Balabat (

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

: 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 A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for exam ...

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 var ...

. 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 a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

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.

Revolution

After the February 1974 popular revolution the

Derg The Derg or Dergue (, ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when they formally "Civil government, civilianized" the ...

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, reigns as head of state for the rest of their life, or until abdication. The extent of the authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutio ...

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

Ethiopian empire The Ethiopian Empire, historically known as Abyssinia or simply Ethiopia, was a sovereign state that encompassed the present-day territories of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It existed from the establishment of the Solomonic dynasty by Yekuno Amlak a ...

and

aristocracy Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense Economy, economic, Politics, political, and soc ...

References

{{ethiopia-hist-stub Ethiopian nobility Social stratification