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‘The wealth of kings‘ and the end of the Zāguē dynasty1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

G. W. B. Huntingford
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Extract

In the Dark Ages there was a break in the ruling dynasty of Ethiopia, and the kingdom fell into the hands of a line called Zāguē, of Agaw origin from Beguenā. (Bugnā), which made its capital at Roha in Lāstā. There is much that is obscure about the events that led to the Zaguē usurpation; the orthodox Ethiopian view, as expressed in the Be'ela nagaśtāt, was that God was angry with the House of David (the dynasty which they believe to be descended from Menilek son of Solomon and the ‘Queen of Sheba’) and gave the kingdom to the Zāguē. According to a document at Dabra Libānos in Šimezana, 2 a woman called Terde'a Gabaz transferred the kingdom to the Zāguē after the reign of Ḥezba Nañ, ‘and they reigned for 133 years, 700 years from the bringing of the Faith to Ethiopia’ (= A.D. 1033). This suggests that Terde'a Gabaz was the daughter of Ḥezba Nañ and married the first Zāguē king, thereby establishing him on the throne. These Zāguē, being Agaw, are referred to in the Chronicles as ‘not Israelites’, as in the Paris Chronicle, f. 2: ‘Anbasa Wedem begot Delna'ād, from whom the throne was taken3 and given to others who were not Israelites’. The end of the Zāguē line came in 1268, when ‘Takla Hāymānot restored the kingdom to Yekuno Amlāk’ (Paris Chron., f. 3), a descendant of the last king before the Zāguē. That there was a break and a restoration cannot be doubted, but the manner of the restoration is not clear and the evidence is conflicting, as well as of late date.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 1965 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1965

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Footnotes

1

Abbreviations: CSCO = Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium; RRAL = Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Cl. sc. mor.

References

2 Ed. Rossini, Conti in RRAL, 5 Ser., XXXI, 1922, 280.Google Scholar

3 There is much confusion in the king lists; see below, ‘Note on the immediate predecessors of the Zaguē’.

4 Document from Dabra Libānos in Tigrē, Rossini, Conti, RRAL, 5 Ser., XXXI, 1922.Google Scholar

5 British Museum Oriental 723. This was copied in the eighteenth century from an earlier manuscript, possibly one contemporary with its sixteenth-century author Gabra Masqal, from which (or from one of a similar date) the Spanish Jesuit Pero Paez made about 1620 an abbreviated Portuguese translation (printed in Beccari, , Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti, 1905, II, 537–77). The name Zaguē also occurs (as here) in its older form Zāguā, from which through an adjectival form Zāguāy came Zāguē.Google Scholar

6 Ed. Rossini, Conti, CSCO, XXXIII, 13.Google Scholar

7 This document was printed by René Basset from MS Eth. 142 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, under the title Études sur l'histoire d'Éthiopie in 1881.

8 Cod. Vat. Aeth. 114, f. 60r, of the nineteenth century.

9 From a manuscript in the monastery of Ḥayq published by Conti Rossini in RRAL, 5 Ser., XXXI, 1922.

10 The office of eˇagē seems to have been instituted in the reign of 'Amda Ṣeyon when the abuna Yā'qob appointed Filpos the third abbot of Dabra Libānos to be second under him (Gadla Filpos, CSCO, XXX, 198). An abuna Yā'qob is recorded in 1320.

11 BM Or. 723 gives his age at the time of his death as 103 years; the Paris Chronicle makes him only 71.

12 Gadl za Yārēd, CSCO, XXVI, 23, from a nineteenth-century manuscript. Yārēd lived in the sixth century.

13 Life of Takla Hāymānot in the Senkesar (24 Naḥasē), printed in Dillmann's Chrestomathia Aethiopica, first ed., 36–9.

14 The story of Matalomē in the ‘Life’ (BM Or. 723) is that during a raid into Shoa he captured Egzi'e Harayā, the mother of Takla Hāymānot, who was so beautiful that he wanted to marry her; but she was saved by St. Michael, and Matalomē became insane. Twenty-five years later Takla Hāymānot when on a missionary journey came to Dāmot and found Matalomē, who I tried to kill him. But the Saint was saved by St. Michael, cured Matalome of his madness, and baptized him, giving him the name of Feśḥa Ṣeyon, which was originally his own name.

15 The ‘Life’ of Takla Hāymānot referred to (BM Or. 723) is the ‘long’ version; there is a ‘short’ version known as the ‘Waldebā redaction’, written by Abbā Samu'ēl of Gadāma Waldebā, perhaps in the reign of Yesḥaq (1412–26) which survives in a fifteenth-century manuscript. This has been edited by Rossini, Conti in Memorie RAL, 5 Ser., II, 1, 1896, 97–143. The two versions vary in detail, but there are no significant differences, though the healing and conversion of Matalomē do not occur in the Waldebā redaction.Google Scholar

16 The Šodē Rāšo was always a member of the Matto clan, one of the 11 clans which had a prescriptive right to certain offices.

17 MS d'Abbadie 11, d'Abbadie, Catalogue, p. 10; of the eighteenth century.

18 Paez, bk. I, ch. V; Almeida, bk. II, ch. v, Beccari.

19 See Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, 61.

20 BM Or. 723.

21 i.e. ‘the laws and institutions of the kingdom’.

22 I Guidi, ‘II Be'ela nagast’, in Oriental Studies presented to Paul Haupl, Baltimore and Leipzig, 1926, 403–9, which contains a summary of the contents of the book.

23 According to the Gadla N la'ab a separate person and father of Na'akueto la'ab.

24 Ḥarbay as brother and king, Gadl. Lāi.; Ḥarbay as king, Bodl. Bruce 93, Paris Chronicle.

25 Ps. lxxxix, 19–29.

26 James V, 16.

27 See below, pp. 20, 22.

28 The sentence beginning ‘And this oil’ and ending ‘(creation) of the world’ is a parenthesis by the writer, not part of the angel's speech.

29 BM Or. 723 ends at this point.

30 BM Or. 503 ends at this point.

31 From here to the end taken from the Gadla TH, BM Or. 723, fol. 51b, 1, the first part of ch. xxxv.