The Chronicle of King Śarḍa Dǝngǝl (r.1563‒1597): A Critical Edition with annotated English Translation

• Applicant: Solomon Gebreyes Beyene, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 445841073

The Chronicle of King Śarḍa Dǝngǝl (1563‒1597), written during the reign of the king, is one of the best Gǝʿǝz historiographic works of Ethiopia. It is unique in terms of the abundant historical data it presents and its literary quality. It is an indispensable primary source for the study of the history of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, as well as for understanding medieval world literature. The earlier (1907) edition (and the French translation) of the Chronicle by Conti Rossini was based on three manuscripts, but neglected five more manuscripts that are very important witnesses for establishing the text close to the original. The project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG Projektnummer 445841073) for four years (2021‒2024), has two main objectives: first, to prepare a critical edition of the chronicle by applying the so-called Neo-Lachmannian (stemmatic reconstructivist) method based on eight manuscripts; second, to translate the Gǝʿǝz critically established text of the chronicle into English and annotate it. As of January 2021, the project has undergone a variety of activities to reconstruct the re-edited Gǝʿǝz version of the chronicle, manually collating the eight manuscripts, analysing variants, identifying and examining conjunctive errors and establishing the stemmma codicum and critical text. A classical text editor is used for the presentation of the edition, which contains three apparatuses for the edited text: variant apparatus, punctuation apparatus, and source apparatus. The editing is still in progress, which will be accomplished at the end of 2024. Aside from the main work of the edition, other parallel activities, including analysing the text and studying the textual tradition, presenting the results of the project at conferences, submitting articles for publication, and conducting research visits were also accomplished. The international workshop held as part of the project from 29 to 30 June 2023 was remarkable and extremely successful. This was indeed one of the most important activities in 2023. Workshop contributions are currently being edited and peer-reviewed, but it will take considerable time to complete, and it will be published in the Supplement Aethiopica Journal, a monograph series, in 2025. Because of the complex and time-consuming process of edition, translation, and annotation, the project cannot be completed in 2024 as planned. Only the edition work will be completed by the end of 2024, considering what has been done so far. Despite having started the task of translating and annotating the chronicle, full dedication will be given to it after completing the edition, which means funding will be needed in 2025. Thus, based on the work already done and the tasks that need to be completed, the applicant is requesting an extension on the research project by one year, that is, from 1 January 2025 till 31 December 2025.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants