Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie d'Arrast (3 January 1810 – 19 March 1897) was an Irish-born French explorer,

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

ethnologist Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology) ...

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

notable for his travels in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

Although referred to as Ethiopia here, the region that they traveled is more accurately defined as

Abyssinia 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 historica ...

or in today's geography northern Ethiopia and

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...

. during the first half of the 19th century. He was the older brother of

Arnaud-Michel d'Abbadie Arnaud-Michel d'Abbadie d'Arrast (The Chambers Biographical Dictionary calls him "Michel Arnaud d'Abbadie".) born 24 July 1815 in Dublin and died 8 November 1893 in Ciboure was an Irish-born French and Basque explorer known for his travels in Ethi ...

, with whom he travelled.

Biography

d'Arrast was born a British subject, in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

, Ireland, from a partially

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

noble family of the French province of

Soule Soule (Basque language, Basque: Zuberoa; Zuberoan/ Soule Basque: Xiberoa or Xiberua; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Sola'') is a former viscounty and France, French Provinces of France, province and part of the present-day Pyrénées-Atlantiques ...

. His father, Michel Abbadie, was born in

Arrast-Larrebieu Arrast-Larrebieu (; eu, Ürrustoi-Larrebille)ÜRRUSTOI-LARREBILLE

and his mother was Irish. His grandfather Jean-Pierre was a

lay abbot Lay abbot ( la, abbatocomes, abbas laicus, abbas miles, ) is a name used to designate a layman on whom a king or someone in authority bestowed an abbey as a reward for services rendered; he had charge of the estate belonging to it, and was entitle ...

and a

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

in Soule. The family moved to France in 1818 where the brothers received a careful scientific education. In 1827, Antoine received a bachelor's degree in

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

. Starting in 1829, he began his education in Paris, where he studied law. He married Virginie Vincent de Saint-Bonnet on 21 February 1859, and settled in

Hendaye Hendaye (Basque language, Basque: ''Hendaia'')HENDAIA
Auñamendi Encyclopedia, Auñamendi Eusko Entz ...

where he purchased 250 ha to build a castle, and became the mayor of the city from 1871 to 1875. Abbadie was a knight of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...

, which he received on 27 September 1850, and the president of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

. He died in 1897, and bequeathed the Abbadi domain and castle in Hendaye, yielding 40,000 francs a year, to the Academy of Sciences, on condition they produce a catalogue of half a million stars within fifty years.

Education

Michel d'Abbadie returned to France with his family around 1820. He first settled in Toulouse, where he saw to the education of his children. All were entrusted to the care of a governess: "I was brought up," says d'Abbadie, "with my sisters, in the English way, all day, all night in a dormitory, with a servant who watched scrupulously over us; and scarcely, every evening, did we have an hour, a single hour, not to converse with our parents by a familiar tutoiement, but, hearing at most some little tale of Daddy, to be relegated to our games in a corner of the room, and to answer any question by You, yes Sir, yes Madam. » Antoine stayed three or four years at home, "Far from the martinet of a master of boarding school studies". But at the age of 13, he was sent to college, where he displayed exceptional ardor. Still a child, he shows an unusual curiosity for the unknown that surrounds him: "What is at the end of the road? he asked his governess. "A river, my friend. "And after the river?" — A mountain. "And after the mountain?" "I don't know, I've never been there. "Well, I'll go and see," replied the child. (Antoine d'Abbadie kept this insatiable curiosity all his life. He assimilates languages very quickly and speaks English, Italian, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Berber and at least five Ethiopian languages.) In August 1827, he obtained his baccalaureate and returned to Toulouse to become a law student. His closest friends at this time were Pierre Étienne Simon Duchartre, Bernard-Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac and Léonce Guilhaud de Lavergne. These young people often talk about their plans for the future. Antoine d'Abbadie knows exactly what he wants to become: explorer in Africa! His project is to study the Christian civilizations of Abyssinia, to help them survive in the face of a conquering Islam and, incidentally, to look for the sources of the Nile. In 1828, his family moved to Paris, rue Saint-Dominique, and Antoine devoted the next six years to the preparation of his project, reading travellers' accounts and studying languages, religions, and literature. He also took courses in Law, Geology, Mineralogy, Astronomy and Natural History at the Faculty. Its preparation is not only intellectual; He also prepared physically for the fatigues and privations that awaited the explorers: he was very skilled in fencing, gymnastics and running. He is an exceptional swimmer. He also practices food deprivation. He went to Ireland, his native country, in 1835, at the end of these years of apprenticeship.

Science and explorations

Portrait of Debtera Tewelde Medhin of Welkait

In 1835 the

French Academy French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

sent Antoine on a scientific mission to Brazil, the results being published at a later date (1873) under the title of ''Observations relatives à la physique du globe faites au Brésil et en Éthiopie''. He left in November 1836 in the frigate L'Andromède and had as a travelling companion Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, exiled after the attempted uprising of Strasbourg, The two young men become friends. In 1837, the two brothers started for Ethiopia, landing at

Massawa Massawa ( ; ti, ምጽዋዕ, məṣṣəwaʿ; gez, ምጽዋ; ar, مصوع; it, Massaua; pt, Maçuá) is a port city in the Northern Red Sea region of Eritrea, located on the Red Sea at the northern end of the Gulf of Zula beside the Dahlak ...

in February 1838. They journeyed throughout Ethiopia, travelling as far south as the

Kingdom of Kaffa The Kingdom of Kaffa was a kingdom located in what is now Ethiopia from 1390 to 1897, with its first capital at Bonga. The Gojeb River formed its northern border, beyond which lay the Gibe kingdoms; to the east the territory of the Konta and Kull ...

, sometimes together and sometimes separately. In addition to his studies in the sciences, he delved into the political fray exerting influence in favour of France and the

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

missionaries. The two brothers returned to France in 1848 with notes on the geography, geology, archaeology, and natural history of the region. The Abbadie brothers not only traveled around Abyssinia, they also saw, listened to and noted a great deal; human geography joins physical geography, but also religion, legislative texts, ethnography, philology, linguistics, numismatics, history, etc. Antoine collects 250 old manuscripts, and creates with the help of the Ethiopian Debtera Tewelde Medhin de Welkait, the first Amharic-French dictionary of 15,000 words and a lexicon of 40,000 words from 30 different languages. Antoine became involved in various controversies relating both to his geographical results and his political intrigues. He was especially attacked by

Charles Tilstone Beke Charles Tilstone Beke (10 October 1800 – 31 July 1874) was an English traveller, geographer and Biblical critic. Biography Born in Stepney, London, the son of a merchant in the City of London, for a few years Beke engaged in mercantile pursuit ...

, who impugned his veracity, especially with reference to the journey to

Kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...

. But time and the investigations of subsequent explorers have shown that Abbadie was quite trustworthy as to his facts, though wrong in his assertion — hotly contested by Beke — that the

Blue Nile The Blue Nile (; ) is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It travels for approximately through Ethiopia and Sudan. Along with the White Nile, it is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile and supplies about 85.6% of the water ...

was the main stream. The topographical results of his explorations were published in Paris between 1860 and 1873 in ''Géodésie d'Éthiopie'', full of the most valuable information and illustrated by ten maps. Of the ''Géographie de l'Éthiopie'' (Paris, 1890) only one volume was published. In ''Un Catalogue raisonné de manuscrits éthiopiens'' (Paris, 1859) is a description of 234 Ethiopian

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...

s collected by Antoine. He also compiled various vocabularies, including a ''Dictionnaire de la langue amariñña'' (Paris, 1881), and prepared an edition of the ''

Shepherd of Hermas A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. ''Shepherd'' derives from Old English ''sceaphierde (''sceap'' 'sheep' + ''hierde'' 'herder'). ''Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations, i ...

'', with the Latin version, in 1860. He published numerous papers dealing with the geography of Ethiopia, Ethiopian coins and ancient inscriptions. Under the title of ''Reconnaissances magnétiques'' he published in 1890 an account of the

magnetic Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particle ...

observations made by him in the course of several journeys to the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

and the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

. The general account of the travels of the two brothers was published by Arnaud in 1868 under the title of ''Douze ans dans la Haute Ethiopie''.Available on Gallica
Antoine was responsible for streamlining techniques in

geodesy Geodesy ( ) is the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth's figure (geometric shape and size), orientation in space, and gravity. The field also incorporates studies of how these properties change over time and equivale ...

, along with inventing a new

theodolite A theodolite () is a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes. The traditional use has been for land surveying, but it is also used extensively for building and i ...

for measuring angles.

Basque and bascophile

Basque through his father, Abbadie developed a particular interest in the Basque Language after meeting Prince

Louis Lucien Bonaparte Louis Lucien Bonaparte (4 January 1813 – 3 November 1891) was a French philologist. The third son of Napoleon's second surviving brother, Lucien Bonaparte, he spent much of his life outside France for political reasons. After a brief politica ...

in London. He started his academic work on Basque in 1852. A speaker of both

Souletin Souletin or Zuberoan ( eu, Zuberera) is the Basque dialect spoken in Soule, France. Souletin is marked by influences from Occitan (in particular the Béarnese dialect), especially in the lexicon. Another distinct characteristic is the use of v ...

and

Lapurdian Navarro-Labourdin or Navarro-Lapurdian ( eu, nafar-lapurtera) is a Basque dialect spoken in the Lower Navarre and Labourd (Lapurdi) former provinces of the French Basque Country (in the Pyrénées Atlantiques ''département''). It consists of ...

, a resident of

Lapurdi Labourd ( eu, Lapurdi; la, Lapurdum; Gascon: ''Labord'') is a former French province and part of the present-day Pyrénées Atlantiques ''département''. It is one of the traditional Basque provinces, and identified as one of the territorial co ...

, Abbadie considered himself a

from

. The popularity of the

motto A motto (derived from the Latin , 'mutter', by way of Italian , 'word' or 'sentence') is a sentence or phrase expressing a belief or purpose, or the general motivation or intention of an individual, family, social group, or organisation. Mot ...

Zazpiak Bat Zazpiak Bat is a heraldic nickname for the Basque coat of arms which includes the arms of the seven provinces mentioned, stressing their unity. It was designed by the historian Jean de Jaurgain in 1897 for the ''Congrès et Fêtes de la Tradition ...

'' is attributed to Abbadie, coined in the framework of the '' Lore Jokoak'' Basque festivals that he fostered.

Abbadia Castle

Abbadie gave his castle home the name ''Abbadia'', which is the name still used in Basque. However, in French it is usually referred to as '' Chateau d'Abbadie'' or ''Domaine d'Abbadia'', and locally it is not unusual for it to be called ''le Chateau d'Antoine d'Abbadie''. Chateau-abbadia-exterieur-entree-e1539073553639

Chateau-abbadia-exterieur-entree-e1539073553639

The château was built between 1864 and 1879 on a cliff by the Atlantic Ocean, and was designed by

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (; 27 January 181417 September 1879) was a French architect and author who restored many prominent medieval landmarks in France, including those which had been damaged or abandoned during the French Revolution. H ...

in the

Neo Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style. It is considered one of the most important examples of French Gothic Revival Architecture. It is divided in three parts: the observatory and library, the chapel, and the living quarters. The château still belongs to the

Academy of Science An academy of sciences is a type of learned society or academy (as special scientific institution) dedicated to sciences that may or may not be state funded. Some state funded academies are tuned into national or royal (in case of the Unit ...

to which it was bequeathed in 1895 on condition of its producing a catalogue of half-a-million

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

s within fifty years' time, with the work to be carried out by members of religious orders. The château was classified as a protected historical monument by France in 1984. Most of the château property now belongs to the Coastal Protection Agency, and is managed by the city of Hendaye.

Publications

Awards and memberships

Antoine received the French

Legion of Honor The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

on 27 September 1850 with the order of chevalier or knight. He was a member of the

Bureau des Longitudes Bureau ( ) may refer to: Agencies and organizations *Government agency *Public administration * News bureau, an office for gathering or distributing news, generally for a given geographical location * Bureau (European Parliament), the administrat ...

and also the

. Both brothers received the grand medal of the

Paris Geographical Society Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

in 1850.

Notes

Footnotes

References

* * * * * * �
Antoine d'Abbadie
* * *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Abbadie, Antoine Thomson D 1810 births 1897 deaths French explorers People from Soule 19th-century French astronomers French-Basque people Basque-language writers Members of the French Academy of Sciences Members of the Lincean Academy Irish people of Basque descent Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Irish emigrants to France