Dawit I (reigned 1380-1412) was one of the most powerful medieval emperors of Ethiopia. He was the son of Emperor Newaya Krestos. His reign coincided with the steady expansion of Christianity, particularly among the Agaw in eastern Gojam province, as well as with bitter conflicts with the Muslims of Adal, an emirate in the eastern lowlands, near the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, at the entrance to the Red Sea. Dawit was attacked by the Adal ruler Sa’ad ad-Din, whom he defeated and obliged to retreat to Zayla, a port on the Gulf of Aden, 25 mi (40 km) east-south-east of modern Jibuti.
Here Sa’ad ad-Din was besieged and later killed in 1403 by the emperor’s men. Dawit also fought a successful campaign against the Falasha (Ethiopians of Jewish faith), who had rebelled in the mountains of Semen, the highest range in Ethiopia, located in Bagemder province, northeast of Gondar. Though reputed a warlike monarch, Dawit seems to have been statesmanlike in his handling of the followers of Ewostatewos (Eustatius), an Armenian monk whose followers insisted on observing the Sabbath, and thereby gave his protection to religious dissent.
Dawit, who had several Florentine craftsmen at his court, showed interest in foreign contacts, and sent one of the first Ethiopian embassies in Europe, in 1402. Earlier, in 1386, he had sent another, accompanied by 21 camels laden with gifts, to the Egyptian Mamluk caliph Barquq. Dawit’s reign is also remembered as the time when a piece of the True Cross is said to have been brought to Jerusalem, a city with which the Ethiopians had long been in communication. To mark the arrival of this antiquity, the emperor ordered that the priests’ sacerdotal vests, which had hitherto been plain, should be embroidered with flowers.
Dawit abdicated about a year before his death. A great lover of horses, he is believed to have been fatally injured when examining a fine but restive horse which lashed out, fracturing his skull. He was buried on the island of Dek, on Lake Tana.
RICHARD PANKHURST
