Aksum
2nd - 11th Century 		Neo-Solomonic Dynasty
1270-1500







Abyssinia
Zagwe Dynasty



Felasha (Ethiopian Jewish) warrior Queen GUDIT had taken power in Aksum in the late 10th century. Around 1030 she herself was purged from power, and eventually - in 1137 - succeeded by the christian ZAGWE DYNASTY.
The new dynasty moved the capital to ADAFA, (near modern Lalibela), then to ROHA (now called Lalibela). The most eminent Zagwe rulers were YEMRAHANA KRESTOS (ca. 1189), LALIBALA and NA'AKWETO LA'AB.
As the succeeding Neosolomonian Dynasty regarded the Zagwe Dynasty as usurpers, our sources on them are often biased. The Zagwe dynasty period is one of those lesser documented in Ethiopian history.
Ca. 1270, an Amharic prince, YEKUNO AMLAK, succeeded in purging the last Zagwe king and establishing the Neo-Solomonic Dynasty.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Prelude to Lalibala : the Zagwe Dynasty, by Richard Pankhurst, from Ethiopia Online
The Lalibala Churches, by Richard Pankhurst
Library of Congress, Country Studies Ethiopia
Ethiopia in the Middle Ages. Literary and Architectural Renaissance, from Iyassu's Homepage
DOCUMENTS The Periplus, a document describing Africa's East Coast in the 1st Century B.C., from CCNY
REFERENCE



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on November 7th 2004

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