Women in the Historical Legal Tradition of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Ethiopia

Abstract

Hundreds of legal records of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries attest that women were landholders, administrators, clerics and judges. In order to determine the exact significance of these historical documents, the paper examines the general legal context within which they were produced. The written law of the land, the Fətḥa Nägäśt, is very restrictive of women’s rights. When analysed in light of contracts, judgments as well as historical narratives (such as chronicles), it becomes evident that women’s legal status always depends upon the interplay of gender with other dimensions of inequalities, and in particular with inherited economic circumstances. It is by correlating functions and domainal privileges with landed wealth that could legally be owned by women that customs moderated gender prejudices.