ABSTRACT
About the middle of the ioth century, whilst Delna’ad was reigning, a religious revolution broke out in Abyssinia, with farreaching consequences. The authors of the revolution were the Falashas, who were of Jewish origin and practised Judaism, and the Zagwe, a tribe or section of the Agaws, who were Christians. The Abyssinian Chronicles make no mention of any revolution, but the King Lists say that after Delna’ad, the kingdom passed to “ another people who were not of the tribe of Israel” AhAJt* rhTMI -• h/i * h \ f r h 9° ^ : These successors of Delna’ad are everywhere in the Chronicles called “ Zagwe,” or “ Zagwa,” and modern historians have written the most strange and contradictory things about them. The traditions recorded by Bruce ( Travels, II. p. 167) state that the leader of the revolution was a princess called Judith (some say Esther, and the natives called her ’Esat hU rti i.e. “ Fire”), who was the wife of the governor of the district of Bugna near Lasta. She determined to overthrow the Christian Religion, and with it Delna’ad, who was descended from the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, and to set her son on the throne instead of Delna’ad who was then an infant. She caused her emissaries to take the guardians of the rock of Damo, where the royal princes were kept shut up, by surprise, and it is said that she murdered 400 of them. Some loyal subjects took the child Delna’ad, the only survivor of his race, to Shoa, where he was received kindly and taken under the protection of the principal chiefs of that province. Judith seized the throne and reigned for 40 years, during which time she laid waste Aksum, and covered the whole country with the ruins of churches and monasteries. The Abyssinians agree that the whole period of her reign was “ one scene of murder, violence and oppression.” On the death of Judith the throne passed to her descendants, and these were kinsmen of the group of kings who succeeded them, and were members of a noble family of Lasta. Among the last named were Christian kings like Lallbala, whose name is, and always has been, held in great veneration throughout the country, but they were not of the race of Solomon, and the Abyssinian Annals do not include them among the rightful kings of the country. The Chronicles say the
Zagwe kings were eleven in number, but they omit any mention of Judith, and that their rule lasted for a period of 354 years. Bruce was so much troubled by the difference in the characters and deeds of earlier and later Zagwe kings that he divided them into two groups, one containing five Jewish, 01* pagan kings, the descendants of Judith, and the other six Christian kings, from a noble family of Lasta. As eleven kings are said to have reigned 354 years, the average length of each king’s reign was a little over 32 years, which is far too high. But the whole period of the Zagwe is, as Bruce said, “ involved in darkness.”
