Chapter 28 - Mänge, Täbibär, Täybär, andAčarge

Summary

AS ALREADY IMPLIED above, when examining the accounts of the monks ofMänge, Täbibär, Täybär, and Ačargewe are faced with a unique challenge: it is not clear from the variousaccounts whether these were all different monastic centres, or whether someof these were different names for the same centre. Heintze (1929b, 76)referes to Mänge as “Mengie (Tebibor), i.e., the city of theblacksmiths.” Elsewhere, Heintze (1929a, 55) states that Mängeis “near Tebiber—the city of the smiths.” This seems toindicate that Mänge is the name of a sub-locality within a localityby the name of Täbibär, a locality which might be the same asthe similar-sounding Täybär. QesḤadanä's above-mentioned statements that he studiedunder the monks in the region of Täbibär, or, as he mentionedelsewhere, in Ačarge, seem to indicate that Ačarge is also asub-locality within Täbibär. In QesḤadanä's (2011, 126) account of the individuals whosigned an official letter pre-sented to Faitlovitch in 1908, one of theindividuals is described as being from “Acharge, Tebib Ber,”thus further strengthening this hypothesis.

Since it has yet to be conclusively proven that we are dealing exclusivelywith one monastic centre, the sources dealing with each of these place-nameswill be described separately.

Mänge

The earliest source mentioning the locality of Mänge1 isHeintze's (1929b) above-mentioned account of his 1928 missionaryjourney, which implies that Guraba was no longer a monastic centre at thetime. Heintze's statement that Betä Ǝsraʿel fromGuraba had settled down in Mänge does not mention the monksexplicitly, but it seems likely that that monks of Guraba would migrate tothe same locality as the laity of their village settled in.

Mänge does not appear in any of the maps examined. A locality by thename of “Teyber” (a possible rendering of the nameTäbibär?), appears in the ORT Census map of 1976 just north ofAčarge, which in turn appears on this map north of the Azäzoto Č̣əlga road, in the general vicinity of Azäzo(map 20.1). Heintze (1929b, 75–76) mentions that, when travellingfrom Guraba to Mänge, he and his entourage visitedČ̣änkäl, a local-ity which can be identifiedwith Č̣änkäla, ca. 8 km east-northeast ofG^wang Ras. He then proceeded along the banks of a river bythe name of Lud and reached Mänge.