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Where is the current conflict covered? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66496137 Hcobb ( talk) 17:43, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
The page of the Amhara people is constantly being violated by specific agenda of a user, Socialwave597. He used to had an Arabic user name and now he changed it to English. He deleted various informations from the page - Including Amhara relationships to the Aksum empire. And he is editing stuff based on his own agenda. Nobody is stopping him. He writing stuff which don’t even mentioned in the source, and deleted other information from other sources which doesn’t soothe his narrative. For example he wrote that it is “believe that the Christianisation of Amharas begin in the Late Aksum empire period”. Believed by who? And that is just a single example. How come no one is stoping him and letting him do as he wish? 2A00:A041:E19A:2600:DDE7:776D:809B:6138 ( talk) 21:00, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Hello, @ Socialwave597. Taddesse Tamart was talking about the Agaw in Wag and Lasta. Here is what he wrote about Amhara; “Amhara troops of Tigre ancestry” meaning that according to Taddesse Tamart (which he himself mentioned) Amhara originated from Axum (what is now Tigray/Tigre). This disproves your claim. Please read carefully his works. Javext ( talk) 11:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm responding to this request from Javext for a third opinion. I've been slow to respond since I wanted to do some research first, & apologize if this inconvenienced anyone. Further, I feel it is only fair to all parties that I mention the rules about edit warring. It would be a loss to Wikipedia were an edit war to leave this article in wrong version. It appears that this disagreement is primarily over the conversion of the Amhara people to Christianity; it is this point I offer my opinion.
First, it needs to be emphasized that the question about the conversion of the Amhara falls in a dark period of Ethiopian history: the years between the end of the Aksum kingdom & the foundation of the Zagwe dynasty are poorly documented. There is a single inscription, some mentions in the histories of the Coptic/Egyptian church, & mentions by contemporary Muslim writers. (The lists of rulers & Abbas/Metropolitans is not trusted by many historians.) So the archeological record -- the study of man-made things -- is important here.
Next, the work of Dr. Taddesse Tamrat has been cited often in this discussion, unfortunately from his doctoral thesis not his published book. There are significant differences between the two, most importantly that he acknowledges that he had additional input that went into his published book from such luminaries as Richard Pankhurst & Stanislaw Chojnacki. The drawback is that Dr. Taddesse's published book is out of print, while his doctoral thesis is available online. (Fortunately thru the School of African Studies, & the British Library website which went offline due to hackers.) Despite this limitation, I will be citing Dr. Taddesse's published book here.
Socialwave597 believes that Dr. Taddesse "without any doubt says that Amhara was Christianized during the reign of Degna Djan". I have not read his thesis in full, but from my understanding of his published work he was at least ambivalent about when the Amhara were converted. He does not explicitly raise the issue when the Amhara were converted, but can assume he believed they were converted at the same time as the inhabitants of Tigray were -- or that they were concerted later. Perhaps his opinion was mixed because it is part of Amhara identity that they can trace their roots to the kingdom of Aksum, the earliest African kingdom to accept Christianity, & Christianity is an important part of defining who the Amhara are. In his book at one point he admits "Traditional material on the Amhara is lacking and it is impossible here to give any specific dates for their origin." (p. 37) Nevertheless he states further on in his book
The Amhara had long been the advance guard of Christian expansion in the south. We have already referred to an early Muslim tradition of the armed conflict between them and the Warjih pastoralists in the Shawan region, in A.D. 1128. There are traditions of a slow movement of isolated Christian families from Amhara to the region of the Shawan plateau. A military expedition by a Zagwe monarch into the "kingdom of Damot" is also referred to elsewhere.
— pp. 64f
So is there any evidence suggesting that the Amhara did convert at an earlier time then, say the beginning of the Zagwe dynasty?
First we need to define what is meant by "Amhara people". Are we talking about a people who are related somehow to the Tigrayan people, or about a people who live in the Amhara area, the Bet Amhara, & came to speak the Amhara language & profess Christianity? That is an issue I don't know if you have or can agree about, but for simplicity I'm assuming it refers to the people who live in that area & speak the language as well as profess Christianity. If either of you disagree, then I guess what I'm about to say will not be of value. But if we agree to that, then archeological evidence can help because we can then turn to the study of the ancient churches of Ethiopia.
These ancient churches show in many ways demonstrate a continuation of traditions rooted in the kingdom of Aksum, such as a basilica floor plan, & a form of construction known as "monkey-head". Many ancient churches with these features are found in the Tigray Region, which is where Christianity first entered the Horn of Africa; those to the south of Tigray would then be considered influenced by Aksumite Christianity. And there are several. (I'm excluding here the famous churches of Lalibela, since many experts believe these were secular structures later converted to churches.) The best known of these are Yemrehanna Krestos, Kankart Mika'el, & Bilbola Tcherqos. Now these have been dated to that dark period between the kingdom of Aksum & the Zagwe dynasty by David Phillipson in his Ancient Churches of Ethiopia (2007): Kankart Mika'el (which he calls the oldest such church in Amhara) to between AD 800 & AD 1000, Bilbola Tcherqos to between 900 & 1025, & Yemrehanna Krestos to between 1025 & 1150) (p. 190). This archeological evidence supports Dr. Taddesse's statement about the Amhara being the advance guard for the southern advance of Christianity.
So it would appear that the expert consensus is that the Amhara converted either around the same time as their northern neighbors, or within a few generations after. Conversion was a slow process: according to Dr Taddesse, Christianity was limited to the royal court & other major population centers along the road linking Aksum & Adulis (p. 23); it wasn't until the advent of the Nine Saints towards the end of the 5th century that Christianity spread into the countryside. (Dr. Taddesse dates this to the late 5th century, while I've seen other authorities who date this a little later, to the 6th century; as Dr. Taddesse commented the evidence for this period is limited.) We do have evidence that despite having gone into a decline after AD 600, the Aksum kingdom had still some importance as late as AD 770, when Arab writers tell of Aksumite naval battles in the Red Sea (Taddesse, p. 32).
I'd like to comment on a few more points raised in this discussion. One is that, according to my understanding of the Galla of saint Tekle Haymanot, that his ancestors who were asked by king Digna Jan to go south and evangelize were living in Amhara & proceeded to Shewa. (Tekle Haymanot was born in Silalish, between the Jamma & Mugar rivers, which I believe is south of Bet Amhara.) But I could be wrong. Another is about the use of glottochronology concerning Ge'ez, Tigray & Amhara. I had always believed from my reading that the three languages had a similar relationship to each other as Latin, Spanish & Portuguese respectively. I was surprised to read from the article Socialwave cited that Ge'ez was considered a sister language to the two, & that the split between Tigrayan & Amharic was dated to 850 BC. (The table in the article should not be read as "2800 BC", but "2800 Before Present"; Before Present is measured back from AD 1950, which calculates to 850 BC.) This is the first source I've seen that promotes such a view. Now I happen to know that the results of glottochronology are at best controversial -- please see the Wikipedia article -- so unless other authorities independent of glottochronology confirm such an early date, I wouldn't rely on that source overmuch. Perhaps not more than in a footnote noting this dissenting POV.
I must thank anyone who has read this far in my essay. I wrote more than I had planned to on this subject. -- llywrch ( talk) 23:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
The
contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to the
Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), which has been
designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
This is the
talk page for discussing
Amhara people and anything related to its purposes and tasks. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Page views of this article over the last 180 days:
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Where is the current conflict covered? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66496137 Hcobb ( talk) 17:43, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
The page of the Amhara people is constantly being violated by specific agenda of a user, Socialwave597. He used to had an Arabic user name and now he changed it to English. He deleted various informations from the page - Including Amhara relationships to the Aksum empire. And he is editing stuff based on his own agenda. Nobody is stopping him. He writing stuff which don’t even mentioned in the source, and deleted other information from other sources which doesn’t soothe his narrative. For example he wrote that it is “believe that the Christianisation of Amharas begin in the Late Aksum empire period”. Believed by who? And that is just a single example. How come no one is stoping him and letting him do as he wish? 2A00:A041:E19A:2600:DDE7:776D:809B:6138 ( talk) 21:00, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Hello, @ Socialwave597. Taddesse Tamart was talking about the Agaw in Wag and Lasta. Here is what he wrote about Amhara; “Amhara troops of Tigre ancestry” meaning that according to Taddesse Tamart (which he himself mentioned) Amhara originated from Axum (what is now Tigray/Tigre). This disproves your claim. Please read carefully his works. Javext ( talk) 11:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm responding to this request from Javext for a third opinion. I've been slow to respond since I wanted to do some research first, & apologize if this inconvenienced anyone. Further, I feel it is only fair to all parties that I mention the rules about edit warring. It would be a loss to Wikipedia were an edit war to leave this article in wrong version. It appears that this disagreement is primarily over the conversion of the Amhara people to Christianity; it is this point I offer my opinion.
First, it needs to be emphasized that the question about the conversion of the Amhara falls in a dark period of Ethiopian history: the years between the end of the Aksum kingdom & the foundation of the Zagwe dynasty are poorly documented. There is a single inscription, some mentions in the histories of the Coptic/Egyptian church, & mentions by contemporary Muslim writers. (The lists of rulers & Abbas/Metropolitans is not trusted by many historians.) So the archeological record -- the study of man-made things -- is important here.
Next, the work of Dr. Taddesse Tamrat has been cited often in this discussion, unfortunately from his doctoral thesis not his published book. There are significant differences between the two, most importantly that he acknowledges that he had additional input that went into his published book from such luminaries as Richard Pankhurst & Stanislaw Chojnacki. The drawback is that Dr. Taddesse's published book is out of print, while his doctoral thesis is available online. (Fortunately thru the School of African Studies, & the British Library website which went offline due to hackers.) Despite this limitation, I will be citing Dr. Taddesse's published book here.
Socialwave597 believes that Dr. Taddesse "without any doubt says that Amhara was Christianized during the reign of Degna Djan". I have not read his thesis in full, but from my understanding of his published work he was at least ambivalent about when the Amhara were converted. He does not explicitly raise the issue when the Amhara were converted, but can assume he believed they were converted at the same time as the inhabitants of Tigray were -- or that they were concerted later. Perhaps his opinion was mixed because it is part of Amhara identity that they can trace their roots to the kingdom of Aksum, the earliest African kingdom to accept Christianity, & Christianity is an important part of defining who the Amhara are. In his book at one point he admits "Traditional material on the Amhara is lacking and it is impossible here to give any specific dates for their origin." (p. 37) Nevertheless he states further on in his book
The Amhara had long been the advance guard of Christian expansion in the south. We have already referred to an early Muslim tradition of the armed conflict between them and the Warjih pastoralists in the Shawan region, in A.D. 1128. There are traditions of a slow movement of isolated Christian families from Amhara to the region of the Shawan plateau. A military expedition by a Zagwe monarch into the "kingdom of Damot" is also referred to elsewhere.
— pp. 64f
So is there any evidence suggesting that the Amhara did convert at an earlier time then, say the beginning of the Zagwe dynasty?
First we need to define what is meant by "Amhara people". Are we talking about a people who are related somehow to the Tigrayan people, or about a people who live in the Amhara area, the Bet Amhara, & came to speak the Amhara language & profess Christianity? That is an issue I don't know if you have or can agree about, but for simplicity I'm assuming it refers to the people who live in that area & speak the language as well as profess Christianity. If either of you disagree, then I guess what I'm about to say will not be of value. But if we agree to that, then archeological evidence can help because we can then turn to the study of the ancient churches of Ethiopia.
These ancient churches show in many ways demonstrate a continuation of traditions rooted in the kingdom of Aksum, such as a basilica floor plan, & a form of construction known as "monkey-head". Many ancient churches with these features are found in the Tigray Region, which is where Christianity first entered the Horn of Africa; those to the south of Tigray would then be considered influenced by Aksumite Christianity. And there are several. (I'm excluding here the famous churches of Lalibela, since many experts believe these were secular structures later converted to churches.) The best known of these are Yemrehanna Krestos, Kankart Mika'el, & Bilbola Tcherqos. Now these have been dated to that dark period between the kingdom of Aksum & the Zagwe dynasty by David Phillipson in his Ancient Churches of Ethiopia (2007): Kankart Mika'el (which he calls the oldest such church in Amhara) to between AD 800 & AD 1000, Bilbola Tcherqos to between 900 & 1025, & Yemrehanna Krestos to between 1025 & 1150) (p. 190). This archeological evidence supports Dr. Taddesse's statement about the Amhara being the advance guard for the southern advance of Christianity.
So it would appear that the expert consensus is that the Amhara converted either around the same time as their northern neighbors, or within a few generations after. Conversion was a slow process: according to Dr Taddesse, Christianity was limited to the royal court & other major population centers along the road linking Aksum & Adulis (p. 23); it wasn't until the advent of the Nine Saints towards the end of the 5th century that Christianity spread into the countryside. (Dr. Taddesse dates this to the late 5th century, while I've seen other authorities who date this a little later, to the 6th century; as Dr. Taddesse commented the evidence for this period is limited.) We do have evidence that despite having gone into a decline after AD 600, the Aksum kingdom had still some importance as late as AD 770, when Arab writers tell of Aksumite naval battles in the Red Sea (Taddesse, p. 32).
I'd like to comment on a few more points raised in this discussion. One is that, according to my understanding of the Galla of saint Tekle Haymanot, that his ancestors who were asked by king Digna Jan to go south and evangelize were living in Amhara & proceeded to Shewa. (Tekle Haymanot was born in Silalish, between the Jamma & Mugar rivers, which I believe is south of Bet Amhara.) But I could be wrong. Another is about the use of glottochronology concerning Ge'ez, Tigray & Amhara. I had always believed from my reading that the three languages had a similar relationship to each other as Latin, Spanish & Portuguese respectively. I was surprised to read from the article Socialwave cited that Ge'ez was considered a sister language to the two, & that the split between Tigrayan & Amharic was dated to 850 BC. (The table in the article should not be read as "2800 BC", but "2800 Before Present"; Before Present is measured back from AD 1950, which calculates to 850 BC.) This is the first source I've seen that promotes such a view. Now I happen to know that the results of glottochronology are at best controversial -- please see the Wikipedia article -- so unless other authorities independent of glottochronology confirm such an early date, I wouldn't rely on that source overmuch. Perhaps not more than in a footnote noting this dissenting POV.
I must thank anyone who has read this far in my essay. I wrote more than I had planned to on this subject. -- llywrch ( talk) 23:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)