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THE PLACE OF ABBAY IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL ETHIOPIAN IMPERIAL COURT [Abstract ID: 1211-07]
This paper is a modest attempt to reconstruct and document the history of the Abbay within the broad context of Ethiopian history. It has the aim of filling an existing lacunae in Ethiopian history by studying the Abbay issue based on a systematic collection and analysis of primary and secondary sources. Abbay has been the most significant factor in determining the diplomatic posture of the powers in control of the lower basin for Ethiopia since time immemorial. Particularly, the Abbay has been a primordial factor of interaction and interdependence in the symbiotic relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia. The paper insists that the geographical reality that the source of the Abbay is located outside Egyptian territory has been Egyptians’ major headache. The river’s vital flow, therefore, produced endless speculations and legends. This paper analyses the works of medieval and modern writers who have produced quite an immense and varied literature that blended reality with myth about hydropolitics of the Abbay. It also argues that the question of the source of the Abbay River remained unanswered until the seventeenth century. Although the explorations for the source of the Abbay could not follow the Nile up from Egypt via the Sudan to Ethiopia, eventually Europeans were able to visit the source coming from the direction of the Red Sea. Despite the fact that the written accounts of European travelers blended reality with myth, they served to bring to an end the mysteries surrounding the source of the Abbay and to introduce the little-known Ethiopia to the outside world.