ABSTRACT
There have been so many emperors in Ethiopia - and I do not mean at the time when they were heathens, but after they received the Old Law, which was at the time of Queen Saba and Menilehêc, her son by Solomon (which they consider to be beyond doubt, as we said in chapter 2 of the first book), and they maintain the line and generation of Menilehêc to this day, as they also affirm, and therefore among themselves they have never given up this name of Israelites and sons of David - that they might have written many long books of their histories. Nonetheless, hardly anything about the early ones can now be found other than what we said in chapters 2 and 5 of the first book, either because of the little application and diligence that these Ethiopians have in writing histories, or because the ones they had written have been lost in the continual wars that they have had with the Moors, Turks and heathens, who at times have taken the greater part of the empire from them and who still occupy many lands today. As a result, although I have made many enquiries and asked many people, I have been unable to find - and nobody has been able to tell me - any information except about this Emperor Amd Ceôn and a few others, as I shall relate below. But it should be noted that this Amd Ceôn is not Emperor Naôd’s father, because that one only reigned for six months; instead, he was another, much earlier one who reigned for thirty years and was the father of Emperor Zêif Arâd.1 I have only found a part of his history, which I shall report as his book tells it, not because it helps me in discussing the missions that fathers of the Society have undertaken to this empire, but so as to relay everything that I have found out about their emperors and about the wars and troubles they have had with the Moors.
