Chapter 20 - Tracing the Development of Monastic Communities in Dämbəyaand Säqqält

Summary

GONDÄR, AS THE main urban centre at the heart of the area inhabited bythe Betä Ǝsraʾel, naturally became the headquarters formany researchers and activists seeking to work with or study this community.As a result, the Betä Ǝsraʾel villages in the vicinityof this town (including those in Dämbəya andSäqqält) are typically better known and documented than thosemore distant from it. Though the first Westerner to publish an account ofBetä Ǝsraʾel monasticism was d’Abbadie, thedetailed documentation of infor-mation regarding BetäƎsraʾel monks and monastic centres began with the publicationsof the London Society. The main base for the activities of this society inEthiopia, from the foundation of its Ethiopian mission in 1860 to 1940, wasthe missionary station in Ğända, at the heart of the region ofDämbəya. The activities of the missionaries (and hence, theirwritten accounts) were, naturally, focused on the BetäƎsraʾel residing rela-tively near these headquarters (Payne1972, 38–79).

Dämbəya and Säqqält were also a focal point ofthe activity of Jewish emissaries to the Betä Ǝsraʾel,beginning with Faitlovitch, who spent a considerable amount of time in thevillage of Amba G^walit in Dembya, and met with the monks of thenearby monastic cen-tre of Guraba. The prestigious Baroḵ priestlyfamily, descendants of the former mälokse(monk)Abba Baroḵ Adhənän of AmbaG^walit, as well as Qes ḤadanäTəkuyä of Guraba, published detailed accounts of some of thisregion's monks and monastic centres.

The resultant wealth of sources on this region's monastic centres inthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries enables us to trace the developmentof Betä Ǝsraʾel monastic centres over time and inunprecedented detail and bring to light phenomena such as relativelyfrequent shifts in the location of the region's monastic leadership.In this endeavour, we must distinguish between BetäƎsraʾel holy sites associated with religious communities, suchas G^wang Ras, Gǝğen, and Mǝdraro, whichcontinuously served as places of pilgrimage and retained their importance inthe eyes of the Betä Ǝsraʾel, and monastic centreswhich were not located at holy sites (map 20.1). The latter, as we will see,derived their prestige from that of the monastic holy men living in them,and once abandoned, were not necessarily resettled, and did not serve aspilgrimage sites.