Chronicle of King Galawdewos (1540-1559): V.

The Chronicle of King Galawdewos (r. 1540-1559), reporting the nineteen

years of the king’s reign, is one of the most useful and significant

historical sources for the history of Christian-Muslim relation in the

sixteenth century of Ethiopia and the Horn. It represents a peculiar

text in Ge'ez historiography both because of its narrative structure and

the underlying sources used by the chronicler. Numerous Arabisms appear

in the text, which eventually suggest that the Chronicle was written by

a person with an outstanding knowledge of Arabic, in 1561. The book

presents a new critical edition based on all available manuscripts and

provides some detailed introductory notes and an English translation.

The new edition yields philological findings concerning the Chronicle of

King Galawdewos in particular and new inputs that call for re-editing

the Ethiopian royal chronicles in general. It also adds valuable by now

not recorded items for Ge'ez lexicography and corrects historical

distortions resulted from the previous edition. Above all, the work

provides a text-critically established edition of the Chronicle of King

Galawdewos accompanied by an up-to-date concisely annotated translation,

which offer new insights into the late medieval history and

historiography of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.