David Samuel Margoliouth

“ A state was founded, having for its capital Napata (mod. Merawi) at the foot of Jebel Barkal, “the sacred mountain,” which in time became formidable, and in the middle of the 8th century conquered Egypt; an Egyptian campaign is recorded in the famous stele of King Pankhi. The fortunes of the Ethiopian (XXVth) Dynasty belong to the history of Egypt (q.v.) . After the Ethiopian yoke had been shaken off by Egypt, about 660 B.C., Ethiopia continued independent, under kings of whom not a few are known from inscriptions. ”

“ In May 909 al-Shīʽī led a tremendous army westwards to the kingdom of Tahert, where he put an end to the Rustamite dynasty, and appointed a governor of his own: he thence proceeded to Sijilmāsa where ʽObaidallah lay imprisoned, with the intention of releasing him and placing him on the throne. After a brief attempt at resistance, the governor fled, and al-Shīʽī entered the city, released ʽObaidallah and presented him to the army as the long-promised Imām. ”

“ Most of the antiquities of Axum still await excavation; those that have been described consist mainly of obelisks, of which about fifty are still standing, while many more are fallen. They form a consecutive series from rude unhewn stones to highly finished obelisks, of which the tallest still erect is 60 ft. in height, with 8 ft. 7 in. extreme front width; others that are fallen may have been taller. The highly finished monoliths are all representations of a many-storeyed castle, with an altar at the base of each. ”

“ Various hymn-books bear the names Degua, Zemmare and Mawasʽet (Antiphones) ; there is also a biblical history in verse called Mashafa Madbal or Mestīra Zamān. Homilies also exist in large numbers, both original and translated, sometimes after the Arabic fashion in rhymed prose. Hagiology is naturally an important department in Ethiopic literature. In the great collection called Synaxar (translated originally from Arabic, but with large additions) for each day of the year there is the history of one or more saints ”

“ These Ethiopian kings seem to have made no attempt to reconquer Egypt, though they were often engaged in wars with the wild tribes of the Sudan. For the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. the history of the country is a blank. A fresh epoch was, however, inaugurated by Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who is said to have massacred the priests at Napata, and destroyed sacerdotal influence, till then so great that the king might at the priests’ order be compelled to destroy himself ”

“ The Abyssinian chronicles, it may be noted, attribute the foundation of the kingdom to Menelek (or Ibn el-Hakim) , son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The Axumite or Menelek dynasty was driven from northern Abyssinia by Judith, but soon after another Christian dynasty, that of the Zagués, obtained power. In 1268 the reigning prince abdicated in favour of Yekūnō Amlāk. king of Shoa, a descendant of the monarch overthrown by Judith (see Abyssinia) . ”

“ Science can scarcely be said to exist in Geez literature, unless a medical treatise, of which the British Museum possesses a copy, comes under this head. Philosophy is mainly represented by mystical commentaries on Scripture, such as the Book of the Mystery of Heaven and Earth, by Ba-Hailu Michael, probably of the 15th century, edited by Perruchon and Guidi (Paris, 1903) . There is, however, a translation of the Book of the Wise Philosophers, made by Michael, son of Abba Michael, consisting of various aphorisms ”

“ After the death of al-Ādid, the last Fatimite caliph in Egypt, some attempts were made to place on the throne a member of the family, and at one time there seemed a chance of the Assassins, who formed a branch of the Fatimite sect, assisting in this project. In 1174 a conspiracy for the restoration of the dynasty was organized by ʽUmarah of Yemen, a court poet, with the aid of eight officials of the government: it was discovered and those who were implicated were executed. ”

“ The inhabitants of Ethiopia, partly perhaps owing to their honourable mention in the Homeric poems, attracted the attention of many Greek researchers, from Democritus onwards. Herodotus divides them into two main groups, a straight-haired race and a woolly-haired race, dwelling respectively to the East and West, and this distinction is confirmed by the Egyptian monuments. ”

“ The present town, containing less than a thousand houses, is supposed to occupy only a small portion of the area covered by the ancient city; it lies in a kloof or valley, but the old town must have been built on the western ridge rather than in the valley, as the traces of well-dressed stones are more numerous there than elsewhere. ”

“ At an early period in his reign he made Jauhar, who had been secretary under the former caliph, commander of the forces, and the services rendered by this person to the dynasty made him count as its second founder after al-Shīʽī. In the years 958 and 959 he was sent westwards to reduce Fez and other places where the authority of the Fatimite caliph had been repudiated, and after a successful expedition advanced as far as the Atlantic. As early as 966 the plan of attempting a fresh invasion of Egypt was conceived, and preparations made for its execution ”

“ The founder of the dynasty was made out to be a scion of a family of heretics from whom the terrible Carmathian sect had originated: later on (perhaps owing to the rôle played by Jacob, son of Killis, in bringing the Fatimites to Egypt) , the founder was made out to have been a Jew, either as having been adopted by the heretic supposed to be his father, or as having been made to personate the real ʽObaidallah, who had been killed in captivity. ”

“ For the history of this kingdom see Ethiopia. J. T. Bent conjectured that the seat of government was transferred to Axum from Jeha, which he identified with the ancient Ava; and according to a document quoted by Achille Raffray the third Christian monarch transferred it from Axum to Lalibela. This second transference probably took place very much later; in spite of it, the custom of crowning Abyssinian| kings at Axum continued, and King John was crowned there as late as 1871 or 1872. ”

“ Further forces were immediately sent to the front by Ziyādatallah, but these were defeated by al-Shīʽī and his officers, to whom other towns capitulated, till Ziyādatallah found it prudent to retire from Al-Urbus or Laribus, which had been his headquarters, and entrench himself in Raqqāda, one of the two capitals of his kingdom, Kairawān being the other. ”

“ His sons, aided by the powerful tribe Zenāta, succeeded in forcing the prison, and releasing their father, who continued to organize a conspiracy on a vast scale, and by the end of 943 was strong enough to take the field against the Fatimite sovereign, whom he drove out of Kairawān. Abū Yazīd proclaimed himself a champion of Sunnī doctrine against the Shīʽis, and ordered the legal system of Mālik to be restored in place of that introduced by the Fatimites. ”

“ They claim to rule the Kasu or Meroitic Ethiopians; and the fifth inscription records an expedition along the Atbara and the Nile to punish the Nuba and Kasu, and a fragment of a Greek inscription from Meroë was recognized by Sayce as commemorating a king of Axum. Except for these inscriptions Axumite history is a blank until in the 6th century we find the Axumite king sending an expedition to wreck the Jewish state then existing in S. Arabia, and reducing that country to a state of vassalage: the king is styled in Ethiopian chronicles Caleb (Kaleb) , in Greek and Arabic documents El-Esbaha. ”

“ He also organized the compilation of the Miracles of the Virgin Mary, one of the most popular of Ethiopic books; a magnificent edition was printed by E. W. Budge in the Meux collection (London, 1900) . In the same reign the Arabic chronicle of al-Makīn was translated into Geez. Under Lebna Dengel (ob. 1540) , besides the above-mentioned collection of chronicles, we hear of the translation from the Arabic of the history and martyrdom of St George, the Commentary of J. Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the ascetic works of J. Saba called Aragāwī manfasāwī. ”

“ The stretch of land between Assuan (Syene) and Maharraka (Hiera Sycaminus) was, however, regarded as belonging to the Roman empire, and Roman cohorts were stationed at the latter place. To judge by the monuments it is possible that there were queens who reigned alone. ”

“ While the stories that make him of either Jewish or Carmathian origin may be neglected, as the product of malice, the uncertainty of the genealogies offered by their partisans renders any positive solution of the problem impossible. ”

“ Other collections exist in Abyssinia, and many MSS. are in private hands. In 1893 besides portions of the Bible some 40 Ethiopic books had been printed in Europe (enumerated in L. Goldschmidt’s Bibliotheca Aethiopica) , but many more have since been published.
Geez literature is ordinarily divided into two periods, of which the first dates from the establishment of Christianity in the 5th century, and ends somewhere in the 7th ”

“ Of Law the most important monument is the Fatha Nagaset (Judgment of Kings) , of which an official edition was issued by I. Guidi (Rome, 1899) , with an Italian translation; it is a version probably made in the early 16th century of the Arabic code of Ibn ʽAssal, of the 12th century, whose work, being meant for Christians living under Moslem rule, was not altogether suitable for an independent Christian kingdom; yet the need for such a code made it popular and authoritative in Abyssinia. The translator was not quite equal to his task, and the Brit. Mus. ”

“ It has been conjectured that these assassinations lost the Fatimites the support of the organization that continued to exist in the East, whence the Carmathians figure as an independent and even hostile community, though they appear to have been amenable to the influence of the African caliph.
ʽObaidallah had now to face the dissatisfaction of the tribes whose allegiance al-Shīʽī had won, especially the Kutāma, Zenāta and Lawāta: the uprising of the first assumed formidable proportions, and they even elected a Mahdī of their own, one Kādū b. ”

“ The MSS. of the Biblical books vary very much, and none of them can claim any great antiquity; the oldest extant MS. of the four Books of Kings appears to be one in the Museo Borgiano, presented by King Amda Sion (1314) to the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem (described by N. Roupp, ibid. xvi. 296-342) . Hence P. de Lagarde supposed the Ethiopic version to have been made from the Arabic, which indeed is in accordance with a native tradition. This opinion is held by few ”