Abstract

This introduction aims to contextualise the contributions to this edited volume by providing an overview of the Ḥatäta Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and its companion text, the Ḥatäta Wäldä Həywät: the manuscripts which contain them, the narrative of the texts themselves, the historical context of their setting, the circumstances of their composition and discovery, and the controversy over their authorship. I begin with a description of the manuscripts themselves and the context of their “discovery” in the middle of the nineteenth century as part of Catholic missionary activity in the Horn of Africa. I then turn to the historical background of the setting of the Ḥatätas in the Ethiopian Empire of the seventeenth century, in particular the political and religious conflict that forms its essential narrative context and provokes its philosophical reflections: the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire by the Adal Sultanate, the conversion of Emperor Susənyos to Catholicism and the resulting civil war, the accession of Fasilädäs, and the restoration of Orthodoxy. I examine how these political events shaped the life of the protagonist of the Ḥatäta Zär’a Ya‛ǝqob and influenced the general problematic of his philosophy. The second part of the introduction turns to the reception history of the text. I divide this history into five periods: Discovery to Catalogue (1854-1859); Catalogue to Edition (1859-1904); Edition to Refutation (1904-1920); Refutation to Rehabilitation (1920-1976); and Limbo (1976-present), each of which traces the development of original arguments on the authorship question and outlines the cultural politics in the background of these arguments. I then reflect on the state of the debate in contemporary Ethiopia and Euro-American academia. A final section concludes the introduction by briefly considering the philosophical significance of the Ḥatätas and the debate concerning their authorship.