Travel Guide Bati

This small town 40 km east of Kombolcha is an important cultural crossroads for the Amahra, Oromo and Afar peoples. The Monday market is famous throughout the country, sometimes attracting up to 20,000 people.Silver coins of Maria Theresa of Austria. The Oromo women of the region can be recognized by their colorful scarves and dresses, embellished with superb silver pendants adorned with coins with a distinctly European profile. This is the effigy of Maria Theresa of Austria, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary from 1740 to 1780, on Austrian thalers (old silver coins) without face value, used in international trade since their first minting in 1741. Demonetized in the Austrian Empire in October 1858 with the adoption of the Austro-Hungarian florin, these large coins, around 4 cm in diameter, were used in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa and the world as official commercial currency, exchanged for the value of its solid silver weight. It was undoubtedly introduced from the Arabian Peninsula - where it was then current - through the slave trade, before becoming widely accepted in the Horn of Africa around the middle of the 19th century. This currency coexisted with another, still highly sought-after exchange "currency": salt bars. Then, in 1883, Menelik II decided to give his kingdom a thaler stamped with a face symbolizing Ethiopia, his own, and bearing on both sides the words in Amharic: "Menelik II, king of the kings of Ethiopia" and "He is the conqueror, the lion of the tribe of Judah". This was in keeping with the tradition of the Axumite rulers, who were the first to mint coins in the early centuries. The Menelik thaler was in turn dethroned by the Ethiopian dollar, under Emperor Haile Selassie, who introduced the first banknotes. Finally, the revolutionary will of the Derg could not do without wiping the slate clean of the country's monetary past and finally imposed the birr (meaning "money"), which is still used today. Some banknotes glorifying peasant pride and progress have retained something of this "people's republic" spirit. Numismatists will have some difficulty in obtaining thalers, which are becoming increasingly rare. What's more, it's advisable to offer a decent price to anyone willing to part with this symbol of pride and prestige. Some merchants offer them for 200 birr, but avoid buying one off a woman's neck by dangling a sum large enough for her. You can find them without too much trouble at the Bati market, in silver, but also in copper, more or less worn by time. Be aware that coins weighing less than 2 g are considered counterfeit, and you should be careful when buying them.