Gudit

Gudit stela field, Axum, Ethiopia

Gudit (Ge'ez: ጉዲት, Judith) was a non-Christian queen (flourished ca. 960) who laid waste to Axum and its countryside, destroyed churches and monuments, and attempted to exterminate the members of the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Aksum.[1][2] Her deeds are recorded in the oral tradition and mentioned incidentally in various historical accounts.

Abreha and Atsbeha Church

Information about Gudit is contradictory and incomplete. Paul B. Henze wrote, "She is said to have killed the emperor, ascended the throne herself, and reigned for 40 years. Accounts of her violent misdeeds are still related among peasants in the north Ethiopian countryside."[3] Henze continues in a footnote:

On my first visit to the rock church of Abreha and Atsbeha in eastern Tigray in 1970, I noticed that its intricately carved ceiling was blackened by soot. The priest explained it as the work of Gudit, who had piled the church full of hay and set it ablaze nine centuries before.[4]

There is a tradition that Gudit sacked and burned Debre Damo, an amba which at the time was a treasury and a prison for the male relatives of the king; this may be an echo of the later capture and sack of Amba Geshen by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi.[5] Gudit is known as ʿEsato in Amharic, which means "fire".[1] Gudit is so related to the destruction of the Axumite Empire, that the name ጉዲት in Amharic is commonly translated as "destruction".[6]

Ethnicity

Carlo Conti Rossini first proposed that the account of this warrior queen in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, where she was described as Bani al-Hamwiyah, ought to be read as Bani al-Damutah, and argued that she was ruler of the once-powerful kingdom of Damot, and that she was related to one of the indigenous Sidama people of southern Ethiopia.[7] This would agree with the numerous references to matriarchs ruling the Sidamo polities.[8] According to the Sidama, Gudit who they refer to as Furra, belonged to the Havilah Gadire tribe. Benjamin of Tudela, the twelfth century Jewish traveler, claims the land of Havillah is confined by al-Habash on the west.[9]

Other scholars, based on the traditions that Gudit was Jewish, propose that she was of the Agaw people, who historically have been numerous in Lasta, and a number of whom (known as the Beta Israel), have professed an Israelite pre-Ezra Judaism since ancient times. If she was not of Jewish origin, she might have been a convert to Judaism by her husband, known as Zenobis, son of the King of Šam[1][10] – one of the names of Syria – or pagan.[11] Local traditions around Adi Kaweh where she allegedly died and was buried indicate her faith was pagan-Hebraic, rather than Israelite or Jewish [Leeman 2009].

Historian Enrico Cerulli also mentions a Muslim queen named Badit daughter of Maya in the same time period who ruled the Sultanate of Showa located in Hararghe, the historical home of the Harla people.[12][13] Somali local traditions also attest to this queen being of Harla background whom they called Arawelo.[14]

Historical evidence

It was during the office of Pope Philotheos of Alexandria when Gudit started her revolt, near the end of the reign of the king who had deposed the Abuna Petros. As Taddesse Tamrat explains, at the time "his own death in the conflict, and the military reverses of the kingdom were taken as divine retribution for the sufferings of Abuna Petros."[15]

This chronological synchronicity with the tenure of Patriarch Philotheos, and the intervention of king Georgios II of Makuria, provides us a date of ca. 960 for Gudit. A contemporary Arab historian, Ibn Hawqal, provides this account:

The country of the habasha has been ruled by a woman for many years now: she has killed the king of the habasha who was called Haḍani [from Ge'ez haṣ́ani, modern aṣ́e or atse]. Until today she rules with complete independence in her own country and the frontier areas of the country of the Haḍani, in the southern part of [the country of] the habashi.[16]

Another historian mentions that the king of Yemen sent a zebra to the ruler of Iraq in 969/970, which he had received as a gift from the Queen of al-Habasha.[17]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gudit. The Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography, Vol. 1 'From Early Times to the End of the Zagwé Dynasty c. 1270 A.D.,' copyright © 1975
  2. ↑ The Queen of the Habasha in Ethiopian History, Tradition and Chronology. School of Oriental and African Studies.
  3. ↑ Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time, A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000) p. 48
  4. ↑ Henze, Layers of Time, p. 48 n.14. His visit among others to various churches in Ethiopia can be read here Archived 2006-06-28 at the Wayback Machine..
  5. ↑ Recorded by Thomas Pakenham, The Mountains of Rasselas (New York: Reynal, 1959), p. 79.
  6. ↑ Ethiopian Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive
  7. ↑ Conti Rossini's argument is taken from Taddesse Tamrat's summary in Church and State in Ethiopia (1270 - 1526) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 39
  8. ↑ See O.G.S. Crawford, Ethiopian Itineraries, circa 1400-1524 (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958), p. 81f for examples.
  9. ↑ Adler, Elkan Nathan (2014). Jewish Travellers. Routledge. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-134-28606-5.
  10. ↑ Queen Gudit/Yodit of Ethiopia, Africa
  11. ↑ Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People second edition, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 60ff.
  12. ↑ Fage, John; Oliver, Roland (1977). The Cambridge History of Africa. Cambridge University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-521-20981-6.
  13. ↑ "Gudit fl. 10th century Orthodox Ethiopia". Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Retrieved 3 July 2017.
  14. ↑ Rayne, Henry (October 1938). "QUEEN ARAWEILO". Blackwoods Magazine. 238: 568-578. Archived from the original on 27 June 2001. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  15. ↑ Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 40f. Although Taddesse Tamrat states that the name of this king is not known, E.A. Wallis Budge in his account of the tenure of Abuna Petros (A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 [Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970], p.276) calls him Degna Djan, who reigned perhaps as late as ca. 1100; this would conflict with Conti Rossi's chronology.
  16. ↑ Quoted in Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State p. 39. Habasha is the Arabic form of Abyssinia, i.e. Ethiopia.
  17. ↑ Stuart C. Munro-Hay, Aksum, an African Civilization of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh: University Press, 1991) p. 101.

Further reading

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