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. Gondar Market Gondar, as the at least nominal capital of the Ethiopian empire, had an important market, one of the greatest in the country. This market was described in the early nineteenth century by several foreign travellers. The German Protestant missionary J.L. Krapf for example told of a weekly market, where it was possible to purchase "salt, honey, cattle, coffee-beans, etc.". British consul Walter Plowden on the other hand reported at about the same time that there was: "a small market daily, and the chief market on Saturday, when the concourse of people is great; and once a week, at the Mussulman

[i.e. Muslim] quarter, a sale of mules and horses. To this part", he adds, "you descend a steep hill, and on a small grass-plain are the beasts, galloping and prancing about in every direction, in the utmost confusion. The purchasers, sitting on the ground, on observing an animal they like, call the rider, and on showing a few [Maria Theresa] dollars, are permitted a trial. The price of those sold are, generally, for a pretty good horse, from ten to twenty dollars, and for a mule from eight to fifteen. "Daily Slaughter" "... If you require meat in the market, they daily slaughter bullocks, [and] sheep at the Saturday market, and fowls are obtained by inquiring from house to house; all that you require for your household must be purchased at the market - firewood, butter, corn unground, honey, red pepper, salt, etc.; all payments are made either in the German crown [in fact the Maria Theresa thaler], or in the medium of the country - viz., pieces of salt". Gondar-a nineteenth century engraving The traders of Gondar engaged in a wide range of activity, some of it at that time scarcely known elsewhere in Ethiopia. In many cases, however, they operated on a capital of only a few thalers. One small Ethiopian businessman told the British traveller William Coffin that two thalers' worth of salt taken from Gondar to what he called the Country of the Shankellas, i.e. the territory near the Sudan frontier, exchanged for an ounce and a quarter of gold, and, that this, after the payment of customs tolls, left him, on his return to Gondar, a clear gold ounce of profit. Women Traders Other types of small-scale business in Gondar included that of butchers, who, according to the French travellers Edmond Combes and Maurice Tamisier, were not to be found outside in the city. They also reported the selling, by some women, of beer and taj, i.e. mead; and, by others, of kohl, or antimony, for eye decoration. There was also, according to the French traveller Arnauld d'Abbadie, a sale in second-hand clothes. A group of people in the market likewise assisted the wheat merchants by carrying their baskets, and in arranging large stones for them to sit on. Adwa Adwa, at this time, was the site of the most important market in the north of the country. The British traveller Henry Salt described it, early in the century, as "the chief mart for commerce" on the eastern side of the Takazee river. "All the intercourse between the interior provinces and the coast", he explains, was carried out by merchants residing in the city. Adwa-a nineteenth century engraving The "Emporium of Northern Abyssinia" A generation later the German scientist Edouard Ruppell referred to Adwa as the "emporium of eastern Abyssinia", and one which enjoyed "extensive trade". The French Saint Simonians Combes and Tamisier likewise observed that the town "flourished by its commerce". Though much of this was conducted on the trade route between Gondar and the coast, other routes of commercial significance ran southwards from Adwa to such important commercial centres as Basso in Gojjam, and Aleyu Aruba in Shawa. Adwa's market was held every Saturday, by the Assam river immediately south-east of the town, and was remarkably well attended. On market days the roads leading to the town would be crowded with people converging on it. Everything that might be needed during the week had to be purchased on that day, for supplies, as the German traveller A. von Katte notes, were virtually unobtainable at other times, and there were no shops. Local produce for sale at the Adwa market included legumes, pepper, butter, honey, limes and salt, as well as cotton cloth, and the skins of various animals, both domestic and wild, as Combes and Tamisier report. Ivory, Gold and Slaves Adwa also handled much of Ethiopia's export-import trade. Exports passing through the town included ivory, gold and slaves, as Henry Salt notes. Imports, on the other hand, comprised "cotton cloth, as well as lead (in small quantities), block tin, copper foil; small Persian carpets of a shewy pattern and of low price, raw silks from China, a few velvets, French broad cloths, and different coloured skins from Egypt; glassware and beads, which find their way from Venice, an other petty articles". Trade in Adwa, according to Henry Salt, was "almost entirely" in the hands of Muslims, who, he believed, there enjoyed "a greater degree of importance, than in other parts of the empire". The town's principal tax collector at that time was likewise a Muslim, a man by the name of Zeynu, whose position was an important one, for Adwa was one of the main customs posts in Tegre. Contact with foreign lands is said to have given the merchants of Adwa a wider horizon than the rest of the population. An incidental effect was that a few of the traders, principally Muslims, had reportedly "learnt the use of sandals". Mansfield Parkyns, a British resident of the city, states that the latter were, however, "worn only in town", for they were "considered as highly troublesome for the road". Caravans also reached Adwa from lands to the south, including Amhara, Walqayt and Shawa. "Large droves" of cattle from Walqayt arrived, Henry Salt reports, and exchanged "very advantageously" for cotton cloth, a "considerable portion" of which came from the lowlands bordering on the Takkaze river. Massawa The port of Massawa, the gateway to the sea of all northern Ethiopia, was at this time the terminal, as in the past, of one of the principal trade routes from the interior. The port, then an island, was dependent on the mainland for all sorts of supplies, including milk, cattle, and goats. Such animals and provisions, according to a British naval officer, Captain T. Weatherhead, were shipped across the intervening narrow stretch of sea in a small boat which travelled backwards and forwards all day. Drinking water was also supplied to the island in large quantities at a price of one Maria Theresa thaler per twenty skin sacks, or a total of about a hundred gallons. Numerous smaller vessels, according to the French Scientific Mission of the 1840s, were also engaged in the transportation to the island of water, milk and other supplies, including sheep and chickens. Export articles from the interior, shipped by way of Massawa, consisted of slaves, gold, ivory, civet, butter, cereals, wax, and hides and skins, as well as small quantities of coffee, honey and gum. Imports were made up, on the other hand, mainly of textiles, beads and trinkets, metals, tobacco, antimony, glass- and china-ware, needles, scissors, knives and razors, swords and fire-arms, carpets, mirrors, pepper and sugar. The market at Massawa was held every morning and evening, with a mid-day interruption, because of the island's intense heat, from noon to about 4 p.m. Trade, in the first part of the century, was dominated by Banyan, or Indian, merchants, who, according to Henry Salt, were "very comfortable," and carried on a "considerable trade."' The most important among them was a certain Currum Chand, who often purchased an entire shipload of goods, which traders would receive from him on credit. They would then take and sell them in the interior, and pay for them three months later, in gold or other local produce. This practice, which was also followed by an Arab called Haji Hassan, had developed, according to Salt, because none of the other Massawa merchants had sufficient capital to invest on any large scale. Indian Trade Indian commercial paramountcy continued for several decades. In 1862 British consul Walker reported that there were on the island 15 to 20 Banyans, who seemed to "monopolise the whole of the trade". The only men with any money, they owned large vessels, which sailed to and from Bombay, in India, twice a year, and were responsible for the purchase of all the gold and ivory brought down from the interior. India was likewise responsible for a large proportion of Massawa's imports. Purchases from the sub-continent in 1852 were valued, according to an earlier British consul, Walter Plowden, at 133,500 Maria Theresa thalers, as compared with only 73,065 thalers' worth from Arabia and Egypt combined.