188 REVIEWS OF BOOKS TRADITION AND CHANGE IN ETHIOPIA. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN AMHARIC FICTIONAL LITERATURE CA. 1930-1974. By R. K. MOLVAER. pp. xi, 268. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1980. 84 guilders. J. Jahn once wrote that in African literature no figure is "portrayed for the sake of his experiences or his interesting situation", but only "for the sake of the instruction the author hopes to achieve through the story". This, Dr Molvaer argues, is in the main true of Amharic creative writing. Despite its didactic character it is far from uninteresting, and, being set in an Ethiopian milieu, provides a remarkable, but thus far scarcely examined mirror of the society in which it was produced. Dr Molvaer's work, which is based on an analysis of 12 Ethiopian writers, or close on 50 books, abounds with insights into the Ethiopian ethos. A worthy companion to Thomas Kane's Ethiopian literature in Amharic (Harrassowitz, 1975) it encompasses much of the field of C. H. Walker's classic The Abyssinian at home (London, 1932). The first part, which is the longest and most important, deals with traditional society, with sections on classes, beliefs and ethics, private relationships, and national character. The second part is devoted to change, and considers the attitudes of conservatives, radicals, and "escapists". (Despite censorship a wide variety of views were published in pre-revolutionary Ethiopia). There are also sections on education, urbanization, and the relaxation of traditional mores - with the consequent "moral decay", increase in crime and deceit, etc. (Ethiopian authors tended to give more prominence to the degenerative than to the beneficial effects of the break-down of the old order.) The book contains a mass of observations not readily available elsewhere. To cite a few examples: (i) A person looking at a painting of a saint will turn his face aside as a sign of respect "as it would be an expression of arrogance to stare him in the face"; (ii) God, the Virgin Mary and the tabot, or "holy of holies", can be talked of in the familiar form, whereas saints are usually referred to in the polite form; (iii) a girl may, when courting, throw a lemon at the youth of her choice; if he catches it this is a sign of his favourable response; (iv) a messenger bringing good tidings will begin with the word "Congratulations!" to which, the recipient of the news will "for unknown reasons" retort "Eat lentils!" (This practice, we would speculate, may perhaps originate in lentils' supposed powers of increasing virility. See S. Strelcyn, Medecine et plantes d'Ethiopie, II, 200.) Of great interest is the author's discussion of the reasons for the posthumous popularity of Emperor Tewodros (1855-68), and of the peaceful coexistence of various religions: "The Ethiopian people, whether Muslim, Christian or pagan, are all godfearing", one of Malvaer's sources declares. Though occasionally repetitive the study is crisply written, with a useful index to Amharic words. The book is unusually free from errors (though Malvaer repeats the mistaken view that the Italian prison island of Asinara was on the Sardinian mainland). Readers unacquainted with Amharic may regret that titles of Amharic books have not been translated, and that there is no reference to published translations of any of them. These are, however, minor blemishes in a work of considerable originality and value. RICHARD PANKHURST. ABU BAKR SE' UITEENSETTING VAN DIE GODSDIENS' 'N ARABIES-AFRIKAANSE TEKS UIT DIE JAAR 1869, By A. VAN SELMS. (Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel, 101.) pp. xvii, 259. Amsterdam, etc., North-Holland Publishing Company, 1979. Dr van Selms, Professor at the University of Pretoria, is well known for his work on the early Afrikaans literature in Arabic script. Abu Bakr b. 'Umar b. Salah al-dln b. Sulayman b. Mustafa b. Ibrahim b. Amir Sulayman b. Amir Zayd al-Khashnawi is not mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Islam, yet his work for the preservation and spread of Islam in southern Africa is equalled by none. He was born in or near Shahrazur, now in Iraqi Kurdistan but then part of the Ottoman Empire. Local unrest forced the family, which was of Kurdish Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 26 Oct 2019 at 17:05:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00136457 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 189 origin, to move to Erzurum. Famine and failure of the crops induced Abu Bakr to seek government aid in Istanbul in 1862. It so happened that in that year the Turkish government had heard of a dispute among the Muslims of what was then the Cape Colony regarding the Caliphate, as it was called by them, the succession of leadership among them. Perhaps to create a following for the Turkish caliphate, or perhaps to put into practice the principle of the protection of Muslim citizens of other countries that was established after the Crimean War, the Turkish government looked around for a learned and active person to go to South Africa and teach Hanafi law there to the Muslims. Perhaps also to ship him out of harm's way, Abu Bakr was sent to South Africa - via London. In Cape Town it appeared that he was not expected, but when the local Muslim community finally learned of his arrival and importance, he was well received, feted, and given a wife. He died in South Africa in 1880. During the 18 years of his sojourn there he had married two wives, raised a family, assembled followers whose descendants up to the present day observe the Hanafi law, instead of that of the Shafi'I school which the Malays originally brought with them. He learned Afrikaans and wrote a number of books in it, having adapted the Arabic script to its phonetic system. The present book (p. vi) is a transliteration, plus Afrikaans (i.e. modern standard) translation, by Professor van Selms, of Abu Bakr's main work on the tahdra, saldt, zakdt, sawm, dhabh, makruhat, mashrubdt, and sayd ("hunting"). It is a rendering into the peculiar Afrikaans of the Cape Malays of the Multaqd'al-abhur, completed in 923/1517 by Burhan al-din Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Halabi in Istanbul (El, second edition, III, 90, first column). Professor van Selms' intention in publishing the complete text is solely to provide materials for the study of the history of the Afrikaans language. This is the oldest-but-one of the early Afrikaans texts, printed in 1869. But for the orientalist it produces two other things. It gives us an unexpected insight into the way a Muslim scholar handles the language of a people for whom he wants to provide a literature on Islam; and it shows how an Islamic literature originates. A large number of words are left in Arabic, even though Afrikaans words for the concepts existed. Islamic writers love Arabic loans. Secondly, not all the loans come from Arabic: e.g. dbdast (cf. Russell Jones, Arabic loan-words in Indonesian, London, 1978, 2) instead of tawaddu is from Persian, — not in Klinkert's Malay dictionary: surban (Klinkert transliterates serban, while Jones gives both forms) is also from Persian - Steingass gives sarband "turban"; batja "to recite" is from Malay, as is puwasa "fasting" and sambeli "ritual slaughter" which Klinkert spells s£mb2lih\agama, from Sanskrit, is used instead of din "religion". We must be grateful to Professor van Selms for giving us this interesting text in full with his complete translation. (Useful lists of these loan-words, but not always with the correct etymologies, can be found in Mia Brandel-Syrier, The religious duties of Islam as taught and explained by Abu Bakr Effendi, Leiden, 1960, xxxviii. Her book gives a complete English translation of the same text, with an introduction by Professor van Selms, from which I have taken the particulars of Abu Bakr's life summarized above. There is an index of Arabic terms on pp. 189-96.) JAN KNAPPERT. THE ARTS OF ANCIENT GEORGIA. By RUSUDAN MEPISASHVILI and VAKHTANG TSINTSADZE, with photographs by ROLF SCHRADE. pp. 310. London, Thames and Hudson, 1979. £12. There is probably no single factor that affects the lives and outlook of the present-day Georgians more deeply, or in more different ways, than the sense of national identity that has persisted over 2,000 years. Of all the nations in the Western Hemisphere only their Armenian neighbours can make a similar claim. Both peoples, thanks to their early conversion to Christianity, underwent a striking cultural development during the period known to us as the "Dark Ages", producing literature and works of art that were far more than feeble copies of Byzantine models. Both survived throughout the Middle Ages as outposts of Christianity, preserving their individual characteristics through centuries of turbulent Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSB Libraries, on 26 Oct 2019 at 17:05:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00136457
