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Thank you. I had never heard of these people, so thank you especially for explaining the material and ideological conditions in which they lived.

Their thoughts are certainly similar to some Enlightenment thinkers, but I think that's because they were living in similar times of great social change. The unique geographical position of Ethiopia, which gave it contact with so many different cultures, undoubtedly has a lot to do with it as well.

And the Ethiopians thought of this stuff BEFORE anyone had ever conceived of the European Enlightenment. Thanks for opening a window to a rich history.

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Great writeup! Articles like this are perfect for shining light on non-european thinkers and inventors, crushing that myth that their peoples never achieved anything. They did! People just haven't read about it.

The more I read of the achievements of various cultures the more obvious it becomes to me that all humans are the alike and think alike.

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Thank you!

Until we recognise the accomplishments of societies across all parts of the world, our understanding of global history will remain incomplete

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Thank you for the article; this is a fascinating reminder of the diversity of philosophical traditions around the world and the ways in which original and pioneering thought can emerge even in relatively isolated contexts. It also underscores the importance of individual reason and questioning in the pursuit of philosophical and spiritual truth.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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What do you think of the accusations that the Hatata is a fake concocted by an Italian monk in the 19th century?

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most of them are not familiar with Ge'ez literature that influenced the Hatata, and have simply not read Claude Sumner's work on the Hatata

I recently got an email directing me to the doubts raised by Anais Wion about the Hatata's authorship, and i feel i should reproduce my long response here;

"Why I consider Anaïs Wion's arguments to lack sufficient evidence, why I consider her to be 'unfamiliar with Ge'ez literature (about the Hatata and its probable influences), and why I think the only evidence she presents is purely circumstantial:

let's use the example of another famous African manuscript, to show how uncovering a forgery is done right.

The Tarikh al-Fattash is a Timbuktu chronicle about the West African empire of Songhai that was once thought to have been written in the 17th century. Copies of it (labeled A, B and C) were re-discovered in the late 19th century, taken to the BnF library, and translated by Octave Houdas and Maurice Delafosse, who published it in 1913. After this first publication, a text which was similar to Ms A and B was found and added to the appendix of the second publication.

But it wouldn't be long before other historians and philologists noticed suspicious sections of 'Ms C' which pointed to later tampering by a forger, these included a 'prophesy' about a 19th-century caliph in Massina (the region where the copies were found), and a section about how that caliph would inherit a group of royal slaves bequeathed by the Songhai rulers.

In the 1970s, the historians Nehemiah Levtzion and John Hunwick identified the culprit to be the 19th-century Massina scholar named Nuh al-Tahir, who was writing on behalf of his patron, the Massina caliph Amhad Lobbo, so they subsequently proved that 'Ms C', was the "forgery". Although they still debated about the text's authorship, which was attributed to a 16th-century scholar Mahmud Kati yet contained sections well into the 1660s. They identified Mahmud Kati's grandson as Ibn al-Mukhtar from one of the Ms, and thus argued that he was the final author of the chronicle.

However, this argument fell apart in the mid-2010s when another historian, Mauro Nobili, discovered a text written by Nuh al-Tahir who incipit begins with 'Tarikh al-Fattash' that mentions the Caliph prophesy, the royal slaves, and identified it as the 'draft' of 'Ms C'. He also shows that Nuh al-Tahir was a very prominent scholar in Massina, heading the caliphate's 'upper parliament', and composing a number of works of Arabic literature --proving that he had the capacity to write such a detailed chronicle

[this is the first substantial evidence of both the author and the title, both had previously only been speculated]

Comparing Ms; A, B and the appendix of Vol.2, Mauro Nobili argued that these represent copies of the original 17th-century chronicle of Ibn al-Mukhtar and were incomplete. He based this not just on the incipit of the three manuscripts: “This historical note was composed at the request of the honorable and brave Askiyà Dawud" versus Ms C, which begins with "Mahmud Kati says …", but also the similarity of their content with another contemporary chroncile about Songhai called the Tarikh al-Sudan, whose authorship was certain, versus Ms C whose author removed, edited and added entirely new sections to the Ms A, B and appendix.

[showing that the Nuh al-Tahir was familiar with both 17th-century chronicles and the career of the eminent scholar Mahmud Kati who appears in the Tarikh al-Sudan]

Nobili was also able to acquire copies of a 'Risala' written by Nuh al-Tahir that was addressed to many West African states. This Risala contained pronouncements based on the Tarikh al-Fattash that "proved" Nuh la-Tahir claims of the Massina ruler Amhad Lobbo being the prophesied descendant of the Askiya of Songhai, as well as Lobbo being the long-awaited caliph, and the inheritor of the Askiya's royal slaves.

Nobili was thus not only able to prove the motivations of the forger and why he misattributed his own work to Mahmud Kati, but also show how he undertook the forgery and the evidence he left behind proving he was the real author, such as the Risala and the draft.

The introduction of Mauro Nobili's book on the discovery of this west African forgery titled; 'Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith' reproduces a famous quote by the historian Marc Bloch:

"To establish the fact of forgery is not enough. It is further necessary to discover its motivations"

Comparing the meticulous work of Mauro Nobili to that done by Anaïs Wion shows the deficiencies in the approach of the latter:

The evidence she presents by comparing the "real" and "fake" authors, eg the names, birthdays, and journeys of Zara Yacob and Juste d'Urbino, is very weak and doesn't match as neatly as Mauro Nobili's evidence does.

The short manuscript of Juste d'Urbino which she uses to compare with the Hatatas is very insufficient and is of little use for a philologist looking to compare the two texts (this was something also Sumner discovered, as i will explain below), especially when contrasted with the very detailed work Mauro Nobili undertook in meticulously comparing six texts; Ms A, B, C, appendix, Tarikh la-Fattash, and the Risala.

My instance on comparing Mauro Nobili's work on the Tarikh al-Fattash's forgery to Anais Wion's work is, to quote the words of Ralph Lee, Mehari Worku and Wendy Laura Belcher: "The burden of proof lies on those who argue against Ethiopian authorship."

And the burden of proof of the Hatata was made even higher by the publication of Sumner's 4-volume magnum opus on the Ethiopian philosophy of the Hatata, in which he demonstrates his very intimate knowledge of the Ge'ez literature that influenced the Hatata.

The strongest defense by Sumner for Zara Yacob's authorship of the Hatata is in his placement of the text in its historical context. Not just in the intellectual and cultural background of Zara Yacob (such as the various texts used in Ethiopian schools which are quoted very frequently in the Hatata), but also his comparison of the Hatata with three philosophical works circulating in 17th century Ethiopia; Mäşhafä fälasfa, the Fisalgos, and Skəndəs’.

Sumner dedicates three volumes to comparing the Hatata with the Mäşhafä fälasfa (Vol.1) and the Skəndəs’ (Vol. 4), not just on their philosophical influences, but also on a philological basis, with many passages being lifted almost in their entirety from both classical texts into the Hatata by both Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat (this latter author is often overlooked in arguments against the Hatata's authenticity). These arguments comparing the Hatata and dozens of Ge'ez texts available to a 17th-century Ethiopian scribe are summarized in (Vol 2), where he then compares the evidence against the works of Juste d'Urbino, proving that the latter was "not the author of the Hatatas, neither is his scribe under his editorship".

Only in (Vol.3) does Sumner deal with the Hatata on its own as a philosophical treatise.

Until Anais Wion:

-Produces something the sort of overwhelming evidence gathered by Mauro Nobili

-Disproves beyond doubt the meticulous comparisons between Ge'ez texts and the Hatata that were made by Sumner

-Provides evidence for the objectives of Juste d'Urbino for writing the Hatata

-Identifies the other persons mentioned in the Hatata, most importantly Walda Heywat (whose work is in fact longer and more detailed than Zara Yacob's), and his father Lord Habtu.

-Uncovers inconsistencies with the historical events (or proves that Juste d'Urbino was very knowledgeable of Gondarine history and geography)

-Uncovers draft copies of the Hatata or a similar document,

Her argument that the Hatata is a forgery has little merit and should be disregarded.

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Thanks! Great stuff

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