Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariyam

Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariyam (Amharic: ተክለ ሐዋርዓት ተክለ ማርያም; June 1884 – April 1977) was an Ethiopian politician and intellectual of the Japanizer school. He was the primary author of Ethiopia's July 16, 1931 constitution, which was influenced by the Japanese Meiji Constitution.

Bahru Zewde includes Tekle Hawariat in the first generation of Ethiopians sent abroad for his education. Born in Shewa, after the initial stages of a traditional Ethiopian education at a local church Tekle Hawariat moved to Harar at the age of nine to live with a relative who was a retainer of Ras Makonnen Woldemikael. He accompanied the Ras against the Italians in 1895-6. It was during the First Italo-Ethiopian War that his mentor Ras Makonnen entrusted him to a member of the Russian Red Cross, Count Nikolai Leontieff, to take him back to Russia and have him educated. He arrived to Saint Petersburg in 1901, where he studied artillery at the Saint Petersburg military academy, achieving the rank of colonel. He was befriended by a number of prominent Russian liberals of the day, including Princess Volkonsky, daughter of the famous Decembrist revolutionary Sergei Volkonsky, and spent altogether 17 years in Russia. Once he returned to Ethiopia, however, Tekle Hawariat became famous as provincial governor, agronomist, and for his part in writing Ethiopia's first constitution. Tekle Hawariat was an important government official during the reign of Iyasu V, although he played a part in Iyasu's depostion of 27 September 1916. Despite his support for the new ruler, Empress Zauditu, during her reign he wrote and produced a play, Fabula: Yawreoch Commedia, which used animal characters to criticize the corruption and backwardness of the Ethiopian court. As a result the Empress banned all further theatre in Ethiopia, an order that was later lifted by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930. As such, Tekle Hawariat introduced Western-influenced drama to Ethiopia, marking the beginning of Ethiopian theatre.

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