GUDIT

Queen Gudit, who flourished in the 10th century, and who was also known as Yodit, Judith, and Esato (“The Fire”), was a non-Christian rebel leader to whom the downfall of the ancient Aksumite kingdom is traditionally ascribed.

Apart from oral tradition, there is considerable documentary evidence that in the second half of the 10th century the ruling Aksumite dynasty was harassed by a non-Christian queen who devastated the countryside, destroyed churches, and sought to exterminate the royal family. Many traditional sources affirm that this queen practised the Jewish faith which she may have adopted from her husband. Some have identified Gudit as the founder of the Zagwé, a dynasty from Lasta in what is now northwest Ethiopia, who seized the throne at an undetermined date after the fall of Aksum, and held it until 1270.

In the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, it is recorded that, during the patriarchate of Philotheos (979-1003), an appeal was received from an unnamed ruler of Ethiopia, seeking the appointment of a new bishop for his country. The letter described how a queen of the Bani al-Hamüya was wreaking havoc in the Christian kingdom. The Ethiopians attributed this calamity to divine wrath incurred during an earlier reign, in the time of the Patriarch Cosmas (923-934), when the Metropolitan of Ethiopia, Abuna Petros, had been dispossessed, and an impostor, Minas, installed in his place; Ethiopia had remained without a bishop ever since.

In response to this appeal, Patriarch Philotheos appointed a new Metropolitan, Abuna Daniel, and with his arrival in Ethiopia, peace seems to have been restored. Scholars are not agreed on the correct interpretation of the designation of the queen. The 20th-century Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini, reading “Bani al-Damuta” for “al-Hamuya,” has suggested that she was a ruler of the once-powerful kingdom of Damot, lying south of the Blue Nile and southwest of Shawa at that date, and that her rebellion represented an attempt by one of the indigenous Sidama peoples of southern Ethiopia to resist domination or absorption by the Semiticised Christian kingdom of the north. Modern scholars support this plausible hypothesis.

The existence of a powerful independent queen receives confirmation from another contemporary documentary source in the work of the 10th-century Arab geographer from Baghdad. In Hawqual, who wrote: As for Abyssinia, it has been ruled by a woman for many years. It is she who killed the Emperor of Abyssinia known as the Hadani and she still holds sway over her own country and the neighbouring regions of the Hadani’s country in the west of Abyssinia.

While positive identification of this queen with the “Queen of the Bani al-Hamüya,” or with the legendary Gudit, is not possible, it seems probable that they were one and the same person. It is likely that the whole cycle of legends of the Jewish Queen Gudit who brought about the downfall of Aksum evolved from memories of invasions and persecution by this woman ruler, who actually killed the reigning emperor and persecuted the Christians. These events evidently coincided with the decline of Aksum, and the transfer of the seat of power southwards.

BELAYNESH MICHAEL