Abba Samuel Wolde Kahin

Abba Samuel Wolde Kahin (also spelled Walda Kahen) was the tutor and mentor of Ras Tafari Makonnen (later Emperor Haile Selassie I) and his cousin, Ras Imru Haile Selassie, when the two were children living at Harar, ca. 1902-1912.

In Chapter 1 of his Autobiography, "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress Vol. I", Haile Selassie recalls how his father Ras Makonnen first arranged for Dr. Vitalien, a physician from Guadeloupe, to instruct the boys in French an hour or so a day. Not considering this sufficient, he also hired Abba Samuel, an Ethiopian at the French Capuchin Mission in Harar ["Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia" p. 193.] . Samuel's father, Alaqa (Chief) Wolde Kahin, had earlier converted to Roman Catholicism.

According to historian H.G. Marcus, this association had caused some suspicion among the nobles that Ras Tafari was leaning toward Catholicism himself, which suspicion he allayed by undergoing a rare second Ethiopian Orthodox rite of Baptism in 1906 [H.G. Marcus, "Haile Selassie I: The Formative Years, 1892-1936", p. 7.] .

As remembered by the future Emperor in "My Life...",

"Abba Samuel was a good man who possessed great knowledge, who applied himself to learning and to teaching, who in goodness and humility gathered knowledge like a bee from anyone, who was devoted to the love of God and of his neighbour, and who did not strive to find enjoyment of the flesh but of the soul."

Later in Chapter 5 of the Autobiography, he relates that Abba Samuel was one of the seven men who drowned in the boating accident on Lake Haramaya on 7 June, 1915.

References

*Haile Selassie I, "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress, Volume One: 1892-1937" ISBN 0-94839-040-9