Iyoas I
Iyoas I ኢዮአስ | |
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Iyasu II |
Iyoas I (
Iyoas and Mentewab
Despite his extreme youth, he was the candidate proposed by Empress
Another problem grew from Mentewab's arrangement of the marriage of her son to Wubit, the daughter of an Oromo chieftain. Iyasu II gave precedence to his mother and allowed her every prerogative as a crowned co-ruler, while his wife Wubit suffered in obscurity. Wubit waited for the accession of her own son to make a bid for the power wielded for so long by Mentewab and her relatives from Qwara Province.
When Iyoas assumed the throne upon his father's sudden death, the aristocrats of Gondar were stunned to find that he more readily spoke in the
In 1764 Ras Mikael Sehul returned to the capital city of Gondar, and convinced Iyoas to support
Not long after this, Iyoas' great uncle Wolde Leul died (March 1767), which James Bruce described was the signal for all parties to engage in a civil war. The two sides were roughly aligned around the two rival Dowager Empresses, Mentewab and Wubit (Welete Bersabe). "Nothing had withheld them but his prudence and authority."[7] The anti-Oromo party found their champion in Ya Mariam Bariaw, the son of Ayo (who had helped to make Iyoas Emperor) and governor of Begemder, and who was supported by Grazmach Eshte. The Grazmach was made governor of Damot whose governor, Waragna, had died some years before. However, the Jawa Oromo inhabiting Damot preferred to be ruled by Waragna's son Fasil; when Grazmach Eshte arrived in Damot, he was assassinated and Fasil proclaimed governor in his place; according to Bruce, Iyoas' uncles Birale and Lubo convinced him to confirm Fasil in that position.[8]
At this point, Ya Mariam Bariaw's pride led to his losing the governorship of Begemder, replaced by the Emperor's Oromo uncle Birale. Because the governorship of Begemder included being custodian of
Enter Ras Mikael
Once he learned of the death of his uncle Birale, Iyoas sent to Tigray's Ras Mikael Sehul for help. Ras Mikael had established himself as the most powerful lord of Ethiopia, at one point having amassed some 6,000
Upon learning of this new army, Ya Mariam Bariaw, who had remained near the site of his victory, fell back into Begemder, first to Filakit Gereger, then to Nefas Mewcha "in the farthest limits of his province" (in Bruce's words) where the armies met.[14] In the battle that followed Ya Mariam Bariaw was defeated, and severely wounded; he fled to the nearby province of the Wollo Oromo, who returned him to Iyoas with twelve of his principal officers. Although it appeared that the Emperor, moved by the pitiful sight of Ya Mariam Bariaw covered with blood from his open wound lying supine before him, was about to pardon this rebel, his uncle Lubo spoke up and demanded, as was his right by traditional Ethiopian law, for Maryam Bariya to delivered to him for what punishment he believed was appropriate; Lubo killed the noble himself by slitting Ya Mariam Bariaw's throat. Shocked at this act, the Emperor's own officers allowed the other twelve captives, who included Wand Bewossen, to escape.[15]
The murder of Ya Mariam Bariaw only deepened Ras Mikael's scorn for Iyoas. Eventually Mikael Sehul deposed the Emperor Iyoas (7 May 1769); one week later, Mikael Sehul had him killed. Although the details of his death are contradictory, the result was clear: for the first time an Emperor had lost his throne in a means other than his own natural death, death in battle, or voluntary abdication. Mikael Sehul had compromised the power of the Emperor, and from this point forward it lay ever more openly in the hands of the great nobles and military commanders. As Edward Ullendorff notes,
- It is this period, from 1769 to the beginning of Theodore's [How the british referred to Emperor Tewodros] reign in 1855, that is called by Ethiopian tradition the time of the masafent ("judges"), for it resembled very closely the era of the Old Testament judges when "there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes".[16]
Both the Empress Mentewab and his mother Wubit were devastated at the death of Iyoas. Empress Mentewab was distraught at the death of her grandson. She arranged for him to be buried at her retreat at Qusquam, and retired permanently to her palace there, refusing to return to the capital for the rest of her life. Although she lived through the next three reigns, she played a minimal role in them.
References
- New York: Routledge. p. 460.
- ^ James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1805 edition), vol. 4 p. 147
- ^ Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopians, A History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 126f
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 pp. 148f
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 p. 153
- ^ a b Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 p. 155
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 p. 156. The date is given in the Royal chronicle of Iyoas' reign (Donald Crummey, "Society and Ethnicity in the Politics of Christian Ethiopia during the Zamana Masafent", International Journal of African Historical Studies, 8 [1975], p. 273)
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 pp. 157-159
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 pp. 160-163
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 pp. 163-165
- ^ Pankhurst, The Ethiopians, p. 127
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 pp. 166f
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 p. 170
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 p. 176
- ^ Bruce, Travels, vol. 4 pp. 178f
- ^ Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, second edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 82
Further reading
- Richard K. P. Pankhurst The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles (Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1967) contains a partial translation of the Chronicle of Iyoas' reign.