International Journal of Ethiopian Studies (IJES) is an interdisciplinary, refereed journal dedicated to scholarly research relevant to or informed by the Ethiopian experience. IJES publishes two issues a year of original work in English and Amharic to readers around the world. Established in 2002, the IJES is dedicated to the research and study of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. The journal contains original articles, reviews, and features filled with relevant, in-depth information on important issues. It serves as a venue for the sharing and cross fertilization of research by scholars working on issues that matter to the region and promotes important voices internationally. PUBLISHER & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Elias Wondimu, Loyola Marymount University SENIOR EDITORS Alemayehu Gebremariam, California State University, San Bernardi Maimire Mennasemay, Dawson College Theodore Vestal, Oklahoma State University BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Fikru Gebrekidan, St. Thomas University

By virtue of its geographic situation, the art of Ethiopia belongs to Africa, however its development was inevitably shaped by historical events. As a result, it is closely linked to models derived from the artistic traditions of Byzantium, and also incorporates elements of Islamic culture and those originating in the Indian sub-continent. The volume presents a comprehensive catalogue of the exceptional collection of paintings on wood belonging to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa.

ETHIOPIA is a compendium on Ethiopia and Northeast Africa for travellers, students, businessmen, people interested in Africa, policymakers and organisations. In this book 85 specialists from 15 countries write about the land of our fossil ancestor `Lucy', about its rock-hewn churches and national parks, about the coexistence of Christians and Muslims, and about strange cultures, but also about contemporary developments and major challenges to the region. Across ten chapters they describe the land and people, its history, cultures, religions, society and politics, as well as recent issues and unique destinations, documented with tables, maps, further reading suggestions and photos.

In this exciting new study, Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country’s history. Ethiopia’s political independence at the end of the nineteenth century put this new African state in a position to determine its own levels of engagement with the West. Ethiopians went to study in universities around the world. They returned with the skills of their education acquired in Europe and America, and at home began to lay the foundations of a new literature and political philosophy. Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia describes the role of these men and women of ideas in the social and political transformation of the young nation and later in the administration of Haile Selassie.

This book explores why Ethiopian kings pursued long-distance diplomatic contacts with Latin Europe in the late Middle Ages. It traces the history of more than a dozen embassies dispatched to the Latin West by the kings of Solomonic Ethiopia, a powerful Christian kingdom in the medieval Horn of Africa. Drawing on sources from Europe, Ethiopia, and Egypt, it examines the Ethiopian kings’ motivations for sending out their missions in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries – and argues that a desire to acquire religious treasures and foreign artisans drove this early intercontinental diplomacy. Moreover, the Ethiopian initiation of contacts with the distant Christian sphere of Latin Europe appears to have been intimately connected to a local political agenda of building monumental ecclesiastical architecture in the North-East African highlands, and asserted the Ethiopian rulers’ claim of universal kingship and rightful descent from the biblical king Solomon. Shedding new light on the self-identity of a late medieval African dynasty at the height of its power, this book challenges conventional narratives of African-European encounters on the eve of the so-called ‘Age of Exploration'.

In Ethiopian Christianity Philip Esler presents a rich and comprehensive history of Christianity's flourishing. But Esler is ever careful to situate this growth in the context of Ethiopia's politics and culture. In so doing, he highlights the remarkable uniqueness of Christianity in Ethiopia. Ethiopian Christianity begins with ancient accounts of Christianity's introduction to Ethiopia by St. Frumentius and King Ezana in the early 300s CE. Esler traces how the church and the monarchy closely coexisted, a reality that persisted until the death of Haile Selassie in 1974. This relationship allowed the emperor to consider himself the protector of Orthodox Christianity. The emperor's position, combined with Ethiopia's geographical isolation, fostered a distinct form of Christianity--one that features the inextricable intertwining of the ordinary with the sacred and rejects the two-nature Christology established at the Council of Chalcedon. In addition to his historical narrative, Esler also explores the cultural traditions of Ethiopian Orthodoxy by detailing its intellectual and literary practices, theology, and creativity in art, architecture, and music. He provides profiles of the flourishing Protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism. He also considers current challenges that Ethiopian Christianity faces--especially Orthodoxy's relations with other religions within the country, in particular Islam and the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Esler concludes with thoughtful reflections on the long-standing presence of Christianity in Ethiopia and hopeful considerations for its future in the country's rapidly changing politics, ultimately revealing a singular form of faith found nowhere else.

Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia offers an original perspective on how the rulers of Ethiopia - one of the great subcenters of agricultural innovation and development - used land to support their dominion. Crummey draws on all the surviving documents pertaining to the holding and granting of agricultural land in the Ethiopian highlands from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. By examining how social relations affected the conditions for economic production and how people of power drew on the wealth created by society's basic producers, he provides new insight into how ordinary farming and herding folk were incorporated into and affected by the institutions that ruled them.