Review

The Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews, have suffered from a negative or complete misrepresentation in the written and oral sources of pre-modern Ethiopia. The term “Jew” was deliberately chosen to stigmatize heretic groups, or any other group deviating from the normative church doctrine. Often no difference was made between Jewish groups or heretic Christians; they were marginalized and persecuted in the harshest way. The article illustrates how Jews are featured in the Ethiopian sources, the apparent patterns in this usage, and the polemic language chosen to describe these people.

During the course of a study of the manuscript tradition of the Betä Ǝsraʾel (Ethiopian Jews), the manuscript Jerusalem, National Library, Ms. Or. 87 came to light. This codex is a unique manuscript with several important elements that contribute to our knowledge of the history of the Betä Ǝsraʾel. Its by far most important feature are two short additional notes that I have come to call the Hoḫwärwa genealogy. This genealogy is the second piece of original pre-twentieth century Betä Ǝsraʾel historiography ever discovered, next to the text published by Leslau in 1946-47 as ‘A Falasha Religious Dispute.’ Taking the manuscript as a starting point, this article aims to cover topics such as the Betä Ǝsraʾel scribal tradition and aspects of their literature, their monasticism, the history of Hoḫwärwa monastery, and the history of the manuscript itself.

No abstract

Illustrated manuscripts in the Ethiopic language, as material objects that carry textual and visual information, are among the most valuable sources of data for art historians specializing in this area. This article provides a handlist of illustrated early Solomonic manuscripts housed in German libraries and museums. The contribution was created within the framework of the AHRC-DFG project Demarginalizing medieval Africa: Images, texts, and identity in early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270–1527) so our data reflects the project’s research focus on visual matter. This is the first time that the illuminations of the manuscripts included in the handlist are analysed comprehensively. We believe that the resulting work sheds new light on the history of book illustration in early Solomonic Ethiopia and hope that it will provide researchers with a valuable instrument to foster comparative research and a more integrative approach to the study of Ethiopian art.