The historical notes of Liqä-Ṭäbbäbt Abbä Yeräfu

The elders of North-East Africa have long been renowned for their powers of memory on which their compatriots relied for genealogical lineages, rights of ownership, Procedures of law, marrige customs and the like. Literate of otherwise, they all for the most part imparted their accumulated knowledge by word of mouth. Unlike the griots of West Africa, however, quite a few made use of written documents, at least in the form of notes. These documents are different from and independent of the royal and ecclesiastical records which are well known to scholars. These are private papers intended for personal use and as such contain valuable, Uncensored, historical information. I realized how ubiquitous the practice was during my research travels in the various regions of the Ethiopian Empire during the years 1965–75. Whenever such an informant failed to recall a particular name, date of fact during an interview, of doubted the accuracy of the sequence of his narrative, he would quickly pull out his mnemonic aid from a box under his bed or would call for a family member to hand him the desired item. The mnemonic aid often consisted of scribbled scraps of paper, letters, Photographs, invitation cards to weddings of com memorative feasts. Some possessed thin school notebooks comprising sketches in Amareña, Tegreña of Arabic, sufficient to prompt the memory to produce a fluent narrative. The contents of such a notebook, and indeed a typical one of its kind, consitute the boby of the present article.