Ethiopian Pilgrim and Monastic Presence in 14Th-16Th Century Egypt and Jerusalem

ARAM, 18-19 (2006-2007) 723-738.A. doi: O'MAHONY 10.2143/ARAM.19.0.2020750 723

‘MAKING SAFE THE HOLY WAY’ ETHIOPIAN PILGRIM AND MONASTIC PRESENCE IN 14TH-16TH CENTURY EGYPT AND JERUSALEM

ANTHONY O’MAHONY (Heythrop College, University of London)

ETHIOPIAN PILGRIM AND MONASTIC PRESENCE IN JERUSALEM AND EGYPT

The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem, from the 14th to the 16th century, was linked to other monastic and pilgrim communities formed along the pilgrimage route from their homeland to the Holy City.1 Enrico Cerulli in his monumental Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Geru- saleme2 established documentary evidence for a ‘rule’ that governed the life of the monastics and pilgrims for the following Ethiopian communities in Egypt.3 (i) Qusqam, near Dayr al Muharaq, the Ethiopian church of the apostles until the 16th century. (ii) Harah Zuwaylah, at Cairo, where the Ethiopian church, near the Coptic Church of the Virgin, was dedicated to St George by the 15th century. Later, in a document of the 16th century, the chapels of Mary Queen of Heaven and St Maria are mentioned. (iii) The Ethiopian presence in the desert of Scete, which was centred on by the 15th century, the monastery of Bahat, near the Coptic monastery of John Colobus, dedicated to the Prophet Elijah and afterwards, from the start of the 16th century, a new convent dedicated to St Mena (Dayr Abü Minä). 1 See also my other studies on the history of Ethiopian presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land: ‘Between Islam and Christendom: The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem before 1517', Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue, Vol. 2 (1996), pp 140-154; ‘The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem: Pilgrims, Politics, Diplomacy and Holy Places until 1840’, Chronos, no. 2, 1999, pp. 29-53; ‘Pilgrims, Politics and Holy Places: the Ethiopian Community in Jerusalem until ca.1650’, Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Cen- trality to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Edited by Lee I. Levine, New York, Continuum, 1999, pp. 467-481. 2 Enrico Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Rome, Collezione scientifica e documentaria a cura del Ministero dell’Africa italiana, Vol. I 1943; Vol. II, 1947. 3 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Parte II: ‘Statuti degli Etiopi in Palestina ed Egitto (dal secolo XIV ai nostri giornie), Capitolo I: Gli ordinamenti delle communitá etiopice dei Pellegrini dal secolo XIV al secolo XVI’, Vol. II, pp. 353-432.

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(iv) A small Ethiopian community presence within the famous Coptic monastery of St Antony of the Desert.

The two communities of Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah had relations with that of Jerusalem. The community of Scete was a little outside the usual pilgrim route from Ethiopia in Jerusalem; but anyway the result was that within documents cited by Cerulli its members were counted as part of the Qeddusan and therefore part of the Jerusalem community and had statutes the same as these of the two larger communities mentioned above. Cerulli only mentions one document making reference to Ethiopian presence at St. Antony of the Desert which comes from the 16th century. We know nothing precise about the patterns, which eventually linked the community of Jerusalem with these Ethiopian communities, than we do of Jerusalem with the Ethiopians Mt. Lebanon or on the island of Cyprus.4 However these communities were affiliated to that of Jerusalem and besides, it should be noted that in one document there is reference to the participation of pilgrims of the community of Säm (Arabic Sham), which might mean here Syria, at a meeting in Qusquam. This might indicate a well used route for pilgrims and Qeddusan who journeyed between the different Ethiopian communities along the route to and from Ethiopia and Jerusalem; and who brought news and traditions from one community to another.5

THE JURIDICAL LINKS BETWEEN THE ETHIOPIAN COMMUNITY IN JERUSALEM AND THE PILGRIMS

How were the links between the Jerusalem community and the Ethiopian communities of Egypt given concrete form? All the members of those communities, Egypt and Jerusalem, had the name of pilgrims or Naggadyan. The Pilgrims enjoyed rights assured by statutes and by custom. In communities; first amongst these, as we shall see, was the right to participate in the assembly of each of the individual communities. On their return to Ethiopia, they re-entered their respective monastic communities of origin; but, if sent to undertake ‘missions’ on account of Jerusalem or the Egyptian communities, they were treated with particular honour and enjoyed equal consideration as foreign missions. The documents give the title Naggadyan or pilgrims to the Ethiopians of Jerusalem and those of Harah Zuwaylah, Qusquam and of Scete indiscrimi- nately.

4 Renato Lefevere,‘Roma e la communita etiopica di cipro hei secoli XV & XVI’, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, Vol. I, 1941, pp. 71-86. 5 For a general account of the Ethiopian monastic presence in Egypt see, Otto Meinardus, ‘Ethiopian Monks in Egypt’, Publications de l'Institut d' Études Orientalés de la Bibliotheque Patriarcale d' Alexandrie, Vol. XI, 1962 pp 61-70; ‘Ecclesiastica Aethiopica in Aegypto’, Jour- nal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. III, 1974, pp. 23-35.

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The pilgrims were also called Qeddusan, or saints. What was the difference between these two categories? Pilgrims were those who participated in the community for the period of their pilgrimage in the Holy Land, they were seen as temporary members to the community in Egypt or Palestine. The Qeddusan, or saints, on the other hand, were those who were settled with a vow to stay in Jerusalem, or in the linked Egyptian community, for life. The link between Jerusalem and the Egyptian communities of Naggadyan or pilgrims, or Qeddusan, or saints, is also confirmed in penal terms in the sense that expulsion from one of the communities meant expulsion from all. And it is a particularly serious, because the guilty person was cut from the return route to his home in Ethiopia. This general expulsion was therefore explicitly announced in the documents for the most serious cases “on pain of excommunication because none of the Ethiopians would receive him; neither those of Härah Zawaylah, nor those of Qusquam nor those of Jerusalem” or with the even more serious words “whoever of the Pilgrims, whether in Jeru- salem or Harah Zuwaylah or Qusquam, takes communion with Za-Selläsë del Danot [the expelled man]…should be excommunicated”.6 The Naggadyan or Qeddusan, participated as of right in the assembly of each. Thus, the participation of the pilgrims of other communities is mentioned emphatically in the documents to give greater value to the deliberations. A document of the 16th century fixed the rule that the cross which the head of the community carried in his hand as a sign of his post, in the case of the death of the leader himself, prior or rector, of the communities in Jerusalem, Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah, would be inherited by the community of Jeru- salem. The community of the Holy City thus had recognition of its symbolic importance over the other Ethiopian communities. The goods of one community could be transferred to another. We have the record of an assignment of the goods of the community of Jerusalem to the female community in the holy city. In this record the prior of Jerusalem assigned to the abbess goods from Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah. The colophon of a codex of the 16th century contained the deed of gift of the book of the prior of Jerusalem to the community of Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah, al- though the wording is less explicit, another codex of 16th century records a gift from Jerusalem to Harah Zuwaylah. Another important link had been established, all the communities by their general obligation celebrated the consecration of dead pilgrims on a fixed day, (Ethiopian Calendar, 29 teqemt). It must be noted that the value of the tazkar in the religious and civil life of Ethiopia; and therefore the communal feast (29 teqemt,) is the object of the gravest admonitions in the documents.

6 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 356.

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THE INTERNAL ORDINANCE OF THE COMMUNITY: POWERS OF THE PRIOR

The powers of the community were divided amongst: (a) The Prior and the Rector (b) The Administrator (c) The Saints or Qeddusan (d) The Assembly

The leader of the community has various titles. In Jerusalem he had the Ara- bic title of rayis, a possible transcription of the Ethiopian rayyïs according to Cerulli. The head of Qusquam community had the same title; while that of the community of Hara Zuwaylah was called equally in Arabic qä-im, transcribed qäym in Ethiopian. In a related document to the head of the Scete was designated abbot, aba-menet, that was analogously carried by the prior of Jerusalem in an ancient statute The head of the community had a cross as his insignia, which he bore in his hand and over which the Jerusalem community had particular rights. Here arises the question that the representation of the sovereign of Ethiopia who ‘held in his hand a cross as if it were a sceptre’ in the medieval accounts derived, in the final analysis, from this custom of the Jerusalem community of which the western pilgrims had spoken.7 The head of the community, that we will from now on call the prior, was present at the assembly and his presence at this is explicitly mentioned in the documents. It is not said if the prior presided at the assembly, but it seems probable. The prior, at the end of the assembly, wrote down the discussions so as to preserve their memory. One statute of St Elia of Scete, of the beginning of the 15th century, was sufficiently confirmatory of the powers of the prior. “They shall obey the Abbot in all works and every service so that they obey the word of God by obeying his [the Abbot's] word”. But we note that the words refer to Scete and are not repeated in other documents. One statute of Jerusalem of the 14th century associated always the abbot to the ‘rabbyt’ and to the ‘santi’: “they [the members of the community] shall obey the Abbot (aba-meriet) and the rabbayt” and then “and if anyone disobeys the orders of the Saints and of the Abbot he shall be excluded!” This suggests a greater limitation of the powers of the Abbot by comparison with those of the council of Qeddusan as we shall see elsewhere.8

7 Otto Meinardus, ‘Some observations of Ethiopian ritual by Medieval Pilgrims’, Publica- tions de l'Institut d' Études Orientalés de la Bibliotheque Patriarcale d' Alexandrie, Vol. XIII, 1964, pp. 129-176. 8 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 358.

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We have now cited the passage of the statute of Jerusalem which establishes the greatest penalty of the expulsion against those who disobeyed the Abbot's orders. Another document of the 16th century, of Harah Zuwaylah, imposed a severe penalty on a monk who had injured both the Patriarch John of Alexan- dria and George, the Prior of Jerusalem. The penalty was alternatively 30 strokes of the whip or 3 years living in the desert of Scete. One statute of Qusquam established that the penalties and penitence fixed by various grades of injury and ways of imposing them among the individual members of the community would be applied in the same measure as in the two hypotheses: that the Prior offended the Qeddusan or that the Qeddusan offended the Prior. The head of the community, Prior, Abbot or Rector, had judicial power, also members of the community had some form of judicial power; however, the documents do not precisely set out the competence of the judicial power that, in some cases, we see exercised by the assembly of the community on quite serious matters. A statute of Harah Zuwaylah established a fine of 50 ounces of gold for those who refused to undergo a sentence of the prior of the community or a sentence of the assembly. The fine seems large, taking account of the usual poverty of the Ethiopian pilgrims; but nothing is to prevent us thinking that here, as in the judicial language of the time in Ethiopia, these penalties were not meant to be taken in their literal sense but in a relative sense that came to be fixed in the terms of equivalent value from time to time.9 A further question is what were the administrative powers of the community. In the documents present by Cerulli, the prior of Jerusalem gave a book to the community of Qusquam, and who passed in assignment, as a fiduciary deposit, some moveable goods of the Jerusalem community, and of those linked communities of Harah Zuwaylah and Qusquam, to the Abbess of the female community in Jerusalem. But, on the other hand, two donations made by the community were received together by the Prior and the pilgrims, that is the Assembly, and still another gift was made to the community of Harah Zuwaylah “in the presence” of the Rector of the community and of the Prior of Jerusalem. And these deeds of gift contained a linking clause which forbade the Prior or Rector from transferring the given items away from the community. In the complexity of the powers of the head of the community many are

9 Therefore as the Negus fixed a periodic band for how much money or how many blocks of salt should be understood equivalent in practice to a ‘horse’ to a ‘mule’ in the terminology of the courts in these years. However, a later statute, also of Harah Zuwaylah, which however seems applicable also to other communities because fixed in an assembly of the pilgrims “gathered from East and West”, established two ounces of gold as the penalty for not executing the sentence of the prior or of the assembly. Such fluctuations of the size of the penalty, from fifty to two ounces give another indication that these should be treated as a customary value, different therefore at various times, as I have already mentioned. The same statute added that, if he, who had refused to undergo the sentence also refused to pay the fine, is put under the greatest penalty of expulsion from the community.

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related to administration and these are linked by the competence of the steward (maggabi). The Abbot was also the head of the scriptorium of the community. He ‘had written’ the books, as witnessed the colophons of the codices, and we have seen that he gave them away.

POWERS OF THE STEWARD

Next to the Prior, or Rector, of the community the documents name two other officials: the maggabi and the qesa gabaz. The maggabi, etymologically, Provider, in Ethiopian, had administrative duties. His importance was fairly extensive; we note that his name was put under that of the Prior several times in the deeds. A maggabi is referred to in the documents collected by Cerulli from the Jerusalem community, Qusquam, and Scete. The absence of his name from the documents of Harah Zuwaylah could be mere chance. The maggabi participated in the assemblies together with the Prior and there was express mention of him in the deeds. On the admission of Pilgrims into the community the goods of monks of the community were consigned to the maggabi. Therefore, the maggabi administered the property of the community. Similarly the finances were controlled by the maggabi. Therefore, a document name of him, together with the Prior, as responsible for the annual commemo- ration of dead pilgrims. The maggabi had to provide the funds that the com- memoration required according to Ethiopian custom. Also, therefore, in a deed of gift of a cow, the Prior and maggabi were expressly forbidden together to hand away the animal. The same deed of the Scete community, which invited all to “obey the word of God through the word of the Prior” subsequently prescribed, “respect the maggabi, put before us”. And this was the only position, other than the Prior, for whom the deed made such orders. Further, the deed of Scete mentions at the end, the qesa gabaz of the community. What were his duties? He was appointed only in the Scete deed and two Qusquam documents in the first of these in the presence of the assembly, the prior and the maggabi; in the second an unfaithful quesa gabaz was mentioned, who had sold a book of the community for 10 gold pieces and could therefore be subject to excommunication. Another position of the community was that of the rabbayt. He appears mentioned in two documents: the statute of Jerusalem of the Laurentian code (1331-1332) which prescribed obedience to the Abbot and rabbayt; and the deed of Qusquam, of prior Tatriqa Medtui, therefore of the 15th century, which gave, at the end, as a chronological reference, the name of the Patriarch, the Negus (Zar'a Ya’qob) and the “rabbayt, priest of Gabra Nazrawi”.

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THE QEDDUSAN OR SAINTS

We have already had opportunity to mention the Qeddusan. The permanent members of the community of Jerusalem and Egypt had this title, linked to their vow of stability. It is understood that the term Naggadyan or Pilgrims, which was more general, included also the Qeddusan who might have arrived originally as pilgrims. Did the Qeddusan have particular powers in the ordinance of the community? From our documents, emerge the following: (i) The same community in Jerusalem was designated in the Laurentian statute with the name “community of the Saints” (mahbara Qeddusan). And the equality of the terms is further indicated in the same document where it was prescribed that the new admissions must consign their goods “to the administration of the community of the Saints”. (ii) The statue of Scete recalled the rule already present in that community, which was called “the rule of the Saints” (hagga Qeddusan). The statue of Jerusalem imposed expulsion on whoever “transgressed the orders of the Saints or of the Abbot. (iii) The deeds of the two assemblies of the community of Qusquam gave as present 45 ‘saints’, and the other time thirty nine ‘saints’. Nor in these same deeds is there any indication of other participants in the assembly. Thus in the first deed it says expressly “all us sons of Qusquam”; that is it leaves one to suppose that only the ‘saints’ discussed matters in this meeting or at least, in fact, no simple pilgrim was present in Qusquam at that time. (iv) We have already mentioned the rule regarding the offences of the ‘saints’ against the prior of the community and of the prior against the saints.

At least in the documents collected by Cerulli, there is no rule that assures as a right the privileged position of the Qeddusan in the community, as opposed to the simple pilgrims. The fact that the Qeddusan represent the permanent traditions of the community must have given them a particular authority that is explained by the community itself particularly presenting itself as the ‘community of the Qeddusan’.

THE ASSEMBLY OF THE COMMUNITY

The Assembly of the community was normally composed, according to the documents, of priests, monks and deacons. The monks were indicated by the name “father” in the statute of Jerusalem. Only two documents, of Qusquam,

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mention the participation of two secular [priests] (alamare) in the Assembly. This might be accounted for by the fact that once there were particularly few participants in the assembly, five priests and five deacons, the admission of the secular [priests] was exceptional. However, as Cerulli has pointed out, another time there were twelve priests and seven deacons which might seem to contra- dict this hypothesis. However, the Assembly should be distinguished by two categories: the participants whose number and nature was usually recorded at the top of the record of their decisions; and those present, who participated in the discussions but not in the decisions. This hypothesis allows for the women whose presence was mentioned in the statute of Jerusalem. The assembly had, above all, power to decide on the statutes and rules of the community. This competence emerges clearly from the documents, in the sense that in the deeds there is no statute or rule which was not expressly to be decided by the assembly of the community. The deliberations of the assembly were minuted in writing under the prior. The frequent warnings on pain of excommunication not to destroy or hide the deliberations prove that it cannot have been rare for there to be attempts to develop rules not made properly written down. These attempts were so very easy undertaken, due to the pre- cariousness of the means used to keep the record of the deliberations; often these were put as annotations in the manuscripts of the gospels or other community books. The community assembly also had judicial powers. Cerulli cites a group of documents that record sentences which come from the community in its assembly. The cases judged serious acts: injuries to the patriarch of Alexandria, and the prior, injuries and ways of behaving by one monk against another. In other documents the assembly of the community of Jerusalem registered a sentence imposed on an Ethiopian pilgrim by the Patriarch of Alexandria. The Patriarch had condemned the Ethiopian, Za-Selläsë del Dämot, to expulsion from the Pilgrim community. The assembly of Jerusalem registered the judgement because it was concerned and it imposed the penalty of excommunication on those of its members who were in communication with the expelled men. This makes clear the relations which give competence on judicial and disciplinary matters as between the patriarch in Alexandria and the assembly of the Ethiopian community. Another typical document, emanating from Harah Zuwaylah, shows the community of pilgrims giving sentence in a trial over the injuries and behaviour between two monks, of whom one was a priest and the other a deacon. The sentence given was a fine which the two of them had to pay to the community; and this is a first interesting point because it showed how the general requirement for community of goods amongst those belonging to the commu-

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nity had the consequence of transforming pecuniary reparations owed for injuries and behaviour of a single offence, as was common in Ethiopian custom and law, into a fine owed to the community. The same document contains another clause. The reparations fixed by the sentence would not be demanded if the sentence were revoked. This is a new as the clause has a remission under the condition of reparations. The assembly of the community also had administrative powers. In at least two cases of which we have already spoken, gifts to the community were witnessed by the assembly together with the prior, while in another case accept- ance was by the assembly “in the presence” of the prior. Overall, one can say that the powers of the assembly were fairly wide and that the prior and the other post holders acted as delegates of the assembly, which remained the highest authority of the Ethiopian community, making the Qeddusan an influ- ential part of the assembly itself.

THE COMPOSITION OF THE COMMUNITY

The Pilgrims whose names we find registered in the documents, come from various parts of Ethiopia. We find among them some ‘sons of Takla Häy- mänot’. That is those originating from the monasteries associated with Dabra Libanos or under its rule, of Takla Häymanot, the Shoan monk of the eigth century. The ‘sons of Samuel of the hermit of Wali’, coming from the monastery of Wäldebbä whose first founder was according to Ethiopian tradition, Saint Samuel. A document recorded by Cerulli a ‘son of Thaddeus of Barterwä’ a follower of the Tigran Thaddeus of fourteenth century. Another gives the name of a monk of a well known monastery of Dabra Hatelo; and finally another document mentions a ‘son’ of the Eritrean, saint Yonas; and another Tigran monk was said to be a disciple of St Eustace. Few conclusions can be drawn from the relative frequency of mentions of one or other group of Ethiopian monasteries in the Cerulli documents, given that these only represent a very small part of the lists of members of the community. It is enough to say that the composition of the pilgrim communities was varied and that the Pilgrims remembered their monasteries of origin. A document already cited by Cerulli, reveals the presence of a female community in Jerusalem, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, with an Ab- bess, the Ethiopian title was ‘rayis’ like that of the prior. She, helped by a ‘daughter’, perhaps the steward of the female vestments and other moveable goods. It seems doubtful whether at that time the female community had its own organisation, separate from the male community. There developed an ancient rule, already in the statute of Jerusalem, that ordered that the women and men in Jerusalem must live in separate places. This might suggest that the rest

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conformed to the rule of communities in Ethiopia where the nuns often lived at the edge of a male monastery and were subject to the jurisdiction of the Abbot.

THE RULES OF THE STATUTE: THE GOODS OF THE COMMUNITY

A fundamental principle exists in the statutes of the community is that goods are held in common. At the moment of admission into the community, the pilgrim gave all his possessions to the community. When a Pilgrim left the community he could only take away his clothes and books, or his staff, as a statue of Scete added. His goods remained the property of the community. The principle was rigorously monitored; already the statute of Jerusalem of the Laurentian code imposed expulsion from the community, the greatest penalty of whose severe practical consequences we have noted above, on anyone, admitted to the community, who did not hand over all their gold and silver. A statute of the Scete community, fixed exactly the clothes that each member of the community could keep for himself, a turban, three shirts, two cloaks and two scapulars, and required them to hand over everything else to common administration ‘whether gold, silver, coins and even a needle and thread’. The penalty for violations of this rule is also expulsion. Another statute of Scete, which generally confirmed the prescription that the new member should hand ‘everything he possesses’ to the community, also prescribed clearly that in the community, members ‘should not say amongst themselves: this is mine or this is not mine’. The regime of common goods of the community and the absolute exclusion of every individual possession were characteristic of these communities. The only permitted individual property, as we have seen, was that of clothes, a stick and books. For the clothes the Scete statute cited the number of clothes; it also fixed the length of the only turban allowed. It is notable that the Ethio- pian monks wore a turban of white material wrapped horizontally around the head. The length of the strips of the turban and therefore the height of it consti- tuted a sign of individual display, which the community of Scete avoided by establishing a measure for everyone. Another statute, also of Scete, forbade every member of the community from using the barnos, the woollen black cloak of the Ethiopians “in order that there be no disputes”, and this is because, not having enough barnos to give to everyone, a pernicious inequality was not to be permitted for the discipline of the community.10 Equality of food corresponded to this equality in clothes. In so many accounts by western travellers mention the rigorous fasts of the Ethiopians in Je- 10 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 370.

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rusalem, but on the other hand we do not find any prescription of particular restrictions on diet. In fact, the only disposition, which was inserted in a statute of Qusquam, concerned the way of eating: ‘They should not eat alone, members of the community, but in the congregation, except for the unwell: make them watch it!’ The disposition is important, because it clarifies a particular point of the rule of these communities who not being monastic, or wholly monastic, adopted the ordinances of Ethiopian monasticism: the public distribu- tion of provisions, which assured equality.11 As for books, only the statute of Jerusalem of the Lauretian code, 14th century, permitted those who were part of the community to carry with them ‘their books’, thus admitting individual ownership of them. On the other hand, however, various deeds concern donations of books to the community, beginning with that of the Sinodos given by Amda Seyon I, in the first half of 14th century, and often the deeds began stating that, on pain of excommunication, the volume should not be taken from the community nor by any of its representa- tives. In principle, therefore, a library existed, or, more modestly, a collection of books, in common ownership. At least at the time of the statute they kept the Lauretian codices there, some volumes were allowed as individual property of single members.12 The community owned all liturgical and sacred vestments.

THE HOSPITALITY AND ITS LIMITS

An issue relating directly to the regime of common ownership was that of hospitality. In the Jerusalem community it could occur that the Ethiopian pilgrims stayed such a short while that there was no need to let them become members of the community; and such a situation could happen often in the communities of Egypt. In this case, what were the time limits on hospitality of the community and therefore its related burdens? The question, from another point of view, concerned the time limit in which an Ethiopian pilgrim could receive food and lodging in the community, without handing over all his personal belongings to the common purse. This gave the issue particular importance.

11 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 370. 12 The Berlin codices makes clear according to Cerulli that the Ethiopian community in Mount Lebanon, mentions the purchase of books by individual monks in 15th century. It is still to be recorded in reference to this, the protestations made later to the Ethiopian candidate to the Bishop of Cyprus about the ownership of some volumes brought by him from Cyprus to Rome. Cerulli, ‘La communità etiopica nel Libanon’, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. I, p. 325-333.

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The Jerusalem statute in the Laurentian code, already fixed three days as the period of hospitality.13 It added that after three days if the pilgrim did not enter the community and handover his property, ‘he should celebrate the feast and go away’. The ‘feast’ most important in the Jerusalem community was clearly Easter.14 There is a need to understand that in the 14th century the hospitality for three days only was free, but was the permanent stay of pilgrims who were not members of the community tolerated, beyond three days and perhaps with pay- ment, during the Easter period? One statute of Qusquam community records a limit of ten days for hospitality. Beyond that term, unless the pilgrim entered the community, he had to leave.

THE QUESTION OF DISCIPLINE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

One of the arguments most frequently appearing in the statutes is that of penalties for ‘blows and insults'. These penal sentences will be examined closely here. Firstly, we note how, besides the general wording of some statutes, ‘he who offended by his words’, other statutes record precisely the insults that will be punished. Some of these, ‘dog, ‘ruffian, ‘pederast’, are general and it will be enough to note that for ‘ruffian’ the corresponding Arabic word and not the Ethiopian one is used in the statute. Cerulli noted in a statute of Qusquam we find recorded the common insults in ‘where is [your] father? ie. ‘a bastard’. 15 What is interesting in the documents is the type of insult specific to this community. Cerulli mentions that in some cases words and pharses, which were used commonly in Ethiopian language and custom, would not be considered insults but the statutes of the Pilgrims mention them as punishable. These were: (i) In a statute of Qusquam: daqqa Habas – ‘son of Abyssinian’. It might seem strange that such a word was punished as offensive. However, it should be noted that Habas is not the Ethiopian form of the national name (Habasa) but the Arab one; and that the Arabs could have given the name Habas an insulting intonation. Besides, either this use of the name Habas in the Arab world was synonymous with ‘blacks’ in gen-

13 Enrico Cerulli has reflected on the question of monastic hospitality in two other essays, ‘Gli Atti di Batra Maryam’, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, Vol. IV, 1944-1945; ‘Gli Atti Takla Alfa’, Annali del R.Istituto Orientale di Napoli, n.s., Vol. II, 1942, pp. 80-81. 14 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 372. 15 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 373.

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eral. Ethiopians preferred the name of ‘Ethiopia’ for their country and anyway, they usually titled themselves ‘Ethiopian’ and not Habasani or Abyssinian. It was against this attitude that they objected to the use of the name Habas.16 (ii) In another statute, also of Qusquam: ‘eslam’, ‘Muslim’ was an offence when said as an appellation and is related to one of the ‘prisoners of the Muslims’ – sewawyan. The statute in question was repeated in the 16th century. In that period, during the Muslim invasion of Ethiopia in the time of the Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, many Christians were taken prisoners or passed into subjection under the Muslim invaders and were constrained by circumstance apostatise to becoming Islam.17 Of these renegades, a large part returned to Christianity when the constraints were removed. It is known that a ritual was adopted by the Ethiopian church for readmission into the church of Christians who had become Muslim in these circumstances.18 In the statutes the insult ‘Muslim’ related to the ‘prisoners of the Muslims’. Ethiopians linked the incidents, which led to the singular position of penitent renegades, who could then find a place in Ethiopian society in the 16th century. (iii) The epithet ‘walda yaqob’ ‘Jacobite’, which is found in a writing of Harah Zuwaylah. The statute imposes a special penalty on whoever “says ‘Jacobite' as an insult”. It must be asked how came the Ethiopians could consider offensive the epithet ‘Jacobite’ which certainly referred precisely to their confession and recorded their spiritual back-ground, whose creed was remembered with honour in their church. I suppose that, however, one needs to think about dogmatic differences, which in fact did not exist, but rather to the jurisdictional separations of the ‘Jaco- bite’ or Syrian Orthodox church with the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria. Therefore it is possible that the rule refers not to questions of theological.

These various insults are considered in the statutes as not equal but bearing different levels of penalty. Thus: (i) The type of insult. The insults mentioned above were, for the most part, punished in the statute of Qusquam with the same penalty, seven ounces

16 See Emeri J van Donzel, ‘Ibn al-Jawzi on Ethiopians in Baghdad’, Essays in honor of Bernard Lewis: The Islamic World: From Classical to Modern Times, Edited by C.E.Bosworth, Princeton, New Jersey, The Darwin Press, 1989, pp. 113-120, which gives an interesting account of Ethiopians as slaves in the Islamic world and the attitude of Muslims towards them in terms of race and colour. 17 On the impact of Islam upon Ethiopia see: J.S. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, Oxford University Press, 1952; Joseph Cuoq, L'Islam en Éthiopie des origines au XVIe siècle, Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines 1981. 18 The Eastern Orthodox church also had such a ritual, Daniel J. Sahas, ‘Ritual of Conversion from Islam to the Byzantine Church’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. 36, 1991, pp. 57-69. The Anglican Church also adopted in 1637 a process of penance and readmission for those who had converted to Islam while in captivity.

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of gold. However, the insult ‘Jacobite’ was punished with nine ounces of gold and that of ‘pederast’ with ten. (ii) The seriousness of the insult. This concept was considered definitively with that mentioned above under letter (i). But in considering the penalty in relation to a single insult, as we have seen, a statute of Qusquam established two different penalties, for ‘he who offended against his brother [in the community] under a big deed (ba-abif geber)’ or ‘with a little deed (ba-ne'us geber)’. Cerulli considers we have here an example in which the application of the penalty did not automatically follow a specific offence but it was left to the judge to value the greater or lesser seriousness of the event. (iii) The quality of the offence. We find, in two annotations, the greatest penalty of expulsion, which came to be inflicted for insults to the patriarch of Alexandria; and in one statute of Qusquam, the provisions signalled that it treated equally the insults which the prior could make to the Qeddusan and that the Qeddusan could make to the prior of that community.19

For the insults we have examined there were two different orders of penalty: (a) Spiritual punishments. These, independently of condemnation for the offence, remained in the disciplinary ambit of mortification's that the offender was obliged to inflict on himself to expiate his sin. The statutes envisage: (1) Fasts. Thus the statute of the Laurentian code prescribed that the offender was to ‘fast for thirty days until sunset with bread salt and water’. A statute of Qusquam prescribed a fast of ‘forty days, besides Friday and Wednesday’ for insults, that is, not including the twice weekly days of fasting which were already prescribed, in the case of grave insults and twenty days in the case of lesser insults. Through these days of punishment the fasting regime was equal in that of grave and lesser insults, ‘do not eat eggs or fish or drink milk or wine’. (2) Prostration's. Were punishments added to that of fasting: ‘one hundred times a day and one hundred times a night’ according to the Laurentian statute; ‘one hundred times a day’ only in the case of serious insults in the Qusquam statute. (3) Living in a hermitage as a hermit. In two notes of the Harah Zuwaylah community we find that two monks had insulted the patriarch and were given a punishment of three and one year respec- 19 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 375.

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tively living ‘in the desert of Scete’: therefore in the hermitages of the desert and not, it seems, in the Ethiopian monastery of St. Elias of Scete. (4) Flagellation. One state of Qusquam fixed thirty strikes as the of- fenders penalty and two annotations mentioned above on the offence against the patriarch record eight thousand or three hundred strikes. We must remember that here we are not dealing with whip- pings given by a public executioner, as for lay Ethiopians, but rather of the flagellation a pilgrim must inflict on himself, as was the usual custom of Ethiopian ascetics. (5) Expulsion from the community. As has been mentioned elsewhere elsewhere, this was the greatest penalty which related both to the spiritual and temporal order, because it put the expelled pilgrim in need of immediately finding a protector. It is not by chance that one statute uses the threatening phrase: ‘Go away to the Muslims!’ in this regard. (6) Penitence. One statute of Scete established generally for the insults – penitence. Probably such a rule should not be interpreted as if it was left to the prudent judgement of the prior or assembly to fix the penalty. Rather it seems that one should see in the rule, ‘if someone has offended his brothers either with a word or a hand, if appropriate, he may be given a penitence. And if he refuses the penitence, expel him’, a primary intention to impose expulsion on the community for he who refuses to be subject to the penalty given to him, whoever he is.20 (b) Temporal punishments. At other times the statute fixes a sum which the offender must pay for the insult he pronounced against a brother. Thus we have in the various statutes or documents: (1) Twenty ounces of gold for offences against the patriarch. (2) Seven ounces of gold for the insults: ‘who is your father?’, ‘son of an Abyssinian’, ‘dog’, ‘ruffian’, and ‘Muslim’. (3) Ten ounces of gold for the insult ‘pederast’. (4) Ten ounces of gold in case of insults between two monks. (5) Nine ounces of gold for the insult ‘Jacobite’.

Thus we have a system analogous to those of the common law of the Ethio- pians. While in the common law, the reparation of the penalty was exacted by the offended person, in our case, given that the general rule which forbade all personal property to members of the community, the sum fixed for the insult was exacted by the community and not the offended person. This is said clearly in the documents relating to the insults to the patriarch, where the of-

20 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 376-377.

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fender was told: ‘pay to Jerusalem’ and that is to the Ethiopian community of Jerusalem; and in the statue of Harah Zuwaylah ‘pay the pilgrims’ therefore to the local community. It is understood that this particular form of exacting the penalty gave cause to other developments in the judicial field. Thus a document of Harah Zuwaylah fixed the sentence of the offender and the level of the penalty at ten gold ounces and added: ‘These (pilgrims) have then given pardon for the love of God. If he (whoever) returns to litigate, they will also exact the further penalty from him.’ Thus we have a type of conditional sentence, which would clearly be impossible in the common Ethiopian law given the right of the individual offended against to reparation. These are interesting signs of this em- bryonic divergence of the penal law, for the Ethiopians in Palestine, from the rigid concept of penalty being understood as the restoration of the harm suf- fered by the victim. Here we have such an evolution derived from the influ- ence of the Ethiopian church.21 Together with insults, our documents deal with penalties for striking members of the community. It thus seems that the texts do not contemplate in these rules serious personal wounds, which would not be frequent in these communities anyway. The rules for blows are analogous to those we have seen for insults. In both cases, insults and blows, the statute of Qusquam applies the distinction of seriousness between ‘he who offends with a serious action’ and ‘he who has offended with a minor action’.

(i) Spiritual. These could be fasting and prostration together, according to the statute of the Laurentian code. The number of days of fasting were left blank in the code, the prostration's were one hundred a day and one hundred a night, as in the case of simple insults; flagellation – fifty times in a statute of Qusquam, as opposed to thirty blows in the case of simple insult, expulsion, according to a statute of Scete which we have already examined, for those who refused the penalty assigned to them. (b) Temporal punishments. A statute of Harah Zuwaylah established that he who struck someone ought to pay ten ounces of gold over and above the ten owed, according to the same statute, for the insults. Also here it was understood that the sum was paid ‘to the pilgrims’ and that is the community and not the individual victim.

Finally it must be noted that in the terminology of the documents there seems to be a distinction of the spiritual penalty, from the temporal one, which was called ‘obligation’ in the sense of the jurisprudence.22

21 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 377-378. 22 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 378-379.

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