The Hatata Inquiries

Two short philosophical texts in Ge'ez from seventeenth-century Ethiopia. Ḥatäta means inquiry. In the first, Zera Yacob tells how religious persecution under the emperor Susenyos forced him to flee and live for two years in a cave, where he examined the competing claims of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Finding that each faith condemns the others, he concludes that God gave human beings reason so they could test every teaching, accepting only what agrees with it. He argues for God's existence as the creator who orders the world, and judges laws by whether they fit the order of creation: he rejects rules that treat women as unclean, defends marriage of one man and one woman as equals, and condemns slavery. The second text, by his student Walda Heywat, offers more practical moral advice in the same spirit. Their authenticity was challenged in 1920 by Carlo Conti Rossini, though the 2023 translators and many other scholars defend them.

It shows a rationalist philosophy of religion and ethics developed in Africa independently of Europe, and it raises questions about reason, tolerance and equality in a vivid first-person voice.