Das geographische Traktat in der Weltgeschichte des Wäldä Amid - Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar

In my dissertation I deal with the geographical treatise in the Universal History of Giyorgis Wäldä ʾAmid, which is known in Ethiopic literature as Tarikä Wäldä ʾAmid and in its Arabic version by the name of its author Ǧirǧis al-Makīn Ibn al-ʿAmīd or as al-Maǧmūʿ al-mubārak „the blessed collection“. In my partial edition I collected all available manuscripts that contain the geographical treatise, provided a translation to German and a commentary on its geographical content as well as linguistic peculiarities. Ǧirǧis al-Makīn Ibn al-ʿAmīd the Elder was born in 1206 AD in Cairo in a respected Christian family. Like some of his ancestors, Ǧirǧis was member of the Diwan of the army and thus held an important function in the military administration in the time of the last Ayyubid sultans. His position caused not only merits to him but also troubles. He fell out of favour during the subsequent Mamluk period and was arrested several times due to allegations of high treason according to some later sources, that claim a fifteen year imprisonment for him during the reign of Sultan Baybars. Most probably did al-Makīn write his Universal History either during or after this time of arrest. Whether or not al-Makīn may claim a high degree of originality for himself or did rather copy large sections either from his contemporary co-religionist Abu Šākir ibn al-Rāhib or from his coeval Ibn al-Wāṣil is a matter of dispute. Later research opted for the latter picture of widespread plagiarism in his opus. Yet alone the latest sections of his work that concern his lifetime are regarded to reflect his own outlook. The section on geography in various aspects is included in the first part of the compendium that deals with the pre-Islamic history, and more specific with the myth of the construction of the tower of Babel. This legend sparked an explanation of the alleged 72 peoples that are split in three phylae following the three Biblical sons of Noah in Semites, Hamites and Japhetites. After picturing the genealogical lines of the Old Testament in Genesis 10, the reader is informed about four peripheral zones that the author postulated at the outer fringes of the world to the East, South, West and North with specific qualities of heat, cold, wetness or dryness. These qualities make each of them inhabitable, while the middle zone alone exhibits comfortable conditions. Describing the middle zone as the only hospitable the author subsequently turns to the description of form of the Earth and the path of the Sun before referring to the maximum of daylight that vary according to its geographical position in each of seven climates. These climates, as many other aspects of this geographical treatise, correlate to antique concepts. They are described again in more detail in a following section. Another section depict the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans as the two major seas – the latter named the ‚Green Sea‘. This section concludes the geographical treatise that was the object of my edition and analysis. All the seven sections that form the geographical treatise represent specific aspects and distinctive genres of the Historical Geography for many centuries back to pre-Christian times. The geographical treatise contains naturally a large number of toponyms and ethnonyms – some of them had become outdated by the time of the original manuscript and even more by the time of its translation to Ethiopic. Due to the widespread orthographic ambivalence for a number of uncommon toponyms and ethnonyms, which can emerge exclusively because of the misunderstanding of diacritical dots in the Arabic script, it was possible to me to find evidence for two independent translations that resulted in two distinct recensions of the Tarikä Wäldä Amid. I have given the name α-recension for the earlier and β-recension for the more frequent later translation. Following indications in the incipit or desinit of some manuscripts it is possible to claim the reign of ʿAṣ́e Zärʾa Yaʿqob (1434 to 1468 AD) as the rather secure date of translation of the α-recension and the time span from 1525 to 1540 AD during the reign of ʿAṣ́e Ləbnä Dəngəl as the most probable date of translation of the β-recension. In its linguistic part the dissertation addresses the aforementioned great diversity and ambivalence in the orthography of proper nouns that go beyond the ever observed misconceptions and garbles but also include divergent multiple standards in the orthography of place name according to their shape and their familiarity to contemporary scribes. Furthermore a number of genuine Arabic features have been detected in this short piece of the translation that the text Tarikä Wäldä ʾAmid represents. Among others one can list Arabized names, adjectives of provenance ending in -i, some specific geographical terminology, idiomatic phraseology and other technical terms, the construction of l-omu instead of b-omu, which designates expression of possession or belonging in accordance with the arabic la-hum, topicalisation by the means of the conjunction wä- … wä- … according to Arabic wa-ʾammā … fa- …, the emergence of asyndetic attributive sentences, ordinal numbers frequently used in postposition, and an early instance of the letter ሻ.