TY - JOUR AU - Guebreyesus, Namouna AU - Abdu, Hiruy PY - 2018/07/17 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - The Establishment of Gwǝlt and Rim Landholdings in Eighteenth-Century Gondärine Churches with a Special Focus on Ḥamärä Noḫ Śälästu Mǝʾǝt Däbr JF - Aethiopica JA - Aethiopica VL - 21 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - 10.15460/aethiopica.21.0.1021 UR - https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/view/1021 SP - 137–163 AB - <p>The Ethiopian kings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries established churches endowed with large estates. The <em>g<sup>w</sup>ǝlt</em> charter founding these estates conferred tax and jurisdictional privileges on the beneficiaries for the administration of the churches. On the land given as <em>g<sup>w</sup>ǝlt</em> , individual holdings known as <em>rim</em> were distributed to clerics. The study defines the economic and social contexts in which the foundation of both <em>g<sup>w</sup>ǝlt </em>and <em>rim</em> occurred and shows that such grants were a manifestation of the king’s prerogatives and that the creation of ecclesiastical holdings disturbed existing social status and entitlements to land. In a comprehensive analysis the study considers land documents from Gondärine churches, with an emphasis on the Golden Gospel of the church of Ḥamärä Noḫ. The commentaries of the <em>Fǝtḥa nägäśt</em>, composed in the same period as the Gondärine land documents, will serve to explain the legal framework of <em>g<sup>w</sup>ǝlt</em> and <em>rim</em> as applied in the eighteenth century in regards to customary Gondärine practices. This study of <em>g<sup>w</sup>ǝlt</em> and <em>rim</em> reveals landholding practises whereby several rights coexisted on the same land, a fundamental aspect of Ethiopian land tenure which continued until the Revolution of 1974.</p> ER -