By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
Dynastic marriage for at least the last half millennium, for which
relatively good documentation is available, played a major, and
well-attested, role in Ethiopian political life. Imperial rulers
effected a number of important dynastic and other unions which freely
transcended divisions of religion, ethnicity and class.
The early sixteenth century Portuguese traveller Francisco Alvares,
generally a reliable informant, writing of the Shewa-based Christian
monarchs prior to the reign of Emperor Na’od (1494-1506), claimed that
they “always had five or six wives”. These were chosen, he says, from
among “the daughters of the neighbouring Moorish [i.e. Muslim] kings”.
Hadeya and Oromo
One of the most important inter-religious and inter-ethnic marriages
of this period took place during the reign of Emperor Ba’eda Maryam
(1468-1478), who effected a dynastic union with Ite Jan Zela, the
daughter of Garad Mehmad, a Muslim ruler of Hadeya. Converted to
Christianity she later became better known as Empress Eleni, the author
of two Ge’ez works on theology, the Regent for her grandson Emperor
Lebna Dengel, and a stateswoman, who, fearing the advance of the Ottomon
Turks, took the imaginative and historic step of opening up relations
with the Portuguese.
The Ethiopian State’s involvement in inter-religious and inter-ethnic
unions found no less important expression some two and a half centuries
later when another great woman Regent, Empress Mentewwab, of Gondar,
arranged for her son, Emperor Iyasu II (1730-1755) to marry Wobit, the
daughter of Amizo, an Oromo (or Galla) leader from Yajju. The Scottish
traveller James Bruce, who visited the country only a generation or so
later , claims that their half-Oromo son Emperor Iyo’as (1755-1769)
brought many of his mother’s Oromo kinsmen to his court, with the result
that “in an instant nothing was heard in the palace but Galla”, i.e.
Afan Oromo, and Emperor Iyo’as himself “affected to speak nothing else”.
A no less significant dynastic marriage took place between Mentewwab’s
daughter,. Wayzero Altash, and Dajazmach Walda Hawaryat, the son of Ras
Mika’el Sehul, the great eighteenth century ruler of Tegray.
There is reason to suppose that beside such important, and well
documented, dynastic unions connected with the ruling house there were
many other inter -religious and inter-ethnic marriages among the lesser
nobility and peasantry which were also politically significant, but
passed unrecorded.
In this and the two following articles we will examine how far the
Beta Esra’el, or Falashas, fitted into the prevailing Ethiopian pattern
of inter-religious royal marriage.
Emperor Sarsa Dengel and Emabet Harago of Samen
Contacts between the Ethiopian State, which was based on Shawa in the
centre of the empire, and the Beta Esra’el, who lived for the most part
in the far north-west of it, were for reasons of geography, fairly
restricted until the late sixteenth century. It was then, during the
reign of Emperor Minas (1559-1563) that the move of the imperial capital
from Shawa to the Lake Tana area, brought the imperial rulers into more
direct contact with some of the more important areas of Falasha
settlement in and around the high and rugged Samen mountains. The Beta
Esra’el country, despite its proximity, was, however, far from easy of
access, or conquest.
Emabet Harago
The first Ethiopian ruler to establish himself firmly in the
north-west of the country was Minas’s brother, the great Emperor Sarsa
Dengel, also known as Malak Sagad (1563-1597), who, it is interesting to
recall, had a Falasha, or probably more correctly ex-Falasha wife from
Samen. The scholarly Jesuit Pero Paes, who was in Ethiopia at the time,
expressly states in his History that she was a “newly converted
Christian” of a Judaic background. Believed to have been a sister of
Gedewon, the notable Beta Esra’el ruler of Samen, she is referred to in
the royal chronicles of the time by the title Emabet or Tegazanyi
(honorific titles perhaps the equivalent to Princess), and is variously
called Harago or Haragwe, perhaps an abbreviation of Haraga Amlak, i.e.
Creeper, or Plant, of God. The union of Sarsa Dengel and Harago, which
we must now consider, was on the face of things scarcely less important
than the above-mentioned marriages of Ba’eda Maryam and Jan Zela or of
Iyasu and Wobit.
Whether the Sarsa Dengel-Harago union was a dynastic union in the
normal sense of the word may be a matter of debate. The Jesuits, with
their implicit and explicit preoccupation with monogamy, regarded Harago
merely as the Emperor’s “concubine”. Several later scholars have
therefore tended to dismiss her as a person of little consequence. Her
assumed position as sister to the Samen Beta Esra’e leader Gedewon
would, on the other hand, suggest that she was a person of some
significance, at least locally, in her own right, as was the case of the
consorts, official or unofficial, of more than one other Ethiopian
ruler. Harago’s role as mother to several of the Emperor’s sons would
moreover have given her prominence, and would by itself have justified
her being accorded the above-mentioned titles of Emabet and Tegazanyi,
if not that of Etege, or Queen.
Emabet Harago, like Jan Zela and Wobit, was not the Emperor’s first
or principal wife: Sarsa Dengel’s official consort was Maryam Sena, a
woman of Orthodox Christian descent. Harago, we would reiterate, was
nevertheless a woman of by no means negligible status: in part because
of her believed descent from the ruling Falasha dynasty, and in part
because of her apparently long-standing relationship with the Emperor,
which caused her to bear him at least four sons. (Whether there were
also any daughters is not recorded).
The tie between Sarsa Dengel and Gedewon’s alleged sister Harago,
like several dynastic arrangements in Ethiopian history, did not produce
peace between the parties concerned, in this case the Ethiopian
Christian empire and the Beta Esra’el leadership. The Emperor in fact
fought a major, and later well-documented, war against Harago’s Falasha
kinsmen. His ties with Harago may, however, have led him to afford
Gedewon some personal protection, as Steven Kaplan has suggested.
Suspicion of this arises from a curious passage in the royal chronicle,
which records that the Beta Esra’el leader, at the close of a disastrous
battle, escaped with fifteen armed men, and passed, supposedly
unobserved, through the armies of two of the Emperor’s principal
commanders. The chronicler protests, at perhaps more than reasonable
length, that if anyone asserted that Gedewon and his party had been
recognised, and knowingly allowed to escape, such allegation was totally
false.
Mother of Four Sons
Be that as it may, Harago was the mother , as we have seen, of four
sons by Sarsa Dengel, and this was later a matter of considerable
political importance in that Maryam Sena reportedly had given birth only
to daughters. This was a great moment towards the end of the reign when
the question of the royal succession came to be considered.
The fact that Harago was not Sarsa Dengel’s official consort – but
only , as the Jesuits assert, a “concubine” – was, it should be
emphasised, entirely irrelevant to the succession issue. This was later
clearly, and correctly, stated by James Bruce, who, rebutting any
suggestion that “illegitimate sons” had “no right to succeed to the
crown”, observes that any such idea was “absolutely contrary to truth”,
for in matters of royal succession “no sort of difference” was ever made
in Ethiopia between legitimate and illegitimate sons. Harago’s sons
were thus fully entitled be considered for the throne, which, as we
shall see, one of them duly attained.
We may conclude that Harago, though mentioned only in passing in our
records,and, like so many of her community an apparent convert to
Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, deserves a significant place in Beta
Esra’el biography and history. Thanks to her, Ethiopia was soon to have
an Emperor of half-Falasha descent.
Za-Maryam
Towards the end of his life Sarsa Dengel, having, as we have seen, no
male heir by Maryam Sena, is said to have contemplated giving the royal
inheritance to his nephew Za-Dengel. The latter was the son of the
Emperor’s brother ABetahun Lesan Krestos. Shortly before his death,
however, Sarsa Dengel, if we can believe Pero Paes, was brought his son
by Harago, a child called Za-Krestos, whom he had never previously seen.
Moved by his love for the infant the ageing monarch reportedly started
to show less honour to his nephew Za-Dengel, whom he made to stand, and,
no longer sit, as formerly, in his presence. He also began to criticise
his nephew behind his back, saying that he lacked the strong
personality which Ethiopia then required of its ruler.
The chief courtiers of the realm, according to Paes, quickly
understood their master’s new way of thinking. Not to displease him it
had long been their custom to agree with whatever he said. They
therefore now began to praise the young half-Falasha Za-Maryam, and
showed the Emperor that they wished to have his son as heir to the
kingdom. Za-Dengel was in this way soon almost entirely excluded from
court activities.
This state of affairs lasted, however, for only about six months, at
the end of which Za-Maryam suddenly died. Sarsa Dengel, Paes tells us,
was much shocked by his son’s death, and regarded it as a Divine
punishment for what he had done to poor Za-Dengel, whom he thereupon
once again befriended.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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