The mysterious jewish queen of Ethiopia

Originally posted by pinguin   Ethiopia is more part of the Middle East history than the rest of Africa, I believe.   Pinguin

No the hell Ethiopia aint, more apart of Middle East history then African 

history. if that were true Pinguin why would their ancient drawings, including

the drawings of today in Ethiopia portray black people with nappy afros?

This picture of Menelik the 2nd(below) is clearly Negro and he was titled

The King of Kings in Abyssinia(Ethiopia) and also believed to be the Son of King Solomon, and Queen Makeda....



You

really know how to piss me the hell off....

You dont give black people credit for anything....

How would u like it if i started saying all of Chile has nothing to do with you or any of your people Pinguin?

Once again i see that i must prove you wrong, and correct you of your bad views towards the accomplishments  of African black people....

Obviously you believe that we are incapable of doing anything good, you didn't directly

say it but i can tell, just how u always go out of your way to make black royalty, or black achievements  look like achievements of another race....

The truth is every race alive, and extinct races have all accomplished something

great in this world and they all need to be recognized and respected no matter their race....


Edited by AfrikaJamaika - 27-Feb-2007 at 22:26

pinguin, if Ethiopia is not in Sub-Saharan Africa, then I don't know where it is... Granted, Ethiopia did have a role to play in Middle-Eastern affairs, especially during the 2nd to the 7th centuries AD, when it was a major regional power which meddled in Southern Arabia, played a role in the development of Islam and was the 2nd christian nation in the world. But all throughout it was still an African civilization. The theory that it was Sabeans which founded Axum has largely fallen into disfavour. Saying that Ethiopia should be considered part of Middle-Eastern history, because it was christian and interfered in Arabian politics is like saying that France should be a part of Middle-Eastern history for the same reasons. The people who usually make this type of argument are the people who believe that African civilizations have little merit of their own.

Spartakus, interesting comment there. When a veteran member of a history forum, who himself spends a lot of time on history, calls me a nerd, then I must be really "special"... That's okay though: I may be a nerd but I  hid it well enough to marry a beautiful woman!

Decebal continuasly surprises me.Where did you find them!You nerd!

The accounts of Gudit are contradictory and incomplete. Paul B. Henze wrote, "She is said to have killed the emperor, ascended the throne herself, and reigned for forty years. Accounts of her violent misdeeds are still related among peasants in the north Ethiopian countryside."[1] Henze continues in a footnote,

On my first visit to the rock church of Abreha and Atsbeha in eastern Tigray in 1970, I noticed that its intricately carved ceiling was blackened by soot. The priest explained it as the work of Gudit, who had piled the church full of hay and set it ablaze nine centuries before.[2]
There is a tradition that Gudit sacked and burned Debre Damo, which at the time was a treasury and a prison for the male relatives of the king of Ethiopia; this may be an echo of the later capture and sack of Amba Geshen by Ahmed Gragn.[3]

The Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini first proposed that the account of this warrior queen in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, where she was described as Bani al-Hamwiyah ought to be read as Bani al-Damutah, and argued that she was ruler of the once-powerful kingdom of Damot, and that she was related to one of the indigenous Sidamo peoples of southern Ethiopia.[4] This would agree with the numerous references to matriarchs ruling the Sidamo polities.[5]

If Gudit did not belong to one of the Sidamo peoples, then some scholars, based on the traditions that Gudit was Jewish, propose that she was of the Agaw people, who historically have been numerous in Lasta, and a number of whom (known as the Beta Israel), have professed the Jewish religion since ancient times. If she was not of a Jewish origin, she might have been a convert to Judaism by her husband, or pagan. [6]

It was during the office of Patriarch Philotheos of Alexandria when Gudit started her revolt, near the end of the reign of the king who had deposed the Abuna Petros. As Taddesse Tamrat explains, at the time "his own death in the conflict, and the military reverses of the kingdom were taken as divine retribution for the sufferings of Abuna Petros."[7]

This chronological synchronicity with the tenure of Patriarch Philotheos, and the intervention of king Georgios II of Makuria, provides us a date of c.960 for Gudit. A contemporary Arab historian, Ibn Hawqal, provides this account:

The country of the habasha has been ruled by a woman for many years now: she has killed the king of the habasha who was called Haḍani [from Ge'ez haṣ́ani, modern aṣ́e or atse]. Until today she rules with complete independence in her own coutnry and the frontier areas of the country of the Haḍani, in the southern part of [the country of] the habashi.[8]
Another historian mentions that the king of Yemen sent a zebra to the ruler of Iraq in 969/970, which he had received as a gift from the Queen of al-Habasha.[9]

Taddesse Tamrat has speculated that one effect of Gudit's otherwise ephemeral rule, might be the pockets of various languages related to Amharic scattered across southwestern Ethiopia (e.g. Argobba, Gurage and Gafat), which could have been Axumite military settlements isolated by her conquests and later Sidamo migrations.[10]

[edit] References
^ # Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time, A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000) p. 48
^ # Henze, Layers of Time, p. 48 n.14. His visit among others to various churches in can be read [here http://www.irrob.org/page/page/2466345.htm].
^ # Recorded by Thomas Pakenham, The Mountains of Rasselas (New York: Reynal, 1959), p. 79.
^ # Conti Rossini's argument is taken from Taddesse Tamrat's summary in Church and State in Ethiopia (1270 - 1526) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 39
^ # See O.G.S. Crawford, Ethiopian Itineraries, circa 1400-1524 (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958), p. 81f for examples.
^ # Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People second edition, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 60ff.
^ # Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 40f. Although Taddesse Tamrat states that the name of this king is not known, E.A. Wallis Budge in his account of the tenure of Abuna Petros (A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 [Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970], p.276) calls him Degna Djan, who reigned perhaps as late as c.1100; this would obviously conflict with Conti Rossi's chronology.
^ # Quoted in Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State p. 39. Habasha is the Arabic form of Abyssinia, i.e. Ethiopia.
^ # Stuart C. Munro-Hay, Aksum, an African Civilization of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh: University Press, 1991) p. 101.
^ # Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State, p. 41.