Cyber Ethiopia

This on-going series of articles presents excerpts from historically interesting accounts of Ethiopian markets, and merchants, as seen over the centuries, mainly by foreign observers. Aleyu Amba on the summit of a small hill ten kilometres below the Shawan capital, Ankobar, was described by the French traveller Rochet d'Hericourt as the "principal commercial market" in central Ethiopia. The market was located on the intersection of several trade routes. One of the most important ran across the Awash river to the walled city of Harar and the Gulf of Aden ports of Zayla and Tajura. Caravans on that route arrived, according to the British envoy Major Cornwallis Harris, "every month during the fair season", and the traffic was "brisk and profitable". One Harar caravan, according

to Charles Johnston, was no less than two hundred men strong. The market at Aleyu Amba lay, he says, on "a large plain, occupying the southern half of the table rock, bare and stony". Trading was on Fridays, and was conducted under the supervision of a local governor, in the early 1840's a certain Qalam Warq, who sat "beneath the scanty shelter of an ancient acacia", in the centre of the market-place, while "the inhabitants of the adjacent villages" poured in, thereby producing "a scene of unusual bustle and confusion". “Bustle and Confusion" Describing the ensuing "bustle and confusion", Harris observes: "Shortly after daybreak wares of every description are displayed under the canopy of heaven, and crowds of both sexes flocking to the stall of the vendor, the din of human voices is presently at its height. Honey, cotton, grain, and other articles of consumption, the produce of the Amhara farmer, are exposed for sale or barter. The Dankali merchant exhibits his gay assortment of beads, metals, coloured thread, and glassware. The Galla [Oromo] squats beside the produce of his flocks, and the Muslim trader from the interior displays ostrich feathers, or some other article of curiosity from the distant tribe. Bales of cotton cloth, and bags of coffee from Caffa [Kaffa] and Enarea, are strewed in every direction. Horses and mules in numbers are shown off among the crowd to increase the turmoil". Dankali merchants played a major commercial role, for "the terror and abhorrence in which the low country and its attendant dangers" were generally held, are said by Harris, to have had "placed nearly the entire trade" in their control. For this reason they were "treated by the monarch of Shoa with all deference and respect". In other parts of the market the same British observer, who was something of a racist, reports that: "Cantering over the tiny plain - a scanty level of an hundred yards - the Galla enters the scene of confusion... a jar of honey, or a basket of butter... lashed to the crupper of his high-peaked saddle. "The surly Adaiel brushes past in insolent indifference to examine the female slaves in the wicker hut of the rover from the south ... Ankobar, the Shawan capital above Aleyu Amba -a nineteenth century engraving "Squatted besides his foreign wares and glittering beads, see the wily huckster from Hurrur [Harar], with his turban and blue-checked kilt. His dealings, it is true, are of no very extensive amount, and salt, not silver is the medium of exchange; but there is still room for the exercise of knavery... "The Christian women flit through the busy fair with eggs, poultry, and the produce of the farm". Other Glimpses Other glimpses of Aleyu Amba market are afforded by the French traveller Rochet d'Hericourt. He tells of Christian merchants selling amoles, or bars of salt, arranged in great piles like walls, as well as of pieces of cloth, which the vendors measured on their arms. The lively "scene of traffic, haggling and barter", as Harris terms it, continued "without intermission, until a late hour in the afternoon". Goods exposed for sale at Aleyu Amba included many articles, among them coffee, 1,500 to 1,700 camel loads of which were on sale the time of Rochet's visit, as well as ivory, civet, tobacco, hides and skins, cotton and woven cotton cloth, horses and mules, cattle, grain, butter, honey, lemons, and gesho used in the preparation of local beer, as also bars, which were put in circulation from this market, and the products of what Johnston calls the "Tabeeb, or artificers monasteries", such as saddles, spears and swords, hoes and plough-shares, and earthenware utensils. Imports Numerous imported goods were also exposed for sale at Aleyu Amba, including glassware, cotton cloth and silks of various kinds, needles, and kwol, or antimony, used for darkening the eyelids. Most trade was carried out by barter, but cattle, sheep and goats were usually brought with amoles, and mules and horses, with Maria Theresa thalers. What medium of exchange you used thus depended on what articles you were buying! Aleyu Amba village consisted, according to Harris, of 250 huts, or "several hundreds" as Rochet observes. Each according to Johnston says, stood "its own snug enclosure". The population of the village was estimated by the British envoy at one thousand, and by his French opposite number at two or three, but, Johnston insists, it did not exceed the latter number. These figures were, however, subject to considerable fluctuations, for on the arrival of a caravan the population might be increased by several hundred persons. The population of Aleyu Amba was ethnically "very mixed", Rochet reports, for it included Amharas, Oromos, Ifatians, Danakils, Somalis, and Hararis, as well as men from Adal, Argobba and Awsa, as Harris states. An envoy from Harar, referred to as Abdal Yonag, was for a time governor of the town. Among the inhabitants were "numerous retired slave merchants", who, according to Johnston, had travelled to Gurage, Enarya, Janjero, and Limmu.