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An Armenian Involvement in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Ethiopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2019

David W. Phillipson
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Abstract:

Two Armenian ecclesiastics from Jerusalem, Isaac and Dimothéos, visited Abyssinia in 1867–1869. The latter’s detailed account of their journey was promptly published, grandiloquently dedicated (with formal permission) to Queen Victoria. The journey has nonetheless received little attention from historians, and the reasons it was made have been poorly understood. An intention to seek release of Europeans imprisoned by King Tewodros (Theodore) of Ethiopia was overtaken by events, the captives’ release being achieved by an expedition from British India before the Armenians arrived. Emphasis was consequently placed on involvement with local politics and ecclesiastical intrigue, both of which are discussed in this paper.

Résumé:

Deux ecclésiastiques arméniens de Jérusalem, Isaac et Dimothéos, ont visité l’Abyssinie entre 1867 et 1869. Le récit détaillé de leur voyage écrit par Dimothéos fut rapidement publié et grandiloquemment dédié à la reine Victoria (avec une permission formelle). Le voyage a néanmoins peu retenu l’attention des historiens et les raisons pour celui-ci ont été mal comprises. Leur première intention était de demander la libération d’Européens emprisonnés par le roi d’Éthiopie Tewodros (Théodore). Celle-ci est devenue cependant caduque après la libération des captifs par une expédition d’Inde britannique. Cet article se penche ensuite sur le rôle joué par ces deux Arméniens dans la politique locale et les intrigues ecclésiastiques.

Information

Type
Journeys and Sources
Information
History in Africa , Volume 46 , June 2019, pp. 137 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2019 

Introduction

This short article arises from perusal of a rare book, Deux ans de séjour en Abyssinie, par le R.P. Dimothéos, Légat de Sa Béatitude le Patriarche arménien auprès de Théodore Roi d’Abyssinie, published in 1871 by the Armenian Press at Saint James’s Monastery in Jerusalem.Footnote 1 The journey described was undertaken by Dimothéos and a higher-ranking compatriot, Isaac, described interchangeably as bishop or archbishop.Footnote 2 On the engraved frontispiece, their portraits are labelled “P. Timothée” and “Isaac, Evêque” respectively.

A feature of the book, to which I am not aware of previously published references, is its prominent and grandiloquent dedication to Queen Victoria, whose Royal Arms feature on the engraved title-page. This dedication, by Isaiah (Isaïe), Armenian Patriarch in Jerusalem, is supported by several translated letters demonstrating that relevant permission had been requested through the Foreign Office in London, and formally granted.Footnote 3

Bibliographic Evaluation of the Principal Source

The book’s entire text is in French, the title-page indicating that it was translated (presumably from an Armenian original) “by order of His Beatitude Isaiah, Armenian Patriarch in Jerusalem.”Footnote 4 The French seems competent but sometimes stilted and convoluted, perhaps following rather too closely the syntax of the original.Footnote 5 Confusion, as noted above, is apparent between the titles Bishop and Archbishop. Contemporary international practice designating the British government as English is often followed. Personal names and toponyms, presumably originally recorded in Armenian and then transliterated into French, take unfamiliar forms (e.g., “Vagchem-Govazi” for Wagshum Gobezie, “Thègri” for Tigray). Dates are stated with disappointing infrequency and lack of clarity, due to use of both Armenian and Western calendars further exacerbated by imprecision and occasional mis-prints.

Apart from recent facsimile reprints of the 1871 French-language edition, the only other publication of which I am aware is a German translation, issued in Leipzig in 1888.Footnote 6 The German edition sometimes appears in library catalogues under Timoteos or Saprichean: this last was the author’s family name, such as was not then regularly employed by members of the Armenian priesthood.Footnote 7

The book’s opening paragraphs include the no-longer-valid statement that “Readers already know the prime aim of our journey to Abyssinia,” and proceed to discussion of the British envoys and other Europeans held prisoner until two years previously by the Abyssinian king Tewodros (Theodore) at his mountain fortress of Maqdala.Footnote 8 It is noted that “The English government did not fail to do everything possible by peaceful means to secure the freedom of the prisoners.”

Background

The possibility that the Armenian patriarch in Jerusalem might prove able to influence Tewodros had apparently been brought to the attention of Lord Lyons, British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, 1865–1867.Footnote 9 A similar suggestion, apparently derived from an Armenian source, was relayed to London in December 1866 by the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg.Footnote 10 The nature of this possible involvement remains unclear, although it was mentioned that the Abyssinians in Jerusalem came “under the jurisdiction of the Armenian Patriarch.”Footnote 11 The claim seems to have been based on the fact that the Abyssinians in Jerusalem “were heavily dependent on the Armenian patriarchate which (…) is said to have provided its African co-religionists with daily rations of food since around 1700.”Footnote 12

Although Dimothéos’s book contains no explicit statement to that effect, there seems little doubt that the initial focus of the two Armenians’ journey to Abyssinia was to seek the release of the British envoys and other Europeans held captive at Maqdala by King Tewodros, and that it was made with at least tacit connivence from the British government. In turn, it appears that the Armenian Patriarch in Jerusalem sought British support for his claimed authority over the Abyssinian monastic community at the Holy Sepulchre. On a different level was the desire to exploit Abyssinian dissatisfaction with their reliance on the Coptic Alexandrian (but Cairo-based) patriarchate for the appointment of an abuna as head of their own church.Footnote 13

Assessment of the Journey

Scholarly attention to Dimothéos’s book, at least in recent years, has been largely restricted to its mention of the two Armenians’ visit to Aksum on their return journey in 1869 when, through the good offices of Dejazmatch Kassa (the future King Yohannes IV) and “le colonel Anglais Ser Kerkham,” they prevailed upon priests of Maryam Tsion to show them the Mosaic Tablets of the Law.Footnote 14 Passing references by Sven Rubenson relate to incidental details in the narrative.Footnote 15 The brief note on Dimothéos in the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica is confusingly alphabetized under “Sapricean, Timoteos Vardapet.”Footnote 16

What may be the only Ethiopian document mentioning the Armenians’ presence in that country is an Amharic letter (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) written late in 1868 by dabtera Assaggahen to Antoine d’Abbadie.Footnote 17 This records the writer’s meeting during the closing months of 1868 with an Armenian who claimed to be a bishop brought to Abyssinia by Tewodros, on an occasion that seems compatible with the contemporary situation described by Dimothéos.Footnote 18

Armenians were on several occasions engaged by Ethiopians in political and ecclesiastical contexts.Footnote 19 The trust placed on them may be due to their supposed independence from internal partisan pressures and to their adherence to an ancient non-Chalcedonian form of Christianity that was neither Ethiopian nor Coptic. This last point was particularly relevant to the uncertainties surrounding the appointment of an abuna. Trust in Armenian intermediaries may primarily be recognized in two areas. Ethiopian rulers from at least the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries had employed Armenian overseas emissaries.Footnote 20 In the 1830s, Sebagadis and his successor rulers of Tigray had involved an Armenian in a mission to urge the Coptic patriarch to appoint an abuna; again, in February 1868, Terso Gobezie (a rebel against Tewodros in Begemdir) threatened to offer the post of abuna to the Armenian Isaac, perhaps in the hope that this might expedite appointment of a Copt to that position.Footnote 21 Since a valid coronation could only be performed by an undisputed abuna, the presence and loyalty of such a functionary was indispensible to any regal contender.Footnote 22 Additional commissions were not infrequently linked with the difficulty and expense encountered when requesting a replacement for a deceased abuna and with dissatisfaction over an abuna who took office, often after a long and inconvenient period when the seat was vacant.

This background permits the visit to Abyssinia by Isaac and Dimothéos to be viewed with an expanded perspective. Salama, appointed abuna by the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, had arrived in Ethiopia to fill a long-vacant position in 1841.Footnote 23 After a difficult period of political turmoil, he crowned Dejazmatch Kasa Haylu as King of Kings Tewodros in 1855. Amity was, however, short-lived: Tewodros imprisoned Salama in 1864 at Maqdala, where he died in October 1867.Footnote 24 Tewodros’s own suicide some five months later intensified a jostling over succession to the paramountcy that was already festering. In officiating at the coronation, Salama had in effect ratified Tewodros in that position, but there was now no abuna to provide a similar service for his successor. Isaac and Dimothéos, overtaken by events in their aim to secure the Maqdala prisoners’ release, immediately transferred to Wagshum Gobezie (who, as ruler of Lasta, then appeared the most likely contender to succeed Tewodros) their efforts to press Isaac’s candidature.Footnote 25 Isaac flaunted his archepiscopal robes before an Abyssinian audience, when their grandeur was compared with those of Salama, to the latter’s disadvantage.Footnote 26

Conclusion

In retrospect, the Armenians’ visit to Ethiopia achieved little. Their late arrival and lack of access to TewodrosFootnote 27 meant that they took no part in the release of the prisoners. The appointment of an abuna following Salama’s death was made in the time-honored way, following nomination by the Alexandrian Patriarch. In Jerusalem, the relationship between the Armenian and Ethiopian communities remained essentially unchanged. Some of these threads are reflected in a letter dated 13 June 1869 sent from Adwa on the homeward journey by “Isaac, Archbishop of Jerusalem” to the British Consul-General in Cairo, expressing thanks for the (unspecified) support of “Her Glorious Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain.”Footnote 28 In the event, it seems that no more lasting benefit accrued to Her Glorious Majesty than to any of the other parties involved.

It may be concluded that several factors combined to support the visit to Ethiopia by Isaac and Dimothéos. Some were of long standing, but their emphasis fluctuated with the rapidly changing circumstances surrounding the reign and fall of Tewodros. Within Ethiopia, affairs of church and state were almost inextricably intertwined but, in both fields and in their inter-relationship, the complexities changed with bewildering rapidity. The Armenian presence introduced a new factor, not previously appreciated.

This brief and incomplete study serves to emphasize the importance of considering the intentions of those responsible for the creation of written records. I have already emphasized this point in connection with Aksumite stone inscriptions of the fourth century AD.Footnote 29 Widely but not invariably recognized, it is even more relevant when a document, like Dimothéos’s book, has many layers of intention and meaning, only some of which have been recognized by readers, and not all of which may have been appreciated by its author.

David W. Phillipson is an Africanist archaeologist who retired in 2006 from the University of Cambridge where he had been for twenty-five years Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, latterly serving concurrently as Professor of African Archaeology. For the first fifteen years of his professional career he was employed in Africa, first in Zambia and then in Kenya. In Britain, he has been President of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and also Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. His research interests focus on later African archaeology, with a recent emphasis on Ethiopia. E-mail:

Footnotes

1 It was issued in two separately-paginated octavo volumes, now usually bound together. The first volume contains a fine engraved frontispiece and title-page on thick paper distinct from that employed for the rest of the book, each signed “Stich u. Druck v. Weger, Leipzig.” This indicates the work of August Weger (1823–1892), graphic artist, steel-engraver, and printer.

2 For an overview and assessment of the journey, written more from an Armenian and Ottoman perspective than from an Ethiopian one, and concentrating on religious matters, see: James de Lorenzi, “Caught in the Storm of Progress: Timoteos Saprichean, Ethiopia, and the Modernity of Christianity,” Journal of World History 19–1 (2008), 89–114.

3 Le Rév. Père Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour en Abyssinie, ou vie morale, politique et religieuse des Abyssins, volume 1 (Jérusalem: Typographie Arménienne du Couvent de Saint-Jacques, 1871), 170–177.

4 An Armenian text is cited by Pankhurst (1978/1979, 290–291), but I have not been able to locate a copy. Richard Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations,” Revue des Études Arméniennes 12 (1977), 273–345, 13 (1978/1979), 259–312, and 15 (1981), 355–400, here 13 (1978/1979), 290–291.

5 All English translations cited here are my own, based on the French.

6 Timoteos Saprichean, Zwei Jahre in Abyssinien: oder Schilderung der Sitten und des staatlichen und religiösen Lebens der Abyssinier, von Sr Hochgw. Pater Timotheos, Legat Sr Eminenz der Armenischen Patriarchen bei König Theodor von Abyssinien (Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1888). The French-language version has clear priority and is the basis for all page-references cited in the present paper.

7 Confusingly, de Lorenzi, “Caught in the Storm of Progress” likewise incorrectly cites Dimothéos’s 1871 French-language edition under Timoteos or Saprichian.

8 Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour, volume 1, 1–4.

9 Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1978],” 287–291, citing: “Correspondence Respecting Abyssinia 1846–68,” United Kingdom Parliamentary Papers 72 (1867–1868), 33–2 (London: HMSO, 1868), 542, 553. Note that Pankhurst (on page 282) mistakenly attributes the latter publication to the House of Commons: it was in fact laid before the House of Lords.

10 Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1978],” 287–290.

11 Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1978],” 287–290.

12 Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1977],” 345 citing “Correspondence Respecting Abyssinians at Jerusalem 1850–67,” United Kingdom Parliamentary Papers 72 (1867–1868), 33–1 (London: HMSO, 1868), 17. For relations between the Armenian and Ethiopian communities in Jerusalem, see also: Otto Meinardus, “The Ethiopians in Jerusalem,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte Serie 4, 14 (1965), 112–147, 217–232; Kirsten Pedersen, “The Qeddusan: Ethiopian Christians in the Holy Land,” in: Anthony O’Mahoney (ed.), The Christian Heritage of the Holy Land (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), 129–159.

13 Donald Crummey, Priests and Politicians: Protestant and Catholic Missions in Orthodox Ethiopia 1830–1868 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 26; Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1978],” 275–278. Abuna indicates the head of the Ethiopian Church: for the word, see: Denis Nosnitsin, “Abuna,” in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, volume 1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), 56; for the history of the office, see: Otto Meinardus, “A Brief History of the Abunate of Ethiopia,” Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenländes 58 (1962), 39–65. See also: John Binns, The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia: A History (London: Tauris, 2016).

14 Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour, volume 1, 135–144; Ugo Monneret de Villard, Aksum: richerche di topografia generale (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1938), 115–116; Jean-Baptiste Coulbeaux, Histoire politique et religieuse de l’Abyssinie depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à l’avènement de Ménélik II, volume 2 (Paris: Geuthner, 1929), 462–463; Roderick Grierson and Stuart Munro-Hay, The Ark of the Covenant (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), 288–292. “Ser Kerkham” must be John Charles Kirkham, whose claim to a knighthood is not otherwise recorded, and whose rank of Colonel is known only in Tigray tradition. Zewde Gabre-Sellassie, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia: A Political Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 281; Richard Pankhurst, “Kirkham, John Charles,” in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, volume 3 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), 409. For tabot, see: Marilyn Heldman, “Tabot,” in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, volume 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 802–804.

15 E.g. Sven Rubenson, The Survival of Ethiopian Independence (London: Heinemann, 1976), 271–274.

16 Marie-Luise Kreuter, “Sapricean, Timotheos Vardapet,” in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, volume 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 534. As noted above, “Sapricean” is the family name not usually used by members of the Armenian priesthood, “Vardapet” being a title accorded to a scholarly or learned priest.

17 Sven Rubenson (ed.), Tewodros and his Contemporaries 1855–1868 (Lund/Addis Ababa: Lund University Press/Addis Ababa University Press, 1994), document 249. I am grateful to Professor Samuel Rubenson for bringing this letter to my attention. For Assaggahen, see: Amsalu Aklilu, “Assaggakan,” in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, volume 1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), 386.

18 Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour, volume 1, 74, 80–82, 91. The date given as 1858 on page 74 must be an error for 1868.

19 Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1977–1981].”

20 Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1977],” 273–275.

21 Crummey, Priests and Politicians, 26; Rubenson, The Survival of Ethiopian Independence, 66; Pankhurst, “The History of Ethiopian-Armenian Relations [1977],” 275–278.

22 Sven Rubenson, King of Kings Tewodros of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: Haile Sellassie I University/Oxford University Press, 1966), 47–48.

23 Crummey, Priests and Politicians, 85–91; Donald Crummey and Getatchew Haile, “Abuna Salama, Metropolitan of Ethiopia 1841–1867: A New Ge'ez Biography,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 37–1 (2004), 5–40; Donald Crummey, “Salama,” in: Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, volume 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 489–490.

24 Crummey, “Salama.”

25 Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour, volume 1, 89–93.

26 Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour, volume 1, 72.

27 Shiferaw Bekele, “Kassa and Kassa: The State of their Historiography,” in: Taddese Beyene, Richard Pankhurst and Shiferaw Bekele (eds.), Kasa and Kasa: Papers on the Lives, Times and Images of Tewodros II and Yohannes IV (1855–1889) (Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, 1990), 289–404.

28 Dimothéos, Deux ans de séjour, volume 1, 144–145.

29 David W. Phillipson, Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn 1000 BC-AD 1300 (Woodbridge UK: Currey, 2012 [Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press, 2014]), 51–65, 91–97.

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