4to, (212 x 174 mm). 158 ff. Latin title and facing title in Amharic (printed in red and black), text in Amharic printed in red and black. Contemporary blind-stamped calf, worn and rubbed, foot of spine chipped. One or two minor stains and scattered foxing, overall in excellent condition.

According to Jowett, Abu Rumi served as a translator for the Scots explorer James Bruce at the age of 22. Abu Rumi left Ethiopia in his 28th year, visiting Cairo, Jerusalem, Syria and India, where he resided in the house of Sir William Jones. "We are not told what he is supposed to have taught that great orientalist", writes Edward Ullendorff, "but presumably it was a smattering of Ge'ez and Amharic poetry" (Ullendorff, p. 66).

While travelling through Cairo, at which time his age is estimated at "about fifty or fifty-five years" (Jowett), Abu Rumi became very ill and was taken in by M. Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville (1772-1822), the French Consul in Cairo. He provided Abu Rumi with food, lodging, and medical care, as well as, more significantly, writing materials. Over a period of ten years, Abu Rumi produced his complete translation of the Bible into Amharic. He then made one more journey to Jerusalem, dying of the plague in Cairo.

The manuscript containing his translation was eventually purchased by William Jowett on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He took it back to Britain, where it was typeset and printed. These printed copies were sent back to Ethiopia. There were a number of editions, different editors making some changes, but the original work is that of Abu Rumi.

A copy of Abu Rumi's Amharic Bible translation was found in a monastery in the early 1860s and launched a church renewal movement that eventually led to the founding of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus.

Provenance: from the library of Archibald Smith-Sligo (1815-91), with bookplate.

Darlow/Moule 1556; Gustav Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia (Stockholm, 1978); William Jowett, "Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815 to 1820", in: Furtherance of the Objects of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1824). Jack Fellman, "The First Amharic Bible Translation", The Bible Translator 28 (1977), 154 ff.; Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible (Oxford, 1968).