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Two Amharic letters by the Falasha leader Tamrat Emanuel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Edward Ullendorff
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Extract

The two letters which form the subject of this short paper have come into my possession as part of the Amharic documents left by the noted Orientalist Eugen Mittwoch (1876–1942) and generously passed on to me by his widow (since deceased) and his daughters (who now occupy senior academic posts at University College, London, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, respectively).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 118 , Issue 2 , April 1986 , pp. 191 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1986

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References

NOTES

1 Earlier instalments of this material were published as follows: BSOAS 1971/1; BSOAS 1972/2; BSOAS 1980/3.

2 Cf. inter alia the present writer's “Hebraic-Jewish Elements in Abyssinian (monophysite) Christianity”, JSS I, 3 (1956), pp. 216–56;Google Scholar“The ‘Death of Moses’ in the literature of the Falashas”, BSOAS 1961/1963Google Scholar = Studies in Semitic Languages and Civilizations, Wiesbaden 1977, pp. 241–65Google Scholar (a paper read to the Congress of Jewish Studies at Jerusalem, 1961);Google ScholarEthiopia and the Bible, The British Academy and O.U.P., 1968.Google Scholar

3 As to this last point, I was rather taken with a passage in Peter Reddaway's fine obituary of Schapiro, L. B. (Proceedings of the British Academy, LXX, for 1984, London 1985, p. 530)Google Scholar which refers to a short article (no bibliographical details given) by Schapiro entitled “Who is a Jew?”. S. likened this problem to St. Augustine's discussion of the nature of time: “If no-one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to one that asketh, I know not”.

4 See footnote 11 to the second letter above.

5 Grinfeld's article is written in Hebrew (as has already been mentioned) and the names appear in Hebrew characters.

6 The virtual founder (after his teacher J. Halévy) of Falasha studies, lived 1881–1955, travelled extensively in Ethiopia and founded pro-Falasha committees in various countries. See the valuable articles on Faitlovitch and on the Falashas by M. Wurmbrand in the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Though I met F. both before and after the Second World War, I saw a good deal more of him and his activities in situ among the Falashas shortly after the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941. F. left his fine library to the city of Tel Aviv; it is now part of Tel Aviv University Library under the curatorship of Mr. I. Grinfeld.

7 Faitlovitch, , Quer dutch Abessinien, Berlin 1910, p. 68.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Ullendorff, in Ethiopian Studies dedicated to Wolf Leslau, 1983, pp. 351–54.Google Scholar

9 A possible reason for staying away from other Ethiopian refugees at that time may have been T.E.'s long-standing closeness to Italians and Italian culture and his attachment to the Carlo Alberto Viterbo mission in 1936–7, on behalf of the Italian Jewish Community, which visited the Gondar region under Italian occupation (cf. Grinfeld, , op. cit., pp. 61, 68)Google Scholar.

10 It is, incidentally, of some interest that T.E. lived in the Ethiopan Consulate (many thought erroneously that he was the Ethiopan Consul), on funds generously supplied by the Ethiopian Royal Family, and never attempted to integrate in the life of Israel! (see also Grinfeld, p. 64).