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Sir ‘At' Adkeme Milga’—A Native Law Code of Eritrea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Dennis J. Duncanson
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Extract

The Abyssinian farming communities of the three highland provinces of Eritrea (Ḥamasên, 'Akele Gûzay, and Serawê) may be said always to have had two agencies of government: on one hand, the institutions of village society, and, on the other hand, the central government of Ethiopia, known in Eritrea as the mengiśti and comprising the military organization of the Solomonid monarch—the Nigûśe Negeśt—and the quasi-feudal establishments of his provincial governors and of the Coptic Church. To the latter of these agencies, in constitutional theory, there succeeded the Italian monarchy when the Eritrean Colony was proclaimed on 1 January 1890. Even before that date the scope of the mengiśti in Eritrean affairs had never been well defined, but had been modified or intensified as political conditions changed in the Empire generally. Thus when highland Eritrea was governed by a Bahre Negȧśê, before the Somali and Turkish invasions of the sixteenth century, the Nigûś and his nomadic Court were probably an appreciable factor in village government. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries scarcely any functions of imperial government can be traced in Eritrea, and the villages, in the words of the contemporary Abyssinologue Job Ludolf, ‘Regi Habessinorum quidem parent, sed sibimet Rectores præficiunt, ac suis legibus in modum alicuius parvæ Reipublicæ utuntur.’ During the nineteenth century political authority—which may be summarized as power to exact tribute (the strict etymological implication of mengiśti), to requisition and re-allocate land, and to beat the war-drum (kitet)–passed into the hands of mesafinti, chiefs of local peasant origin who claimed a dubious imperial sanction for the authority they had won by their arms. This phase culminated in the unsuccessful attempts of John IV (1870-89), himself a mesfin from the Tigray, partially to reorganize Eritrean village society on a feudal basis that would enable him to reassert the lapsing imperial authority. The only code of laws known in Ethiopia was the Fitha Negeśt, or Canons of the Kings, culled from Scripture, from ancient canons of the Church, and from early Byzantine statutes by a Syrian compilator of the fifth century and translated into Ethiopic in the fifteenth. The Fitha Negeśt stood until the twentieth century as the basic law of the Empire beside the Law of Moses, and was no less inept in village affairs for being highly revered by the Abyssinians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1949 , pp. 141 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1949

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References

page 141 note 1 The terms Eritrean and Ethiopian here refer the heterogeneous political territories of those names, Abyssinian to one people who live in the highlands of both territories.

page 141 note 2 Historia Æthiopica, 1681.

page 141 note 3 Edited by Guidi, Ignazio, II Fetha Nagast, Rome, 1897-1899Google Scholar.

page 142 note 1 For example, Prof. Rossini, Carlo Conti, Principî di diritto consuetudinario dell' Eritrea, Rome, 1916Google Scholar ; Capomazza, Ilario, Il diritto consuetudinario dell' Acchehelè-Guzai, Asmara, 1937Google Scholar ; and Petazzi, Ercole, L'Odierno diritto penale dello Hamasien, Asmara, 1937Google Scholar.

page 142 note 2 The comparative importance of these systems may be judged from the approximate populations of the districts in which they are followed:

Deqi Tejim 100,000; 'Akele Gûzay (including Mèn Miḥaza and 'Igela) 85,000; 'Adkeme Milga’ 70,000; Logo Tfwa 40,000; 'Anseba 14,500; Karnejim 13,500; Lamza. 13,000.

This is not a complete list of the systems of customary law in Eritrea, nor even of the so-called codes, but only of those followed in the three highland provinces.

page 142 note 3 Sir‘at' Adkeme Milga’, Tipografia Eritrea Pietro Silla, Asmara, 1944, is. 50c. Sir'at Logo Tfwa, ibid., 1946, not priced.

page 144 note 1 The word risti defies simple translation because of the many and divergent customs associated with it in different communities. Perhaps the nearest English equivalent is allod, especially in the implied contrast with land occupied by tenure (gulti, plural 'agûlat) directly or indirectly from the Nigûś.

page 144 note 2 It should be understood that these references are not, of course, as in other parts of Africa to mission churches, but to the Coptic Church and the numerically unimportant Catholic Church of Ethiopic Rite.

page 145 note 1 e.g. 'Inda 'Aneniyas v. 'Inda 'Êfrêm, both of Kes'ad Da'ro ('Adi Wegri No. 26/45).

page 145 note 2 Mulazzani, A., Residente del Mereb ('Adi Kuala), Nome del diritto consuetudinario secondo il costume dell' Atchemé Melegà, 1898.Google Scholar

page 145 note 3 For an exposition of Eritrean landright generally, see Nadel, S. F., ‘Land Tenure on the Eritrean Plateau’ in Africa, Jan. and Apr. 1946Google Scholar.

page 148 note 1 Lôbo, P. Jerónimo, J, S.., A Voyage to Abyssinia (1625-1633), transl. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, London, 1893, p. 119.Google Scholar

page 148 note 2 This principle was upheld by the European courts in 1942 at the end of a series of disputes begun in 1912 between the 'Inda Gebreknstos of Bêt Gebri'êl and the 'Inda Ganzay of 'Adi Nala, one of the best-known cases in Eritrea.

page 149 note 1 That the Italian Government once had some such rule is mentioned by Mulazzani, loc. cit.