Gebre Mesqel Lalibela
Gebre Mesqel Lalibela ruled Ethiopia in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and gave his name to the eleven rock-hewn churches that are the country's most famous monument. He belonged to the Zagwe dynasty, which had displaced the Aksumite line and ruled from the highlands of Lasta. Tradition holds that a swarm of bees surrounded him at birth and that his mother declared the bees recognised his future sovereignty, from which the name Lalibela is said to derive. Another tradition has him poisoned by a rival, falling into a coma for three days, and being carried by angels to heaven, where he was instructed to build a new Jerusalem. That instruction is the point of the site. Jerusalem had fallen to Saladin in 1187, and pilgrimage from Ethiopia became dangerous or impossible. The churches at Roha, later renamed Lalibela, were laid out as a substitute — with a river named the Jordan, a Calvary, and a Tomb of Adam — so that the pilgrimage could be made at home. The churches are not built but excavated. Workers cut down into solid volcanic tuff from the surface, isolating a block by digging trenches around it, and then hollowed out the interior, carving columns, windows, arches and reliefs from the living rock. Bete Giyorgis, cut in the shape of a Greek cross and standing in a deep pit, is the best known. Drainage channels and tunnels connect the complex. They are still in active use by Ethiopian Orthodox priests, and were declared a World Heritage Site in 1978. He is venerated as a saint.
- Lived: 1150 CE – 1225 CE
- Nationality: Ethiopian
- Roles: king
