Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi

eforms into Ethiopia. In 1626, the Catholic Patriarch Afonso Mendes imposed a
number of changes on the ancestral religious practices of the Ethiopians. Social
unrest and civil war followed and Susneyos was forced to resign. His son
Fasiladas, who succeeded him, rejected Catholicism upon his accession to the
throne and, in 1633, expelled or killed all Jesuit missionaries. He ended his reign
by abdicating in favor of his son, Fasilides. He was buried at the church of
Genneta Iyasus.
The Emperor ran afoul of Zara Yacob, a seventeenth century Ethiopian
philosopher and religious thinker, whose treatise, in the original Ge'ez language
known as the Hatata (1667), has often been compared to Descartes' Discours de
la methode (1637). In the period, when African philosophical literature was
significantly oral in character, Yacob's inquiry, transmitted by writing, was one of
the few exceptions.
"Behold, I have begun an inquiry such as has not been attempted
before. You can complete what I have begun so that the people of
our country will become wise with the help of God and arrive at the
science of truth, lest they believe in falsehood, trust in depravity, go
from vanity to vanity, that they know the truth and love their brother,
lest they quarrel about their empty faith as they have been doing till
now."
From The Treatise of Zara Yacob.
Zara Yacob (spelled also Zar'a Ya'aqob or Zar'a Ya'eqob) was born into a
farmer's family near Aksum, the capital of the ancient Greek-influenced kingdom
in northern Ethiopia. Yacob's name means "The Seed of Jacob"; "Zara" is the
Aramaic word for "seed." "By Christian baptism I was named Zara Yacob, but
people called me Warqye," he wrote later in the Treatise. Although his father was
poor, he supported Yacob's education. Yacob attended the traditional schools
and became acquainted with the Psalms of David, which deeply influence his
thought. After having returned to his native Aksum, Yacob taught there for four
years.
Yacob was educated in the Coptic Christian faith, but he was also familiar
with other Christian sects, Islam, Judaism, and Indian religion. A truth seeker,
who decided to rely on his own inner voice, Yacob was denounced before King
Negus Susenoys (r. 1607-1632), who had turned to the Roman Catholic faith and
ordered his subjects to follow his own example. Attempts to change the age-old
rituals were met with resistance and tens of thousands were martyred.
Yacob fled into exile with some gold and the Book of Psalms. On his way
to Shoa in the south he found at the foot of the Takkaze River a cave. Yacob
lived there alone for two years, praying and developing his philosophy, which he
presented in the Hatata. In this book Yacob later said, that "I have learnt more