Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia

This book is a rare event in modern academic publishing, the culmination of a lifetime's scholarship. Crummey's interest in Iyasus Mo'a's legacy lies, not in the Gospels themselves, but in the margins and flyleaves on which were recorded the details of land transactions affecting the monastery - most of them grants by successive emperors of the right to collect the land tax known as gult, which in highland Christian Ethiopia constituted the most sought-after form of ownership ... Crummey has been able to use this hitherto barely noticed source of documentation to uncover the relationships between crown, clergy and aristocracy in Christian Ethiopia, and in large measure to transform our understanding of them.

• Gult and the state - 1200-1540; "Man is free; land is tributary"; Gondar, 1632-1721 - order and disorder; Mentewwab, "how beautiful she is!" 1721-1769; the leadership of Galawdewos - family and property in Gondarine Ethiopia; the era of the princes; church, land and society in Gondarine Ethiopia - institutional grants; church, land and society in Gondarine Ethiopia - private transfers; Gult and the reconstruction of the monarchy - 1680-1910; transformations - state, land and society.