1 - The Background

Summary

The northern principalities

The year 1769 symbolizes the initiation of the period in Ethiopian history known as the Zamana Masafent. It was in that year that a Tegrean prince named Ras Mikael Sehul (the second name being an epithet to describe his astuteness) made a bloody intervention in royal politics in Gondar. He killed the reigning emperor, Iyoas, and put his own favourite, Emperor Yohannes II, on the throne. Before a year was out, Yohannes himself incurred Ras Mikael's disfavour, and was in turn deposed and replaced by Emperor Takla-Haymanot II.

This making and unmaking of kings by Ras Mikael marked the nadir of imperial power. While the intervention of other members of the nobility was not to be so dramatic, the long-standing struggle for power between the monarchy and the nobility had been decidedly resolved in favour of the latter. Until 1855, when Kasa Haylu became Emperor Tewodros II and restored the power and prestige of the imperial throne, the successive emperors were little more than puppets in the hands of the forceful nobility. An emperor had practically no army of his own. In the 1830s and 1840s, his annual revenue was estimated at a paltry 300 Maria Theresa silver dollars, the Austrian currency then in use in Ethiopia, whereas Ras Walda-Sellase of Tegre had 75,000 thalers at his disposal, and Negus Sahla-Sellase of Shawa had some 85,000 thalers.

Ras Mikael's domination of Gondar politics was itself short-lived. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a strong man by the name of Ali Gwangul had emerged as a powerful figure and kingmaker. He initiated what came to be known as the Yajju dynasty, after their place of origin in present-day northern Wallo. From their base in Dabra Tabor, successive members of this dynasty controlled the throne for about eighty years. Although Muslim and Oromo in origin, they had become Christianized, and followed other Amhara customs. The power alignments for or against them were dictated less by ethnic and religious considerations than by self-interest and regional aggrandisement. Yajju power may be said to have reached its peak in the ‘reign’ (1803-1825) of Ras Gugsa Marsu.