Twelve Years in Ethiopia is the intriguing, little-known memoir of Arnaud-Michel d'Abbadie, a French explorer of the early nineteenth century who was one of the first modern Europeans to visit and describe the interior of Ethiopia. This lively and detailed work of discovery, which has never been translated into English, gives students of African history and European colonialism a fascinating look at the confrontation of two civilizations in a unique land, the oldest independent nation of Africa and one of the most distant outposts of ancient Christianity.
Beginning in early 1838, Abbadie traveled with his brother, the Catholic priest, Antoine-Thomson d'Abbadie, from Egypt to the Red Sea coast of what is now Eritrea, and into the cities of Adwa and Gondar in Tigray. Book 1 of "Twelve Years in Ethiopia" follows the brothers as they explore the Muslim trading port of Moussawa, meet the feudal princes of Tigray, witness the everyday life of villagers and peasants, and set in motion a confrontation of European and Ethiopian Christianity.
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