Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Prester John of the Indies by C. F. Beckingham and G. W. B.

Huntingford
Review by: Wolf Leslau
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Oct. - Dec., 1962, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Oct.
- Dec., 1962), pp. 560-561
Published by: American Oriental Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/597530

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 REVIEWS OF BOOKS
The Prester John of the Indies. Edited by C. F.
BECKINGHAm and G. W. B. HUNTINGFORD.
2 vols. Pp. xvi + 617. Published for The
Hakluyt Society by Cambridge University
Press, 1961. (The Hakluyt Society. Second
series: no. CXIV).
The first Portuguese embassies sent to Ethiopia
were those of Pero da Cavilha and of Joas Gomes.
Pero da Cavilhh was sent by King Joas II of
Portugal in 1487 to explore the East. Johs
Gomes, a priest, was sent by Tristdo da Cunha
when the Portuguese occupied Socotra in 1507.
Neither of them returned to Portugal. The Por-
tuguese mission of which Francisco Alvares was
a member was the first embassy from Europe
known to have reached the Ethiopian court and
returned in safety. The mission landed at Mas-
sawa on the west coast of the Red Sea in April
1520 and re-embarked there six years later. This
mission was sent to Ethiopia at the instigation of
Alburquerque, the governor of the Portuguese pos-
sessions in the East who "hoped that a contribu-
tion of Ethiopian manpower with Portuguese
naval strength might enable him to overthrow
Muslem dominion in the Red Sea and destroy the
sanctuary of Mecca" (p. 2). The mission arrived
to Ethiopia at the time of the King Lebna Dengel.
The account which Alvares wrote of the mission
which he accompanied was first printed at Libson
by Luis Rodriguez in 1540. According to the
editors of the text under review it is "not likely
that Alvares supervised the printing of his book in
1540, and it is possible that he was already dead"
(p. 7).
The Portuguese text was translated into English
by Lord Stanley of Alderley and was published in
1881 by the Hakluyt Society under the title " Nar-
rative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia."
There was also an earlier version which the
Italian humanist Battista Ramusio had included
in his great collection of travel narratives, Navi- find this Arabic title at the Ethiopian court. It is
gationi et Viaggi, the first volume of which de-
voted to Africa, was published in Venice in 1550.
The present version is a revision of Stanley's trans-fied with the Amharic noun, but it should be
lation, but it also takes account of additions and
variants of Ramusio's text.
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Alvares's report is not only an important source
for the ethnographic details about the country but
also for Ethiopian history in the period of Lebna
Dengel. Alvares was a keen observer of the re-
ligious and court life of the country. It is true
that at times he indulges in unnecessary descrip-
tions that do not add any useful information, but
on the whole the student in things Ethiopic will
find a wealth of information in his account.
The editors are to be congratulated for having
put at our disposal this account and for having
served us with a model of editing a text. They
made an effort-and most often succeeded-to
identify the Ethiopian place names and the techni-
cal terms given by Alvares. Their job was not an
easy one since Alvares most probably did not know
Amharic and his rendering of Ethiopic names is
defective.
The edition consists of an Introduction, the
translation of the text with numerous footnotes
and appendices by G. W. B. Huntingford: I. A
seventeenth-century Ethiopian description of Ak-
sum. II. The rock-cut churches of LUlibAlA. III.
The tabot. IV. The Ethiopian calendar. V. Offi-
cial titles and terms used by Alvares. VI. Notes
on maps: 1. Gastaldi's map of 1564, by A. A.
Skelton; 2. Modern maps. VII. Gazetteer of
place-names.
In the observations that follow the transcription
is that of the editors. Alvares tells us that a
Christian and a Moor from Arquiquo (Arqiqo)
came to see him. "The Christian said that the
town of Arquiquo belonged to Christians " (p. 54).
Note that at present nearly all the inhabitants of
Arquiqo are Moslems.
Page 80, n. 3, read bdtage- instead of bdlagi; p.
88, n. 2, read tef instead of tef.
The Alicaxi of Alvares explained as " ouvidor or
major-domo" because he receives and does justice
is identified by the editors (p. 94, no. 2) as the
Arabic al-q&di "the judge." It is surprising to
rather the alaqd as seen by the authors on p. 552.
The " Malaganha " of Alvares is correctly identi-
malkansnha instead of malakania, malkania.
On p. 238 Alvares writes: "We were going
560
 Reviews
from the sea to the Court, and a young man, a
servant of the Prester, whom they called calacem,
was guiding us." I wonder whether the calacem
is not to be identified with qdlds even though it
means "port-parole du roi."
The expression hunca hiale huchia abetom
"what you commanded, lord, here I bring it"
(p. 282) is indeed obscure. The editors identify
it with enneho yazzazu abito "here (they are),
whom you ordered, Sir." However, hunca is per-
haps rather enka "here! ", hiale probably eyyalh
"while you say."
The cord worn round the neck by the Christian
Ethiopians is mdtab, not matab (320, n. 11).
Alvares tells us (p. 390) that "they generally
eat [what I think] is cress seed, and they make it
with a sauce and call it tebba," the tebba being
identified by the editors with ddbbo which, how-
ever, means ""bread." The tebba would rather
be the Tigrinya siibhi " sauce," pronounced *tibhi,
tabbi in the Amharic way.
Studies on the Civilization of Islam. By HAMIL-
TON A. R. GIBB, edited by STANFORD J. SHAW
and WILLIAM R. POLK. Pp. 369. Boston:
BEACON PREss, 1962. $7.50.
In this volume the editors have assembled a
number of Sir Hamilton Gibb's previously pub-
lished articles and have grouped them under three
major headings: mediaeval Islamic history;
Islamic institutions, philosophy and religion; and
contemporary intellectual currents. As the author
observes in his preface, a certain unity has been
"imposed" on these articles by "a slowly matur-
ing conviction that literature and history, both
being expressions of a living society, cannot be
studied in isolation from one another without dis-
tortion of the underlying reality." Anticipating
possible criticism that the generalizations pre-
sented in some of these articles "may distort or
even falsify to some extent the complexity of the
actual data," Sir Hamilton points out that "be-
hind each generalization there lies a considerable
body of detailed study of the original sources."
Anyone familiar with Gibb's wide-ranging and
painstaking work with Arabic source material
knows this to be true.
The fifteen articles reproduced here were origi-
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of Books 561
The editors state (p. 435, n. 3) that the inhabi-
tants of the country round the lake Zway are
Gurage. While it is true that the inhabitants of
the five islands of the Lake Zway speak a Gurage
dialect of the Eastern group, the inhabitants
around the lake use Galla.
The names of the islands are in Amharic: Tul-
luguddo, Tiddiicca, Fundurro, Galina (not Kelila
of p. 436, no. 1), and Dibri Sina. Their respec-
tive names in Laqi (the language of Zway) are:
Dibri Sayon or Ddbrd Con, Aysat, Famat, Galila,
and Diibr Sina.
The Urbarag are not one of the " Seven
Houses" (i. e. tribes) of Gurage (p. 583-4), the
" Seven Houses " being Chaha, Muher, Aklil,
Gyeto, Gumer, Ennemor, and Eza.
These minor observations should not detract the
reader from the high quality of the edition of an
extremely useful work written on Ethiopia.
WOLF LESLAU
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES
nally published in an equal number of different
journals and Festschrifts, some of them quite diffi-
cult of access except in very large libraries, and
range in date of composition over 30 years from
1928 to 1958. The first section includes several
essays dealing with early Islam, such as "The
Evolution of Government in Early Islam" and
"Arab-Byzantine Relations under the -Umayyad
Caliphate," the latter first published in Dumbar-
ton Oaks Papers; two studies of Saladin's career,
his armies and his achievement; and concludes
with Gibb's excellent article on Arabic and Persian
historiography entitled " Tarikh," which originally
appeared in the supplement to the first edition of
the Encyclopaedia of Islam. In the second sec-
tion are five articles, of which two deal with the
theory of the Caliphate, one with Ibn Klihaldun's
political theory, one with Islamic religious thought,
and one (in Arabic) with the beginnings of prose
composition and the development of literary style.
The final section includes a series of essays on
contemporary Arabic literature( published in the
BSOS), and an article translated from the French
on the reaction against western culture in the
Middle East.
An appendix contains a bibliography of Gibb's
publications, arranged chronologically, from 1923