Balabat ( Amharic: ባላባት, romanized: balabat or balebat, lit: 'with father' compare with English Patrician) was a largely traditional

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

social class of wealthy land owners who lived on rent collected from their tenant framers (gebbars). Balabats were below the Mesafint (hereditary nobility "princes") and equal to the Mekwanint (appointed nobility "officers") in the

class hierarchy A class hierarchy or inheritance tree in computer science is a classification of object types, denoting objects as the instantiations of classes (class is like a blueprint, the object is what is built from that blueprint) inter-relating the vario ...

. They were closely related to, commonly married to, and had the same economic base on land as the Mesafints and Mekwanints. Balabats officially ceased to exist when

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...

was abolished in 1975.

Politics

Balabats were a powerful figure in Ethiopian society and, had substantial influence on its politics. They were heavily represented in the imperial parliament that was established in 1931. Emperor Haile Selassie I had reduced their importance to centralize authority around the end of his reign as the last emperor.{{Cite book, last=C., first=Dunning, Harrison, url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1134608730, title=Land reform in Ethiopia : a case study in non-development, date=2 December 1970, publisher=University of Wisconsin-Madison, Land Tenure Center, oclc=1134608730

Revolution

After the February 1974 popular revolution the

Derg The Derg (also spelled Dergue; , ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, then including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when the military leadership formally " c ...

overthrew the government of Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1975 the Derg abolished the

monarchy A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutional monarchy ...

and feudalism to establish Ethiopia as a Marxist–Leninist state. This ended the

Ethiopian empire The Ethiopian Empire (), also formerly known by the exonym Abyssinia, or just simply known as Ethiopia (; Amharic and Tigrinya: ኢትዮጵያ , , Oromo: Itoophiyaa, Somali: Itoobiya, Afar: ''Itiyoophiyaa''), was an empire that historical ...

and Aristocracy.

References

Ethiopian nobility Social stratification

Politics

Revolution

See also

References