ancient social order. After the decline of the royal power in the 19th c., the kantiba remained the mayor of Gondar. This served as the model for the next capital, Addis Abeba, founded at the end of the 19th century by Menelik, whose mayor was to be entitled kantiba.

Gondar was looted twice during the 19th century, symptom as well as cause of its political weakness. The first damage was caused by the violent and authoritarian King Tewodros, enthroned in 1855. He successfully fought the regional lords, but at the end of his reign Tewodros counted numerous enemies, and in 1866 he looted the churches and palaces of Gondar. A contemporary critic said that he was unable to make Gondar a capital, so he destroyed and looted it, taking all the precious objects to the town of Dabra Tabor in order to build his own capital city. But time had run out for Tewodros, and in 1868 he had to flee again from Dabra Tabor to his fortress Magdala, where the British army besieged and defeated him. They

9

were travelling with a curator from the British Museum, and partly under his supervision, partly as war booty, most of the precious manuscripts and objects of Gondar found their way to London, where they are still kept in the British Library. After Tewodros, two kings reinforced the cohesion of the kingdom : Yohannes IV (1871–1889), who reigned from Tigray and his epicentre in Adwa, and then Menelik, who reigned in Shawa, founded Addis Abeba, expanded the frontiers of the kingdom toward the south, and made Gondar a provincial city. As well as the redistribution of the geo-political map, another event ruined Gondar : the Sudanese soldiers (the Mahdists) invaded the town in January 1888 as part of a Holy War declared by the Mahdist state against Ethiopia. Churches were burnt and looted. After the coronation of Hayle Sellasie in 1930, Gondar became the main city of the Amhara region, a city of ancient splendor somehow neglected by the modernity of the Ethiopian state. When Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris lived and worked in the town in 1932, they were struck

by the boredom and decay of the city.

The Italian occupation was, in some ways, an opportunity for Gondar. In February 1935, Mussolini ordered the invasion of Ethiopia from Eritrea and Somalia, which had been an Italian colony since the end of the 19th century. The fascist regime in Italy wanted an empire, and Ethiopia was to be the epicentre of the Italian African empire. Disregarding the fact that the Ethiopian state, headed by Hayle Sellasie, was represented at the League of Nations, and the 1928 Italo–Ethiopian treaty of Friendship, the European states allowed Italy to invade Ethiopia. Within one year, the Italian army was in Gondar (March 1936) and soon after in Addis Abeba (May 1936). Gondar was to become the regional capital of Amhara, and the Italian regime invested much in reshaping the city. Architecture and urbanism were tools of the fascist domination in order to make their ideologies a political and social reality : rendering visible the power of the state and the army, dividing the population according to social and racial ranks. The characteristic of Gondar compared with other towns such as Massawa in Eritrea or Tripoli in Lybia, which were also modified and re-constructed by the Italians, is the presence of its castles, which inspired the Italian architects. The Italians always called them “Portuguese” castles,

10

as they would not acknowledge them as indigenous. The fascist occupant therefore drew continuity between this “portuguese” architecture, royal Ethiopian power, and their own domination. In addition to the main features of the fascist architecture, one can see in the Italian buildings of Gondar

some typical features from the stone castles.

The Italian occupants left Ethiopia in 1941, defeated by the joint Ethiopian and British forces . The modernization of the city went on, respecting somehow what the Italians had left behind. Gondar, the city where an old nobility remains, was part of the modern state built by Hayle Sellasie. But after the Derg regime (1974–1991), most of the administrative responsibilities were transferred to Bahar Dar, on the southern bank of Lake Tana, depriving Gondar of its political role as a provincial capital. Thus, Gondar has been developing much more slowly than other cities in Ethiopia, imbuing it with a quiet and peaceful rhythm. Nonetheless, today Gondar is quickly expanding, especially on the road going south to Azazo. Its university campus is a town in itself, located on the hills of Maraki.

Anaïs WionCFEE / CNRS

About the authors

Sisay Sahile born and raised in one of the oldest families of Gondar, is an historian. He is project coordinator of Ras Ghimb Museum, Gondar.

Simon Hardy has been Inter-national Volunteer in Gondar (2011-12) and he was in charge of the cooperation between the twin cities Gondar and Vincennes.

Dr. Anaïs Wion is an historian, specialist of the Gondarine Ethio-pian period. She is researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), based in Addis Ababa at the French Center for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE).

Jonathan Le Péchon is a graphic designer. He has been living in the Ethiopian capital since 2007. After working for several visual communication agencies in France and Ethiopia, he is now an independent graphic designer in Addis Ababa.

Pr. Manuel João Ramos is an anthropologist, he wrote several books and articles on Ethiopia. He teaches at ISCTE in Lisbon, Portugal.

11

Itinerary 1

Gondar is located right in the middle of the well-promoted historic route of Ethiopia and this is no coincidence... Becom-ing a major international destination for culture-based tour-ism a decade ago, the city has a long and rich history and has left an important cultural heritage in terms of art, archi-tecture, crafts, scholarship and literature. Along with other sites in and around Gondar, the Royal Compound was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1979. It is there-fore essential in this City Guide to dedicate the first itinerary to the castles of Gondar.

Inside the royal enclosure

Gondar as an historic capital

12

2

N

50 m

1

3

6

8

5

7

4

9

1 Fasci di Combatimiento

2 Ras Ghimb Palace

3 Terrara Hotel

4 Royal Enclosure

5 Dopolavoro Cinema

6 Post Office

7 Commercial Bank of Ethiopia

8 Fogera Hotel

9 Jantekel Warka

Itinerary 1-A

13

Gondar : an historic epicentre The hilly site where the city is organised had natural advantages for the foundation of a capital : its morphology and its geostrategic potential led the Ethiopian kings to stay there for more than a century (from 1636 until the end of the 18th century). Set on a belvedere and positioned along a very important com-mercial road, Gondar and the heart of the town used to beat around the royal enclosure and its outbuildings. Even if Gondar has now largely expanded its borders, the remaining core is still the same as the one decided by King Fasiladas four centuries ago !

Others sites are scattered around the royal enclosure, such as the Baths of Fasiladas, the church of Debre Berhan Sellasie, and the pal-ace of Mentewab in Qusquam. The visitor may need to pay more attention and e!orts to visiting these distant historical places, but he will surely be rewarded by all the interesting information to be gathered there.

Easily identifiable with its long double white tail, you cannot miss the Paradise Flycatcher, twirling and singing around you. For bird-watching tours in the Ras Ghimb compound : Lammergeyer Bird Association ( 09 18 724 243 )

French engraving from 1868

The atmospheric street covered with arches linking the

Royal Enclosure to the churches

GO

ND

AR

AS

AN

HIS

TO

RIC

CA

PITA

L

14

15