Short History of Ethiopian Literature (in Amharic). Addis Abeba Yuniversiti 1976 (1983/1984), mimeographed, pp. 6 (indicated with Ethiopian letters Ha-Re) + 260 + 2 not marked with numbers.

Paper · 1988 · Aleksander Ferenc

Summary

This is a book review, not an NLP paper. Aleksander Ferenc reviews Amsalu Aklilu's Acäcäir Ye-Ityop'ya Sine-Tsihuf Tarik (A Short History of Ethiopian Literature). The book is a mimeographed university textbook issued by Addis Ababa University in 1976 by the Ethiopian calendar (1983/84). Ferenc presents it as the first general survey of Ethiopian literature written in Amharic inside Ethiopia. Until then, the field had been covered mainly by European and American scholars such as Littmann, Guidi, Cerulli, Ricci and Kane.

Using a Marxist-influenced framing, Aklilu splits the literature into religious writing (roughly 4th–19th century) and secular writing (from the 19th century onward). He then traces two traditions:

Giiz: Axum inscriptions, the Bible, hagiography, chronicles and philosophical treatises.
Amharic: from missionary Bible translations up to post-1974 revolutionary writing.

The reviewer values the later chapters most. They contain biographical details and quotations from unpublished works that are hard to find in other surveys. For anyone mapping Ethiopian literary history, the book is a primary reference from inside the field.

Key points

Structure: a 6-page introduction paginated with Ethiopic letters (Ha–Re), 260 numbered pages, and 2 unnumbered pages. Giiz is covered in chapters 2–4 (pp. 10–79) and Amharic in chapters 5–8 (pp. 80–253). Other Ethiopian languages are largely left out.
Axum inscriptions: chapter 2 gives Amharic translations of ten Axum inscriptions, some also in Giiz. These follow Littmann's numbering from the Deutsche Axum Expedition (1915).
Menelik II era: chapter 6, the longest, covers this period (1889–1913). It profiles writers such as Afewerk Gebre Iyesus, the first Ethiopian novelist, and Tekle Hawaryat Tekle Maryam, author of the first Ethiopian play.
Contested authorship: European scholarship credits the philosophical works associated with Zera Yaqob and Welde Hiywot to the Italian missionary Giusto da Urbino.
Hiruy Welde Sillase: the book includes a list of his works that Hiruy compiled himself; his son, blatta Sirak, found it in 1970.
Footnotes: pp. 254–260 also work as a selected bibliography.
After 1974: writing expanded into languages other than Amharic. New Amharic terminology appeared, either borrowed directly or built on foreign models from native Amharic material.

Interesting ideas

I1. Publishing translated inscriptions under an external scholar's established numbering keeps the new edition cross-referenceable with older ones.
I2. Disputed authorship is presented as competing positions held by named scholarly traditions, not as one settled fact.
I3. An author's own list of his works, recovered through his family, is treated as an especially valuable primary source.
I4. New terms are sorted into outright loans versus calques built from native morphemes on foreign patterns.
I5. The whole history is organised by a periodization tied to historical and political reasons, not just a list of names.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

I1 (back): Translation and generation outputs could carry IDs tied to the canonical source sentence or treebank item, so every rendered text stays traceable to its origin.
I2 (world): The knowledge graph could store attributions as claims together with who asserts them, so answers can say "according to X" instead of stating contested facts flatly.
I3 (learn): When building silver data or compiled knowledge, primary or self-reported sources could be ranked above secondary summaries in a provenance-weighted trust tier.
I4 (tokens): The lemmatizer and morphology layer could tag unknown words as likely loans or native-material coinages, which would improve decomposition and lemma guessing for neologisms.
I5 (world): Event ordering in a text's world could attach eras or phases with explicit causes, helping answer "why then?" questions as well as "when?" questions.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 4Arts and Humanities · 16,039 works Social Sciences · 1,772 works Literature and Literary Theory · 519 works Political Science and International Relations · 182 works

🧭 Topics 1Semitic languages · 2,908 works

Cite

Cite as Aleksander Ferenc. 1988. Short History of Ethiopian Literature (in Amharic). Addis Abeba Yuniversiti 1976 (1983/1984), mimeographed, pp. 6 (indicated with Ethiopian letters Ha-Re) + 260 + 2 not marked with numbers. Studies in African Languages and Cultures.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@article{ferenc1988short,
  title = {{Short History of Ethiopian Literature (in Amharic). Addis Abeba Yuniversiti 1976 (1983/1984), mimeographed, pp. 6 (indicated with Ethiopian letters Ha-Re) + 260 + 2 not marked with numbers.}},
  author = {Aleksander Ferenc},
  journal = {Studies in African Languages and Cultures},
  year = {1988},
  url = {https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/640}
}

References

3 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

to the translation of Bible, other Ethiopian languages, be sides Amharic, have begun to be written down (pp. 86-92). Amsalu Aklilu also discusses the situation of writing and literature in Amharic during the times of the Emperor Theo dore II, who reigned from 1855 till 1868 (pp. 92-105). The author does not fail to indicate the influence of John Bun yan’s "Pilgrim’s Progress" (Ye-Menany Guzo), translated into Amharic at the end of the 19th century, on the Amharic lite rature produced at the turn of the 20th century. Chapter 6, the largest in the book (pp. 106-175), dis cusses the times of the Dnperor Menelik II (1889-1913), and general political situation and the new interior structure of state administration. For instance, he mentions the initia tion of ministries in Ethiopia (here he refers to the work by Polish scholars: A. Bartnicki, J. Mantel-Niećko, "Geschichte éthiopiens", Berlin 1978, p. 107). These issues pro vide the background for the author’s discussion of the deve lopment of Amharic literature of that time. Then the author proceeds to a relatively comprehensive portrayal of the most prominent writers of that time: Afewerk’ Gebre Iyesus (pp. 111-121), the first Ethiopian novelist (1868-1947)? Tekle Hawaryat Tekle Maryam, the author of the first Ethiopian drama play, who received part of his education in Russia at the end of the 19th century (pp. 121-126); Gebre Igzïâbher, a Tigrinya birth, the editor of the first newspaper in Ethio pia (pp. 126-129); Gebre Hiywot Baykedany (19277-1953?), (pp. 129-157), also active as a political and an economical journalist; Hiruy Welde Sillasê (7-1958), (pp. 157-148); Yoftahê Nigusê (7-1950), a poet and a dramatist (pp. 149-155) . find
Amsalu Aklllu also discusses the situation of Amharic literature during the Italian occupation 1955-1941 (pp. 155-156) , and he presents some writers who made their debuts after the liberation of Ethiopia in~194l, that is, Mekonnin Indelkachew - a novelist and a dramatist (1891-1963), (pp. 159-160), Welde Giyorgis Welde Yohannis (pp. 161-171), Mahi-teme Sillasê Welde Meslćel, born in 1902 (pp. 171-174). The author also portrays the development of press and periodical journalism in the discussed period. Amsalu Aklilu remarks on particular writers are of spe cial value. They are sometimes supplied with large quotations from the discussed works, and in the case of Hiruy Welde Sil lasê, Amsalu Aklllu provides a list of his works, made by the writer himself, which was found by his son, blatta Sirak, in 1970, and rendered accessible to Amsalu Aklllu (p. 148). The author devotes chapter 7 (pp. 176-255) to the dis cussion of the modern Amharic literature and to the portrayal of the writers who made their debuts after the Italian-Ethio pian war, that is, after 1941. Thus, we can find relatively comprehensive portraits of such writers as: Kebbede Mikael, a fiction writer, a poet, a dramatist and a translator with quite a wide selection of his poems (pp. 175-192); Girmachew Tekle Hawaryat, born in 1915; Tekle Hawaryat Tekle Maryam's son, a dramatist and a novelist, a representative of the so-called ’’descriptive realism” (p. 194), one of his novels, "Araya", has been translated into Russian and may have been translated into Chinese (pp. 192-201); Taddese Liben, of Oromo origin, whose some works were translated into Polish by W. Brzuski (pp. 199-201); Negash Gebre Maryam, who elaborates on moral themes, e.g. in his no vel "Set adarï" (A Prostitute), (pp. 201-206); Birhanu Zerihun (pp. 206-208), who, after the 1974 revolution became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Addis Zemen" (New Times); Mengistu Lemma, a poet and a dramatist who elaborates on po pularizing the values of the traditional Ethiopian culture (pp. 208-214); Tsegayë Gebre Medhin, born in 1956, a fiction writer and a dramatist of Oromo origin, who, apart from so cial themes, pursues lexical experiments which, according to Amsalu Aklllu (pp. 214-215), often prevents the average reader from understanding the writer’s ideas (pp. 214-215); Haddis Almayyeuh, born in 1915, who having received traditional edu cation, later studied in the USA. In 1974, he published a book (written, in fact, in 1964) which stipulates for pro found changes in the political system in Ethiopia (pp. 215— 227); Bealu Girma, a writer of the young generation, who can be distinguished from others by his latitude and outspoken ness in the depiction of sexual life (p. 228). In 198Ó, he published a novel entitled "Ye-£ey kokeb 'Ciri" (Call of the Red Star) in which one of the themes was the hunger in Wello province and the situation there shortly after the 1974 re volution (pp. 227-229); and Danyachew Werlću (pp. 229-255), who writes both in Amharic and English. In his Amharic no vels, he often uses language characteristic for the young Ethiopian intelligensia. His English novel "The Thirteenth Sun" has been translated into German (p. 230). In chapter 8, the last one (pp. 256-255), Amsalu Aklllu discusses political writing, often not published but circu lating in single copies, of the students of the Addis Ababa University which was often called "an island of democracy" in the times of the imperial reign (p. 256). Some of the best known writers of the cirole are! Tamiu Feysa, the au thor of the poem "Biha yinnaggiral" (A Beggar Speaks), Dan yachew Werlću, Yohannis Admasu, Abbe be ‘ Werlću Yilma Kebbebe, Ibsa Gutema, the author of the poem "Ityop’yawl mannew" (Who Is an Ethiopian?), and Haylu Gebre Yohannis. Their literary pieces were most often presented during the cele brations of the so-called "Day of the University" and their social and political radicalism Intensified particularly after the December revolution in I960 (tahsas 1955, accor ding to the Ethiopian calendar). Amsalu Aklllu ends his survey with a short outline of the Ethiopian literature after the February revolution in 1974 (yekatit 1966, according to the Ethiopian calendar). The author dwells on the introduction to the Ethiopian writing on a large scale of other languages besides Amharic, and ’to the very Amharic the introduction of terminology from marxism leninism, modern science and technology, often loaned from foreign languages or created, according to foreign patterns, on the base of the Amharic language substance. find
The discussed textbook includes footnotes (pp. 254-260) which, due to their content, can also serve as a selected bibliography of the subject. It appears that chapters 6-8', which discuss the history and the situation of Amharic literature after 1941» that is after the end of Italian-Ethiopian war, and also the modern Ethiopian literature, possess the most cognitive value for non-Ethiopian literary scholars. These chapters include bio graphical information and facts which can rarely be found in other, not numerous, surveys of the subject. It mainly con cerns the last quarter of the century, and particularly the period after the 1974 revolution. The quotations from, often not published elsewhere, literary works increase the value of these chapters. Amsalu Aklilu work, pioneering on the Ethiopian ground and in many aspects in the foreign studies on Ethiopia as well, will undoubtedly take due place in the history of the studies on Ethiopian writing and literature. It is also a wide-spread popularization in other poligraphic forms, per haps even translating into foreign languages. find

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