THE LIBRARY OF EMPEROR TEWODROS II AT MAQDALA (MAGDALA) By RITA PANKHURST

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THE LIBRARY OF EMPEROR TEWODROS II AT MAQDALA (MAGDALA) By RITA PANKHURST


Rita Pankhurst -Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London-
  


The Emperor Tewodros II (1855-68), although remembered to-day mainly as an energetic modernizer, was also involved to a significant degree in the history of traditional Ethiopian libraries.

 Tewodros had intended to build a great church dedicated to Madhane Alam 'Saviour of the World', on Christian ground near the natural fortress of Miqddila which had served him as state prison, granary, and family sanctuary no less than as a storehouse for his accumulated treasures.

Within the precincts of the fortress, which was not considered Christian ground, the only church was the modest one also dedicated to the Saviour and described by the geographer, C. R. Markham, as 'a wretched place, withoutpictures or even whitewashed walls ',1 and by Major H. A. Leveson, a British officer and journalist, as 'the hovel called a Church '.

 The Emperor wished to provide the new church with the traditional service books and other manuscripts which turned important churches into centres ofstudy as well as of worship. To this end he had for years been collecting manuscripts from churches throughout his domains, and especially from Gondar.

 The missionary T. Waldmeier reports, of one of Tewodros's expeditions against the city in December 1866 : ' The royal army fell with great rapacity upon the unhappy city ... houses were plundered, hidden treasures sought out and stolen, churches robbed of their holy relics, their prayer-books, their other old documents ... and afterwards set on fire '.

Dr. Gerhard Rohlfs, a German scholar who visited Gondar in 1881, relates that, in the course of Tewodros's two sackings of the city, he carried away allbooks he could seize. ' Of the many books mentioned, for example, by Combes and Tamisier, none could be procured other than those of a religious nature.
Certainly this was not due to ill will : I was on very good terms with the Kantiba and the whole clergy, and they sold me church objects. But whenever I asked for books they always answered : " Theodore took them all away ". It was the same in Matraha.


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Rita Pankhurst -Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London-
 
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