{"id":158,"date":"2026-11-09T08:54:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T13:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/?p=158"},"modified":"2026-10-04T18:10:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T22:10:01","slug":"menz-the-highland-heartland-of-shewa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/158","title":{"rendered":"Menz: The Highland Heartland of Shewa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shewans have a phrase for Menz. They call it <em>ye Amara menech<\/em>, &#8220;the source of the Amhara.&#8221; It is a big claim for a small, cold district at the northern end of the Shewan plateau. But anyone who knows the history of Shewa understands why it is made.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-181\" src=\"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/menz-bernos-levine-1958.jpg\" alt=\"A man of Menz in a bernos, 1958\" width=\"790\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/menz-bernos-levine-1958.jpg 640w, https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/menz-bernos-levine-1958-300x235.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lqOQewn6UVQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Menz is where the Shewan revival began. It sheltered the Christian families of Shewa when the rest of the plateau was lost, it produced the line of rulers that ended with Haile Selassie, and it kept a way of life that many Shewans still regard as the purest form of their own.<\/p>\n<h2>The lie of the land<\/h2>\n<p>Menz lies on a broad, high plateau in what is today the North Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region. Its rivers run west towards the Abbay. Steep cliffs cut one part from another, which makes travel slow. To the east a chain of mountains divides it from the lowlands of Efrata, Gedem and Qawat.<\/p>\n<p>The anthropologist Donald Levine, who lived in Menz for six months during his fieldwork of 1958 to 1961, set out its traditional boundaries: the Mofar river to the south, the Adabay and Wanchet rivers to the west, the Qechene river to the north, and the mountain wall to the east. Within those limits Menz has three parts, Mama Meder, Lalo Meder and Gera Meder, with Gera in the north. Their names are still the names of the local districts.<\/p>\n<p>The local tradition explains them neatly. Three men, Mama, Lalo and Gera, divided the land between them, and Gera, who had the strongest horse, got the largest share. Lindahl&#8217;s gazetteer notes that the real men behind the legend seem to have lived in the late 1600s.<\/p>\n<p>It is high country. Mehal Meda, the main town, stands at 3,132 metres. Mount Abuye Meda, near the eastern edge of the old Gera Midir district, reaches 4,012 metres, the highest point in the zone. Levine described Menz as one of the coldest places in Ethiopia. Barley is the only grain that does well on the highest ground, and in those places teff injera is not the daily bread.<\/p>\n<h2>A harsh place that held<\/h2>\n<p>The first written mention of Menz is not friendly. The chronicle of Emperor Amda Seyon&#8217;s wars in the 1320s, the <em>Glorious Victories<\/em>, names it as &#8220;Manzehel,&#8221; a Muslim province. In the sixteenth century the armies of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim reached the Menz highlands; tradition dates one of those raids to 1531.<\/p>\n<p>What made Menz matter came next. When the Oromo migrations of the late sixteenth century overran most of Shewa, Menz, according to Levine, was practically the only part of Shewa not overrun. The surviving Amhara families took refuge in its mountain strongholds. From there, in the seventeenth century, they began to come back down.<\/p>\n<p>Local tradition goes back further still. Lindahl, summarizing Levine, records traditions that small, isolated Christian families were already established in Menz in the 900s and 1000s. We give that as tradition. The historian Taddesse Tamrat is firmer about the thirteenth century, when he traces a chain of Christian settlements running from Hayq through Menz and Tegulet into central Shewa.<\/p>\n<h2>The home of a dynasty<\/h2>\n<p>The Shewan royal line began in Menz. Negasi Krestos, who ruled from about 1682 to about 1703, was born at Agancha in Gera. He founded the church of Kidane Mehret there and made it his first base. His son Sebestyanos was chief of Menz before he was master of Shewa.<\/p>\n<p>When exactly Menz became part of the Shewan state depends on what you mean by joining. Different accounts give different answers, so it is worth being careful.<\/p>\n<p>The dynasty itself came out of Menz, so in one sense Menz was Shewa&#8217;s founding province. But Menz did not simply submit to its own princes. W. C. Harris, writing in the 1840s, records a tradition that Abiye, whom he calls the &#8220;third king of Efat,&#8221; defeated and subjugated Gole, the independent ruler of Menz. Gole&#8217;s daughter Wolensa was the mother of Zenebework, the queen mother of Sahle Selassie&#8217;s day.<\/p>\n<p>Even then, Harris writes, the men of Menz &#8220;still retain a large share of their ancient independence.&#8221; They deposed governors the king appointed and refused to join the southern campaigns, saying their own feuds kept them busy. Sahle Selassie, who called them &#8220;his own flesh and blood,&#8221; left them to the care of his mother and asked them for only one tribute: <em>sekdat<\/em>, the coarse black woollen cloth of Menz, which was used for the royal tents. Yet when the general Medoko rebelled, the king sent to Menz for help, and its men came in time to decide the battle.<\/p>\n<p>So the most honest answer is this. Menz was the birthplace of the dynasty in the 1680s, was brought under the Shewan crown by Abiye&#8217;s time in the early eighteenth century, according to Harris&#8217;s tradition, and kept a proud semi-autonomy well into the nineteenth.<\/p>\n<h2>Church and monastery<\/h2>\n<p>Menz is famous across Ethiopia for its religious devotion and its strict keeping of the fasts. That reputation rests on its parish churches more than on great monasteries.<\/p>\n<p>The sources name one monastery in particular. Kidane Mehret is an old church in Menz and also the name of its one important monastery. A <em>gedl<\/em> (a saint&#8217;s life) survives of Etche Yohannes, a devout and wealthy monk who taught there in the reign of Emperor Iyasu I (1682 to 1706). Another place of renown is Afqara, a natural fortress used as a political prison. Beyond these, published sources on the monasteries of Menz are thin, and we would welcome help from readers and clergy who know the local houses.<\/p>\n<p>What is certain is how completely Orthodox the district remains. In the 1994 census, 99.56 percent of the people of the old Gera Midirna Keya Gebriel district reported Orthodox Christianity as their religion.<\/p>\n<h2>Grain, wool and the Guassa<\/h2>\n<p>Levine found that the average Menz farm kept 100 to 150 sheep. The wool was used undyed, and the houses were built of stone, so the whole district had a natural-coloured look. Harris noticed the same thing a century earlier: the dark clothes of the people of Menz set them apart from the rest of Shewa. He also noted that salt bars served as money, and that a man&#8217;s wealth was counted by the number of his ploughshares, kept buried until they were needed.<\/p>\n<p>The wool culture has not died. In a 2025 survey, almost all the farmers interviewed in Menz Mama still sheared their sheep, using the wool for the <em>bernos<\/em>, a heavy woollen cloak, and the local cloth called <em>zitet<\/em>. The Menz sheep is now the focus of serious breeding work. A community-based breeding programme that began at Molale, run with the Debre Birhan Agricultural Research Center and international partners, won a gold medal from Ethiopia&#8217;s Ministry of Science and Technology in December 2015. The farmers improved their own breed instead of replacing it with imported stock.<\/p>\n<p>On the eastern rim of Menz lies the Guassa, a high Afro-alpine grassland at 3,200 to 3,700 metres, home to the Ethiopian wolf and the gelada. For more than 400 years, it is reported, the Guassa was managed by the local communities under a system called <em>qero<\/em>. Two elected chiefs enforced the rules on cutting the guassa grass and grazing. The user communities were organized by parish, which placed the grassland under the protection of the church and gave it something of the character of consecrated land.<\/p>\n<p>That system is one of the oldest known community-managed conservation areas in sub-Saharan Africa. It lasted until the land reform after 1974, when all rural land was nationalized and the local institutions were dissolved. The grassland became open to all, and its condition declined badly. Today it is protected again as the Guassa Community Conservation Area.<\/p>\n<h2>Menz in the twentieth century<\/h2>\n<p>Menz kept its role as a refuge and a source of fighters. In the Italian occupation, the elderly patriot Dejazmach Auraris, governor of Menz, led resistance there, and in October 1938 the Italian commander Cavallero flew in to direct operations himself against it.<\/p>\n<p>Levine noticed in 1960 that Menz had only four schools with fewer than 400 children, in an area of 50,000 to 60,000 families. The conservatism that kept Menz Christian through the centuries also made it slow to accept government schooling. Development has come slowly ever since.<\/p>\n<h2>Why Menz matters<\/h2>\n<p>Menz has never been rich. It is cold, high and hard to farm. But the things Shewa is proudest of all have roots there: the royal line, the deep Orthodox faith, the sheep and wool culture, and a community system on the Guassa that protected the land for four centuries.<\/p>\n<p>A visit to Mehal Meda or a walk across the Guassa is a visit to the place where Shewa held on. That is reason enough to know it.<\/p>\n<h2>Sources<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Bernhard Lindahl, <em>Local History in Ethiopia<\/em> (Nordic Africa Institute), Menz entry, summarizing D. N. Levine (Second International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 1963; <em>Wax and Gold<\/em>, 1965), Harris (1844), Abir (1968), Pankhurst (1997) and Mockler (1984). <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/2007\/http:\/\/www.nai.uu.se\/library\/resources\/dossiers\/local_history_of_ethiopia\/M\/ORTMEN.pdf\">Local History in Ethiopia, Menz entry<\/a><\/li>\n<li>William Cornwallis Harris, <em>The Highlands of Aethiopia<\/em>, vol. 2 (London, 1844), pp. 341\u00e2\u20ac\u201c343. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/highlandsofthiop21844harr\">vol. 2<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Donald N. Levine, &#8220;On the History and Culture of Manz,&#8221; <em>Journal of Semitic Studies<\/em> 9, no. 1 (1964). <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/jss\/9.1.204\">On the History and Culture of Manz<\/a> (known through Lindahl&#8217;s summary; not consulted directly)<\/li>\n<li>Donald N. Levine, <em>Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 1965). <a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/W\/bo19351153.html\">Wax and Gold<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Taddesse Tamrat, <em>Church and State in Ethiopia 1270\u00e2\u20ac\u201c1527<\/em> (Oxford, 1972). <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/church-and-state-in-ethiopia\">Church and State in Ethiopia<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Teklewold Belayhun, Aweke Engdawork and Amine Mustefa, &#8220;Sheep Production System and Farmers&#8217; Breeding Practices in North Shewa and South Wollo Zones of Amhara Region, Central Ethiopia,&#8221; <em>International Journal of Veterinary Science and Research<\/em> (2025). <a href=\"https:\/\/www.veteringroup.us\/articles\/IJVSR-11-254.php\">Sheep Production System<\/a><\/li>\n<li>ICARDA, &#8220;Research on Menz sheep breeding awarded in Ethiopia&#8221; (6 February 2016). <a href=\"https:\/\/icarda.org\/media\/news\/research-menz-sheep-breeding-awarded-ethiopia\">Research on Menz sheep breeding<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Wikipedia, &#8220;Menz,&#8221; &#8220;Mehal Meda,&#8221; &#8220;Gera Midirna Keya Gebriel,&#8221; &#8220;Guassa Community Conservation Area,&#8221; &#8220;Negasi Krestos.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Menz\">Menz<\/a> , <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mehal_Meda\">Mehal Meda<\/a> , <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gera_Midirna_Keya_Gebriel\">Gera Midirna Keya Gebriel<\/a> , <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Guassa_Community_Conservation_Area\">Guassa Community Conservation Area<\/a> , <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Negasi_Krestos\">Negasi Krestos<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Image: &#8220;Amhara man wearing Bernos with Donald Levine, Menz, 1958,&#8221; via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Menz was the cold highland home of the Shewan dynasty, a district of barley, wool and monasteries that stayed inside the Shewan story from the beginning.menz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shewans have a phrase for Menz. They call it ye Amara menech, &#8220;the source of the Amhara.&#8221; It is a big claim for a small, cold district at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shewa.org\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}