Roman law in Ethiopia: traces of a seventeenth century transplant

Abstract

This study tracks the ancient Ethiopian Fetḥa Nagaśt (‘Law of the Kings’) to its origins, which date back to compilations of Roman-Byzantine law from the fifth to the ninth centuries, first translated from Greek into Arabic by Coptic Christian jurists in Egypt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and into the classical Ethiopic language (Ge’ez) in the mid-seventeenth century. The transfer of this Eastern Roman torso of law to the radically different social environment of Ethiopia may be ranked as one of the earliest systemic ‘receptions’ in comparative legal history. While never attaining the dominant status of Roman law in medieval European practice, the survival and resilience of the Fetḥa Nagaśt in the subsequent evolution of the country’s legal and political system from the seventeenth century onwards has indeed been remarkable – including its ‘inspirational’ role acknowledged in twentieth-century modern codifications. What distinguishes Ethiopia from other ‘mixed legal systems’, though, is the absence of a ‘genetic’ relationship with any one foreign legal system.