The Forgotten African philosopher: Zer'a Yaqob

Zera Yacob was an Ethiopian philosopher from the city of Aksum in the 17th century. His 1667 treatise, developed around 1630 and known in the original Ge'ez language as the Hatata (Inquiry), has been compared to René Descartes' Discours de la méthode.

In 1852, a remarkable manuscript was discovered by a Capuchin monk in the highlands of Ethiopia. The text told about a man named Zera Yacob, born in the land of the priests of Aksum, educated by traditional Ethiopian scholars and driven from his home by the conflict that broke out between the two groups. Fleeing in the night he made for the wilderness, and near the banks of the Takkaze river found refuge in a remote cave where he ‘meditated all day on people’s quarrels and wickedness, and on the wisdom of the Lord their creator, who keeps silent when they act wickedly in his name’.