The Administration of Ethiopian Däbr Estates in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Abstract

Royal land endowment to individuals and institutions is an old phenomenon in Ethiopia. The economic viability and profitability of large estates required that their administration be regulated. The Fətḥa Nägäśt (the Kings’ law) affirms guiding principles for donators; it was incumbent to founders of estates to define management rules without infringing on the religious power. The present article examines hundreds of seventeenth and eighteenth century legal acts (foundation documents, sales, and land transactions) collected from churches in the regions of Goğğam and Gondär.  The documents reveal the emergence of an administrative structure, whereby kings prescribed regulations for the material administration of estates borrowing the style and assignment of function from court and monastic customs. They proceeded in abidance by a seventeenth century royal decree that reaffirmed the delimitation of power between state and church. The present article discusses the organisation of officers who supervised incomes and kept landholding deeds in church domains. Some administrators were assigned to control revenues and run the treasury while others ensured the registration of charters, the transfer of deeds, and eventually judgment of conflicts.