Founding of Ethiopia's Solomonic Dynasty
A dynasty claiming descent from Solomon took the Ethiopian throne in 1270 and its last emperor was deposed in 1974. The Zagwe kings who had ruled for the previous century and a half were the builders of the rock-hewn churches at Lalibela and were regarded by the Christian nobility of Tigray and Amhara as usurpers, because they did not claim the descent that legitimacy in Ethiopia required. Yekuno Amlak, a nobleman from Amhara supported by the monastic clergy, defeated and killed the last Zagwe king in 1270. What made the claim work was a book. The Kebra Nagast, assembled in its surviving form in the fourteenth century, tells how the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, bore him a son called Menelik, and how Menelik returned to Jerusalem as a young man and brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Ethiopia with the firstborn sons of the Israelite nobility. The Ethiopian church holds that the Ark is in a chapel at Axum, guarded by a single monk who never leaves it. The dynasty ruled with interruptions for seven centuries and the claim was written into the constitutions of 1931 and 1955. Haile Selassie's full title included Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Elect of God, and it is why Rastafari in Jamaica took him for a messiah. He was deposed by a military committee in 1974. Whether any of the genealogy is historical is beside the point, which is that it worked for seven hundred years. A dynasty that could not be legitimate without descent from Solomon produced a book proving the descent, and every rebel and usurper afterwards had to claim the same line.
- Year: 1270 CE
- Category: Civil War
