Fetha Negest

The Fetha Negest, Ge'ez for Justice of the Kings, is a theocratic legal code compiled around 1240 in Arabic by the Coptic Egyptian Christian writer Abu'l-Fada'il ibn al-Assal, drawing on apostolic writings and Byzantine legal tradition. It was translated into Ge'ez in fifteenth-century Ethiopia, where local law was incorporated into an expanded version, and its opening sections address ecclesiastical matters such as church hierarchy and the sacraments while its later sections cover civil concerns including family relationships, financial obligations, and administration. It remained Ethiopia's supreme law for nearly seven centuries until Emperor Haile Selassie I introduced a modern constitution in 1931, and it continued to influence later Ethiopian law, including the 1960 civil code, which credited it as an inspiration. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/