Ethiopia, 1600–1660

Yaqob, son of Sarsa Dengel by his mistress Harago, had been made emperor at about seven when his father died in 1597, though the dying king had first promised the crown to his adult nephew Za Dengel. In 1600 the boy reigned while his father's widow and her sons-in-law governed. As he grew up he set out to rule for himself.

Maryam Sena, Sarsa Dengel's widow, had borne him only daughters. She persuaded the dying emperor to name Yaqob and had Za Dengel shut away on an island in Lake Tana. Her daughters' marriages tied the palace to the great lords, and from her residence at Qoga she ruled as co-regent with Ras Atnatewos.

Ras Atnatewos, governor of Gojjam and married into Maryam Sena's family, was regent and the young emperor's tutor. When Yaqob, grown, quarrelled with him and pushed him out, he lost his hold on the government, and he turned against the emperor he had helped crown.

Za Sellase, a soldier of humble Gurage birth, was popular with the professional regiments. Yaqob had made him chief of pages, and he had urged the boy to end his minority, for which the regents banished him. Recalled in 1603 to command a division, he allied with Atnatewos instead. Yaqob was deposed and sent into exile in Enarya.

Dejazmach Kefla Wahid, husband of Sarsa Dengel's daughter Krestosawit, had shared the interim government with Atnatewos, then gone back north to Tigray. He extended his rule to the coast as Bahr Negash, with his seat at Debarwa, where he received the newly landed Jesuit Pedro Páez in 1603. One of his men was charged with holding the banished Za Sellase.

Escaped from his island prison, Za Dengel was crowned by Za Sellase to be a figurehead. He proved his own man: he decreed a levy for an army under his own command and an edict against the lords' exactions on peasants and merchants, and replaced governors across the Amhara provinces. He told Páez privately he wished to become Catholic, and abolished the Saturday sabbath.

Brought back from Enarya by Za Sellase, Yaqob reigned again. Atnatewos came over to him, and in April 1606 Kefla Wahid brought Tigrayan troops to his side at Cacaho in Begemder and was beaten. When Za Sellase came to his camp after a defeat by Susenyos, Yaqob mocked him and drove him to the other side. Yaqob was killed at Gol; his body was never found.

Susenyos, a great-grandson of Dawit II, had lived as an outlaw prince in Gojjam and Shewa, fighting with Oromo war bands. Ras Atnatewos's party proclaimed him emperor on 14 December 1604. Za Sellase backed Yaqob instead, and for two years the rivals fought across the highlands, until on 10 March 1607 Susenyos beat and killed Yaqob at Gol in Gojjam.

Za Dengel gave Za Sellase Dembiya and Wegera and a wife from the royal family, but after the rains of 1604 he rose against the emperor with Atnatewos. On the plain of Barcha, on 13 October 1604, he killed the emperor he had made. He brought Yaqob back and made himself first minister; beaten by Susenyos and mocked by Yaqob, he changed sides before Gol.

Dejazmach Yonael, a veteran of Sarsa Dengel's wars against the Beta Israel of Semien and the Ottomans at Massawa, was an ally of Atnatewos against Za Dengel. He reportedly died on 13 October 1604 at Barcha, in the same battle that killed the emperor.

After Barcha, Atnatewos, unable to reach Za Sellase, answered Susenyos's demand for support and proclaimed him emperor. When Susenyos fell back sick into the mountains of Amhara, Atnatewos wavered, and when Yaqob reappeared in Dembiya he went over to him. He fought for Yaqob at Gol and escaped from the field.

Beaten at Cacaho in 1606 fighting for Yaqob, Kefla Wahid fled to Tigray. After Gol he submitted to Susenyos with rich gifts and was solemnly forgiven, and the northern governors followed his example. About 1608 Susenyos replaced him in Tigray with his own half-brother Sela Krestos; Kefla Wahid died of plague at the royal camp of Gorgora in 1618.

Susenyos did not trust a man who had made and unmade emperors. He imprisoned Za Sellase on Amba Guzman in Gojjam. Za Sellase escaped and, by one account, was killed on the run in June 1607 by Za Dengel's kinsmen; another has him living a year as an outlaw first.

Abuna Petros, the Egyptian metropolitan, excommunicated Za Dengel, and Atnatewos and Za Sellase won him over to their rising, which gave it the Church's sanction. He then rode with the restored Yaqob, was wounded at Cacaho in April 1606, and was killed beside him at Gol in March 1607.

Pedro Páez landed at Massawa in 1603 and settled at the Jesuit house of Fremona. Za Dengel invited him to court, where he arrived on 17 June 1604, to explain European law and government, and had him draft letters to Pope Clement VIII and Philip III asking for help against the lords. When the sabbath decree came, Páez withdrew to Fremona to wait out the war.

Crowned at Aksum, Susenyos gave the great offices to his brothers and old companions. He made Páez his friend and counsellor, gave the Jesuits land at Gorgora on Lake Tana, and in 1607 wrote to the Pope and the king of Spain and Portugal asking for soldiers. From about 1612 he took Catholic communion in private.

Abba Meherka Dengel, schooled at Debre Libanos and once confessor to Sarsa Dengel's empress, had taught Susenyos, who made him his confessor. He wrote the first 22 chapters of the emperor's chronicle, up to the coronation. He defended the Jesuits in their early years and argued in the court debates of 1613–14.

By about 1612 Takla Sellase, called Tinno, had taken over the chronicle, the first royal secretary known to bear the title sahafe te'ezaz. His history paints the emperor's enemies, Za Sellase, Yolyos, Yemana Krestos and Keflo, as villains. Keflo once took the secretary's seal from him, and Takla Sellase never forgave it. He died in 1638.

Sela Krestos, Susenyos's half-brother, governed Tigray by 1608 and with the title Bahr Negash, until his harsh rule there provoked revolt. In February 1612 the emperor gave him Gojjam entirely. He turned openly to Rome that year and pressed the new faith on his province, which set him against Yolyos, whose lands in Gojjam he took.

Gedewon, leader of the Beta Israel in the mountains of Semien and probably a brother of Harago, Yaqob's mother, sheltered and proclaimed claimants against Susenyos. Through submissions and new wars he held out against the emperor for nearly two decades, until Susenyos had him killed about 1625.

Kefla Maryam, a son of Sarsa Dengel by Harago and so Yaqob's brother, was one of three rebels Gedewon named king. With his brother Matako, who meant to be his vizier, he ravaged lower Semien. Both were captured and confessed they had been led astray; about 1608 Susenyos had them put to the sword.

Yolyos had served Susenyos since his outlaw years. In 1607 the emperor married him to his daughter Malakotawit and made him governor of Gojjam. After a plot with Keflo in 1609 he was pardoned, Malakotawit pleading with her father for him by one account. Sent north to Tigray in 1612 as Sela Krestos took Gojjam, he persecuted the Jesuits there.

Keflo, a man of humble birth who had risen as Atnatewos's favourite, served Susenyos as governor of Gojjam, regiment commander and blattengeta, and plotted against him in 1609 and 1613, pardoned each time. As chief of Dembiya he grew so powerful that he took the royal secretary's seal. In 1617 he secretly joined Yolyos's rising.

Ras Yemana Krestos, Susenyos's half-brother, lost the title of ras to Sela Krestos about 1612 and, as governor of Begemder, came out against the missionaries. In 1617 he joined Yolyos, Keflo and Abuna Semon, and planned to marry his daughter to Walay, son of Gedewon. Captured, he was condemned to death, pardoned, exiled to Gojjam and forbidden the marriage.

The conspirators first tried to kill Susenyos at court: Keflo was to strike the emperor and Yolyos to kill Sela Krestos. On 11 May 1617 at Sadda in Dembiya the royal army routed the rebels; Yolyos was beheaded and left unburied. Keflo, still playing the loyal servant, tried another attempt on the emperor and was beheaded on 22 June.

Abuna Semon came from Egypt about 1607 to succeed Petros and anointed Susenyos. At first friendly with the Jesuits, he took the Orthodox side in the court debates of 1613–14 and forbade anyone to join the Catholic faith or enter Jesuit churches. In 1617 he joined the coup, and he was killed at Sadda on 11 May.

Páez built the Jesuits a house and a stone church at Gorgora and became the emperor's close counsellor. His first great convert, Sela Krestos, made Gojjam the first province to keep the Roman Lent and feasts. Páez wrote a History of Ethiopia, finished in 1620, that drew on Ethiopian informants, Meherka Dengel among them.

António Fernandes, in Ethiopia since about 1604, was sent by Susenyos in 1613 to find a route south to Malindi on the Indian Ocean, and on to Europe, avoiding the Ottoman-held coast. The party crossed Enarya and Kambata, but Ethiopian Christians hostile to the mission had them held, and the survivors came back to Gorgora with nothing gained.

In 1622 Susenyos professed the Roman faith in public, put away every wife but Wald Saala, and issued an edict against the Orthodox faith. Páez died that May. Rome named a patriarch, Afonso Mendes, and on 11 February 1626 at Danqaz the emperor, his heir Fasilides and the court swore obedience to the Pope.

Malkea Krestos, a wealthy courtier who went on many of the emperor's campaigns, was Susenyos's chief adviser and backed the Catholic policy. His wife Walatta Petros left him; when she learned he had been involved in the killing of Abuna Semon in 1617, she left him for good. Later he talked the emperor out of having her killed.

Amata Krestos, daughter of Susenyos's maternal uncle and stepmother of Malkea Krestos, was a favourite of the emperor for her counsel, and once warned him of assassins. She was said to be the richest woman in the kingdom. The Jesuits thought her conversion only for show; she gave her land to shelter monks who resisted Rome.

Wald Saala, Susenyos's wife since about 1601 and mother of Fasilides and Gelawdewos, was at first one of the Jesuits' chief opponents at court and defended people who suffered from her husband's Catholic zeal. In the early 1620s she founded a church at Qoma, above the Abbay gorge, and endowed it with land enough to keep over 200 nobles and clergy.

Walatta Petros, a noblewoman, became a nun on Lake Tana in 1617, aged 25, and there met Eheta Krestos. When the emperor banned the Orthodox faith she fled east and preached that a king who had turned to Rome was accursed. Brought before the court, she was spared and sent to her brother; she fled to Waldebba and preached again.

Manuel de Almeida, a Portuguese Jesuit chosen in 1622 as envoy to Susenyos, sailed from India to Suakin with a pass from the Ottoman pasha, crossed to Massawa, met the governor of Tigray, Qeba Krestos, at Debarwa and reached Fremona in January 1624. The emperor received him well. His later History of Ethiopia drew on Páez's.

Afonso Mendes, named patriarch of Ethiopia in 1622, landed at Beilul in May 1625 to avoid the Ottoman port of Massawa and reached the court at Danqaz in February 1626. After the oath he ordered priests ordained again and Christians baptised again, and forbade the Saturday sabbath and the old fasts. Susenyos's soldiers enforced it.

Takla Giyorgis, a noble of Enderta who had risen through two decades of the emperor's service, held Tigray and the title Bahr Negash by 1628 and was married to Susenyos's daughter Wangelawit, against her will, after her sister. In September 1628 he rebelled against the emperor's support for the Jesuits. When he had his Jesuit chaplain killed, his allies fell away.

Malkea Krestos, of a branch of Dawit II's line, became leader of the Agaw of Lasta in 1629 and called himself king of the Orthodox faith, holding the mountain of Emakina. Susenyos's campaign of February 1629 was routed and a royal son-in-law killed. His men raided Begemder and Semien, and the rising drew support from Tigray to Amhara.

Sarsa Krestos, probably a son of Yemana Krestos, had escorted Mendes into Danqaz in 1626. In 1630 the emperor took Gojjam from Sela Krestos and gave it to him. On 18 May 1631 he rose, claimed to be king, called on the people to abandon the Roman faith and killed Catholic notables. Captured by Fasilides's army on 1 June, he was executed.

Bihono, Malkea Krestos's general, was famous for his victories over the royal army. In 1632 he beat Gabra Krestos, governor of Begemder, then the joined forces of Gabra Krestos and Ras Sela Krestos, almost at the gates of the court, and many royal commanders went over to the rebels. He died at Wayna Daga on 7 June 1632.

Dejazmach Qeba Krestos, the emperor's son-in-law and one of the first courtiers to turn Catholic, was sent against Takla Giyorgis and captured him; the rebel was tried at Gannata Iyasus and executed. Sent to Tigray to strike Lasta from the north-east, Qeba Krestos was cut off in the mountains and killed in 1629, and his head carried to Malkea Krestos.

Sela Krestos fell out with Susenyos after the oath of 1626 and lost Gojjam, though he was called back to beat the Lasta rebels in Begemder. After a failed campaign in 1630 the emperor blamed him and gave Gojjam to Sarsa Krestos. In 1632 Bihono humiliated him, and he withdrew to Damot rather than face his brother.

Fasilides, the heir, had sworn the oath of 1626 but kept his own counsel; the Jesuits could not tell whether he was friend or enemy. In 1631 he marched on Sarsa Krestos, who claimed to fight for him, and brought him to Danqaz to die. After Wayna Daga he is said to have told his father the dead were his own Christian subjects.

Susenyos's troops grew mutinous on the Lasta campaigns; once he let them keep a Wednesday fast, and the patriarch rebuked him. In June 1632 he broke Malkea Krestos's army at Wayna Daga. Within weeks he declared that no one would be forced into the Roman faith, abdicated in favour of Fasilides, and died that September.

Brought before the court again, Walatta Petros was made to spend Saturdays with the Jesuits while Mendes worked to convert her. When that failed she was banished alone, about 1627, to Zhebey in the hot borderland with Sudan. Monks and nuns joined her there, her first community. After three years she was let go, and founded communities at Chanqwa and Mesele.

Eheta Krestos, a noblewoman who had left her husband and son to become a nun, had joined Walatta Petros in 1617. When Walatta Petros was banished, she begged Amata Krestos to ask Malkea Krestos to ask the emperor to let her follow. Amata Krestos was moved and did so, and Eheta Krestos joined her friend in exile.

Mendes would not bend. When the emperor's daughter Wangelawit, three times married, asked leave to marry her lover, he refused despite the pleas of the whole court, and hatred of Rome grew. He rebuked the emperor for the soldiers' fast. After Wayna Daga he could only confirm that Susenyos no longer forced the Roman faith on anyone.

Emperor from 1632, Fasilides restored the Orthodox Church, sent to Alexandria for a new metropolitan and took the Jesuits' lands. His uncle Sela Krestos would not come to court or renounce Rome, and was sent into exile, where he died. Meherka Dengel, the old confessor who had backed the missionaries, was sent to the far borders of the empire about 1633.

In March 1633 Mendes and his priests were ordered out of the lake country to Fremona in Tigray. When news came that Portuguese ships had attacked Mombasa, Fasilides took it for the patriarch's doing and ordered the Jesuits out of the country. Mendes still hoped for Portuguese soldiers from India.

Almeida was chosen with Manoel Barradas to go to Goa and ask the Portuguese authorities for help for the mission. He made slow progress, and by the time he reached Diu the expelled Jesuits had caught up with him. Back in India after thirteen years away, he became provincial of his order.

The Jesuits fled to Yohannes Akay, a Bahr Negash then in revolt, who hid them on his mountain. Fasilides offered him a pardon to give them up; he would not hand his guests to the king, and in May 1634 handed them to the Ottomans at Massawa instead. The Turks held Mendes at Suakin for ransom before he could sail for India.

Under the new king Walatta Petros's communities grew, and she founded more around Lake Tana, at Zage and Damboza. Fasilides sent her Walatta Giyorgis, a daughter of Sarsa Dengel who had turned Catholic, to be won back to the old faith, and Walatta Petros later spent several months at court advising him.

The restoration took away Malkea Krestos's cause but not his claim; he was remembered as the restorer of the faith. In 1635 he surprised the royal army at Libo, drove Fasilides out, entered the king's house and sat on the throne with a candelabrum on his head for a crown. A few days later the king's governors fell on him and killed him.

Driven from Libo, Fasilides called in Damo, governor of Semien, Ras Za Krestos of Damot and his brother Gelawdewos, who caught and killed the claimant. About 1636 he made Gondar his capital and began a stone palace there. Fearing a Portuguese return, he looked to their enemies, writing in January 1642 to the Zaydi imam of Yemen.

Gelawdewos, Fasilides's full brother and governor of Begemder, helped destroy Malkea Krestos. Susenyos had asked that he be kept at court rather than shut up on the royal mountain, and Fasilides put him over military affairs. But he had his own following, and by one account he rebelled in Lasta in 1638 with his half-brother Elfyos.

Wald Saala did not recognise her son Fasilides's authority over her foundation at Qoma, whose community supported Gelawdewos. Its first land charters, sealed by Abuna Marqos in 1641–42, name neither the king nor any Ethiopian church official.

Abuna Marqos, a monk of the monastery of St Anthony in Egypt, was consecrated in Cairo in 1634 and reached the court in the fourth year of Fasilides's reign, settling at Gondar. He blessed Walatta Petros's calling and ordained priests for her community, and sealed charters for Wald Saala's Qoma. His wealth and standing with the nobles and the army grew.

Walatta Petros founded her last communities on the shores of Lake Tana, at Afar Faras and Zabol. After a three-month illness she died on 23 November 1642, twenty-six years after becoming a nun, and was buried at Rema.

Eheta Krestos, her companion since 1617, succeeded Walatta Petros as abbess and led the community, which had no male head, until her own death on 2 April 1649.

Peter Heyling, a goldsmith's son from Lübeck who had studied law in Paris under Grotius, went to Egypt hoping to bring Lutheran reform to the Coptic Church, and travelled to Ethiopia with Marqos. At Fasilides's court he worked as teacher, physician and theologian, mostly around Gondar and Azezo, and translated the Gospel of John into Amharic.

Fasilides wanted a caravan route from Gondar to Beilul, a port outside Ottoman control, guarded with firearms only the imam of Yemen could supply. In 1647 he sent Hajj Salim, a Muslim, to the imam with a letter that hinted obscurely at Islam. Salim said the emperor wished to convert, and the imam sent an envoy back.

Only in 1647 did Fasilides subdue his brother. Ethiopian sources send Gelawdewos to the royal mountain of Wehni; al-Haymi heard he was exiled to an island; a Jesuit report says Fasilides had him strangled after Marqos warned that he meant to restore Rome. Nothing more was heard of him, and it was believed he had been killed.

After Gelawdewos fell, Wald Saala came to terms with her son. In 1648 her church at Qoma was rededicated to Saint Fasiladas and given legal standing, and it kept its rich endowments. She died in 1661.

Thought too rich and powerful by the court and the church's own officials, Marqos was deposed and arrested on charges of licentious living about 1646–48, and exiled to an island. Al-Haymi and the Jesuits tied his fall to Gelawdewos's. The next metropolitan was the king's candidate, Mikael; the one Gelawdewos had asked for was sent away.

In 1650 Fasilides gave land at Qwarata on Lake Tana for a monastery devoted to Walatta Petros, who had defied his father. Her community kept its house there, and Qwarata became a place of asylum for those fleeing the king's anger.

Al-Haymi, a Zaydi scholar and poet, left the imam's residence in July 1647, sailed from Mocha to Beilul and crossed Tigray with Ethiopian merchants. At Gondar, in 1648–49, he admired the new palace's furnishings from Istanbul and India. In private audience it was plain Fasilides had no interest in Islam, and the imam's secret letter was never handed over.

In 1660 Fasilides sent Hajj Mikael Abu Yusuf to the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul to buy firearms. In Alexandria the envoy told a Coptic priest about the emperor's court and a fine library at Azezo; whether he ever reached Istanbul is not known.

Heyling's criticism of Ethiopian piety cost him the king's favour. He was expelled in 1652 by way of Massawa, and at Suakin the Ottoman pasha had him executed. His followers, led by Zamaryam of Azezo and called the German's disciples, kept his teaching alive at Gondar.