The arrival of a Land Cruiser in the centre of the sleepy hamlet of Aleyu Amba in Northern Shoa stirred quite a commotion as children scramble from a nearby market, gleefully gawking and staring at the occupants.

A lone passenger, an American of Ethiopian origin, emerges from the back seat and tries to make small talk with the growing crowd. He inquires if anyone would know about his grandfather, Dejazmach Ayalneh Belay, the last patriarch of an old prominent family. His grandfather had once owned, administered and ruled over a large Gultin Aleyu Amba.

The Gultwas a land grant given to one of his ancestors by the King of Shoa as a reward for loyal services - a regular practice during the imperial time in the north. Ayalneh Belay, an absentee landlord residing in Addis Abeba, annually collects the taxes and rents from tenants on the Gultthrough his overseer, which makes up a small part of his wealth.

By the time the final days of the empire approached in 1974, Ayalneh Belay has risen to prominence by creating his own independent wealth that depends less on the income of his Gult but more on his investments in urban properties, business ventures and the purchase and cultivation of productive land in the south.

Today, no one seems to know or to have ever heard of the ancient patriarch. Eventually, the visitor moves to a small establishment at the edge of the road tailed by the crowd and settles for a breakfast.

After a while, an aged and gaunt figure of a woman leaning on a twisted cane is pushed toward the front of the gathering and is presented to the guest.

“The overseer of the Gultwas my great-grandfather, and the great house and settlement were there below the northern escarpments,” she says.

She points with her cane to the general direction of a terraced plateau that sits below a rocky bluff at the edge of town.

“There is no one left now that knows of the old farmstead. It has been overrun by new settlers and collective farms. Some of the old folks kept small plots but are dying out and have already moved away or have settled to lives of squalor like me.”

She shuffles and takes a seat close to the guest. She peers into his eyes and seems to admire the designer shirt, pants and shoes that the Ethiopian-American is adorned with and is delighted when he trains a camera that dangles from his neck at her and takes pictures.

Today, the old land tenure system in Ethiopia has been dismantled and replaced by a hodgepodge of administrative and governmental directives that have left the fate of our land resources in the hands of government officials.

In the imperial system of land tenure, particularly in the north, “peasants enjoyed only usufructuary rights over the land, but in the south, where land measurement and property registration for tax purposes was introduced, private ownership and land sales [flourished, even between landowners and tenants],” reports Daniel W.GebrieL, et. al in ‘History of Tenure System In Ethiopia.’