Yekuno Amlak of Ethiopia

Emperor Yekuno Amlak (throne name Tasfa Iyasus) was "IPA|nəgusä nägäst" (10 August 1270 - 19 June 1285) [In the Ethiopian calendar, 10 Sené and 16 Nehasé, respectively. A. K. Irvine, "Review: The Different Collections of Nägś Hymns in Ethiopic Literature and Their Contributions." "Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London". School of Oriental and African Studies, 1985.] of Ethiopia and restorer of the Solomonic dynasty. He traced his ancestry through his father, Tasfa Iyasus, to Dil Na'od, the last king of Axum.

Much of what is known about Yekuno Amlak is based on oral traditions and medieval hagiographies. Most sources state that his mother was the slave of an Amhara chieftain in Sagarat (located in the modern Dessie Zuria district of the Amhara Region).Fact|date=January 2008 Yekuno Amlak was educated at Lake Hayq's Istifanos Monastery near Amba Sel, where later medieval hagiographies state Saint Tekle Haymanot raised and educated him, and helped him to depose the last Zagwe king. Earlier hagiographies, however, state that it was Iyasus Mo'a, the abbot of Istifanos Monastery in Lake Hayq, who helped him achieve power (Istifanos was the premier monastery at that time, while Tekle Haymanot's Debre Libanos become more prominent in the later medieval period; it is from this period the traditions that ascribe the deed to Tekle Haymanot date), although neither of these traditions is contemporary [G.W.B. Huntingford, "The Historical Geography of Ethiopia" (London: The British Academy, 1989), pp. 74f.]

Traditional history further reports that Yekuno Amlak was imprisoned by the Zagwe king Za-Ilmaknun ("the unknown, the hidden one") in Malot, but managed to escape. He gathered support in the Amhara provinces and in Shewa, and with an army of followers, defeated the Zagwe king. Taddese Tamrat argued that this king was Yetbarak, but due to a local form of "damnatio memoriae", his name was removed from the official records. [Taddesse Tamrat, "Church and State in Ethiopia" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 68n.1.] A more recent chronicler of Wollo history, Getatchew Mekonnen Hasen, flatly states that the last Zagwe king deposed by Yekuno Amlak was none other than Na'akueto La'ab himself. [Getachew Mekonnen Hasen, "Wollo, Yager Dibab" (Addis Ababa: Nigd Matemiya Bet, 1992), p. 28-29.]

Yekuno Amlak is also said to have campaigned against the Kingdom of Damot, which lay south of the Abbay River.

Recorded history affords more certainty as to his relations with other countries. For example, E.A. Wallis Budge states that Yekuno Amlak not only exchanged letters with the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII, but sent to him several giraffes as a gift. [Budge, "A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia", 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970), p. 285.] At first, his interactions with his Muslim neighbors were friendly; however his attempts to be granted an Abuna for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church strained these relations. A letter survives that he wrote to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars, who was suzerain over the Patriarch of Alexandria (the ultimate head of the Ethiopian church), for his help for a new Abuna in 1273; the letter suggests this was not his first request. When one did not arrive, he blamed the intervention of the Sultan of Yemen, who had hindered the progress of his messenger to Cairo.

Taddesse Tamrat interprets Yekuno Amlak's son's allusion to Syrian priests at the royal court as a result of this lack of attention from the Patriarch. Taddesse also notes that around this time, the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch were struggling for control of the appointment of the bishop of Jerusalem, until then the prerogative of the Patriarch of Antioch. One of the moves in this dispute was Patriarch Ignatius III David's appointment of an Ethiopian pilgrim as Abuna. This pilgrim never attempted to assume this post in Ethiopia, but -- Taddesse Tamrat argues -- the lack of Coptic bishops forced Yekuno Amlak to rely on the Syrian partisans who arrived in his kingdom. [Taddesse, "Church and State", pp. 69ff.]

Yekuno Amlak ordered the construction of the Church of Gennete Maryam near Lalibela, which contains the earliest surviving dateable wall paintings in Ethiopia. [Paul B. Henze, "Layers of Time, A History of Ethiopia" (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 59.]

His descendant Emperor Baeda Maryam had Yekuno Amlak's body re-interred in the church of Atronsa Maryam. [ [http://130.238.24.99/library/resources/dossiers/local_history_of_ethiopia/A/ORTAST.pdf "Local History in Ethiopia"] (pdf) The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 28 January 2008)]

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