Wonders of the African World - Episodes

|| THE HOLY LAND EPISODE ||

For over 3,000 years Ethiopia has been a land of mystery and fascination. The Greek poet Homer thought that the Ethiopians had been blessed by the gods, while the historians and dramatists who came after him described a people of immense piety who lived beside the fountain of the sun. In the Middle Ages, the kings of Europe began to search for a mythical Ethiopian king named Prester John, beginning the Age of Discovery when they sailed along the coast of Africa. In the early years of our own century, the famous African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois described Ethiopia as "the all mother of men," and in recent years we have begun to see a new truth in his claim as the oldest human remains are excavated there.

Mythical history is part of an Ethiopian fascination with the Old Testament which seems to begin in the Dark Ages after the power of the great ancient city of Aksum began to diminish. In the 6th century, the kings of Aksum had been powerful enough to lead a Crusade into Arabia, defeating a Jewish king who had slaughtered Christians in the caravan city of Najran, and leaving a memory of powerful black warriors among the poets of Arabia. With the rise of Islam, however, the Red Sea trade was no longer controlled from Aksum and its rulers began to move south. The throne passed to a different line of kings, descendants of a Cushitic tribe called the Zagwe. They were never accepted by the old regime, and the powerful abbots of the northern monasteries, especially Debra Damo, succeeded in replacing them with a king who claimed descent from King Solomon (the Solomonid Dynasty). The Zagwe also claimed Israelite descent and several of them are still venerated as saints in Ethiopia. The most renowned, Lalibela, is said to have created one of the greatest wonders of Africa after an angel carried him to heaven: a city cut from the living rock in the highlands of Lasta, which is now called by his name. Thirteen churches can still be seen in the rock, an astonishing variety of passages leading deep into the hillside, revealing hidden chapels and sanctuaries where the ancient faith is preserved by priests and monks, and the bodies of thousands of devoted pilgrims were carefully stored until the end of the world.

When the Solomonid dynasty replaced the Zagwe around 1270 A.D., they built no capital to rival Aksum or Lalibela. Instead, a nomadic court traveled throughout the country, so that the kings could keep the great aristocrats under their control, reducing their wealth by forcing them to feed the court during its visit. As the emperors of the Solomonid dynasty conquered the neighboring regions, they brought large numbers of people who were pagan or Muslim under Christian control. Fearing that such diversity would threaten the stability of his empire, Zara Yaqob imposed a cult of the Virgin Mary as the New Ark of the Covenant. She had carried the presence of God within her before Christ was born just as the Ark carried the presence of God in the Tablets of the Law. As part of this cult, he required that icons of the Virgin be venerated, and Fere Seyon, the greatest of his court artists, produced a number of spectacular painted panels that survived the Muslim invasion of the 15th century.

When the Portuguese who had been searching for Prester John finally reached the Ethiopian court, the Christian empire was threatened by Muslim armies led by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, known as Grañ, "the Left-handed." The son of the Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama died in the final battle. Even though the empire was saved, the Ethiopians were now exposed to the ambitions of the Jesuits, who wished to convert their ancient Church to Roman Catholicism. Although the emperor Susneyos was converted to Catholicism, his decision brought the empire to the brink of civil war, and in 1632 he abdicated in favor of his son, Fasiladas, who expelled them.

Fasiladas built a new capital at Gondar, near Lake Tana. The site was remarkably beautiful, and many of the castles and churches of the imperial capital still stand today among groves of trees. The palaces of the Gondarine emperors seem to have been built by foreign as well as Ethiopian masons, and their splendid towers and walls are unique. The city was an emporium along important caravan routes between the north and the south, and most of the trade was in the hands of Muslim merchants who lived in a separate quarter of the city. Gondar was also home to Beta Israel, "the House of Israel," who claimed to be Jews. They are also known as Falasha, a word that seems to refer to their separation from the rest of Ethiopian society, and Falasha craftsmen provided many essential skills that Ethiopian Christians were unwilling to perform, from pottery to metalwork.

Ethiopian chronicles record the lives of many powerful women, and the 18th century empress Mentewwab was one of the greatest. She had been born an Oromo, but became Christian after she married the emperor Bakaffa. He was captivated by her beauty, and also hoped that the marriage would help relations between the Christian establishment and the Oromo warriors who had been invading the empire from the South. As Bakaffa had feared, the power of the Gondarine empire was eventually weakened by the presence of the Oromo, as well as by the doctrinal disputes that had undermined the Church. Real power passed to regional warlords in what is called the Era of the Princes, the decades of civil war that ended in 1855 when Kasa Haylu defeated his rivals and became the emperor Tewodros II. He began to bring European technology into the ancient empire, but the world was still astonished in 1896 when the emperor Menelik II won a famous victory over an Italian army that crossed the Ethiopian frontier. The event caused a political crisis in Italy, leading the country toward extreme nationalism and eventually fascism, but it aroused admiration among people who had been subject to colonialism themselves.

In 1930, Ras Tafari was crowned as Haile Selassie, the last emperor. When he was crowned, Marcus Garvey and other black leaders in America and the Caribbean announced that Selassie fulfilled a Biblical prophecy that kings would come out of Africa. Fascination with the black Christian emperor became most intense among those who believed him to be no less than God incarnate, and to have escaped death during the Revolution of 1974. This Rastafarian belief has been spread throughout the world by Jamaican musicians, most notably by Bob Marley.

By Roderick Grierson

|| THE HOLY LAND EPISODE ||