Iyoas I (
Ge'ez: ኢዮአስ; 1754 – 14 May 1769), throne name Adyam Sagad (Ge'ez: አድያም ሰገድ) was
Emperor of Ethiopia
The emperor of Ethiopia (, "King of Kings"), also known as the Atse (, "emperor"), was the hereditary monarchy, hereditary ruler of the Ethiopian Empire, from at least the 13th century until the abolition of the monarchy in 1975. The emperor w ...
from 27 June 1755 to 7 May 1769, and a member of the
Solomonic dynasty. He was the infant son of
Iyasu II and
Wubit (Welete Bersabe), the daughter of an
Oromo chieftain of the
Karrayyu.
Iyoas and Mentewab
Despite his extreme youth, he was the candidate proposed by Empress
Mentewab, his grandmother, who then acted as his regent. Her proposal was supported by the great nobles of the reign, ''
Ras''
Wolde Leul her brother,
Waragna,
Ayo governor of
Begemder, and ''Ras''
Mikael Sehul. One handicap with this tactic of ruling through a proxy, as
Richard Pankhurst points out, was that neither Iyoas, due to his age, nor Empress Mentewab, due to her sex, could operate far from the capital city of
Gondar
Gondar, also spelled Gonder (Amharic: ጎንደር, ''Gonder'' or ''Gondär''; formerly , ''Gʷandar'' or ''Gʷender''), is a city and woreda in Ethiopia. Located in the North Gondar Zone of the Amhara Region, Gondar is north of Lake Tana on ...
, and relied on Waragna and her brothers to lead many of the military campaigns. The very first challenge to Iyoas' rule, when Nanna Giyorgis rebelled in
Damot out of envy for Waragna's increased influence in the court, had to be suppressed by a force led by Waragna and the Empress' brother ''
Grazmach'' Eshte.
Another problem grew from Mentewab's arrangement of the marriage of her son to Wubit, the daughter of an Oromo chieftain. Iyasu II gave precedence to his mother and allowed her every prerogative as a crowned co-ruler, while his wife Wubit suffered in obscurity. Wubit waited for the accession of her own son to make a bid for the power wielded for so long by Mentewab and her relatives from
Qwara Province
Qwara (Amharic: ቋራ), also spelled Quara, was a province in now Amhara Region, Ethiopia, located between Lake Tana and the frontier inside present-day Sudan, and stretching from Agawmeder in the south as far north as Metemma, and as far west ...
.
When Iyoas assumed the throne upon his father's sudden death, the aristocrats of Gondar were stunned to find that he more readily spoke in the
Oromo language
Oromo, historically also called Galla, is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch, primarily spoken by the Oromo people, native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia; and northern Kenya. It is used as a lingua franca in Oromia an ...
rather than in
Amharic
Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...
, and favored his mother's Oromo relatives over the Qwarans of his grandmothers family, or the Gondarine nobility that had surrounded the Solomonic monarchs since the reign of Fasiledes. His preference of the Oromo only increased when Iyoas reached adulthood. He assembled a Royal Guard with 3000 of that people, and put his Oromo uncles Birale and Lubo, the brothers of Wubit, in command of them. On the death of the ''Ras'' of Amhara province, he attempted to promote his uncle Lubo governor of that province, but the outcry led his uncle Wolde Leul to convince him to change his mind.
[Bruce, ''Travels'', vol. 4 p. 155]
In 1764 ''Ras'' Mikael Sehul returned to the capital city of Gondar, and convinced Iyoas to support
Badi abu Shalukh, the exiled king of
Sennar
Sennar ( ') is a city on the Blue Nile in Sudan and possibly the capital of the state of Sennar. For several centuries it was the capital of the Funj Kingdom of Sennar and until at least 2011, Sennar was the capital of Sennar State.
Histo ...
. Iyoas made Badi governor of
Ras al-Fil
Ras al-Fil (Arabic: lit. 'head of the elephant') was a former governorate of the Christian Ethiopian state, located to the west of the river Atbara and Mätämma near the Ethiopian-Sudanese border.
Ras al-Fil seems to have been the principal m ...
along the border with Sennar, and Wolde Leul advised Badi to remain in Ras al-Fil; however the exiled king was lured back into Sennar where he was quietly executed.
[
Not long after this, Iyoas' great uncle Wolde Leul died (March 1767), which James Bruce described was the signal for all parties to engage in a civil war. The two sides were roughly aligned around the two rival Dowager Empresses, Mentewab and Wubit (Welete Bersabe). "Nothing had withheld them but his prudence and authority." The anti-Oromo party found their champion in Ya Mariam Bariaw, the son of Ayo (who had helped to make Iyoas Emperor) and governor of Begemder, and who was supported by ''Grazmach'' Eshte. The ''Grazmach'' was made governor of Damot whose governor, Waragna, had died some years before. However, the ]Jawa Oromo
Jawa may refer to:
Places Southeast Asia
*Java (), the most populous and fifth-largest island in Indonesia and the site of its capital, Jakarta
*East Java, also called Jawa Timur, a province on the Indonesian island of Java
*Central Java, also ca ...
inhabiting Damot preferred to be ruled by Waragna's son Fasil; when ''Grazmach'' Eshte arrived in Damot, he was assassinated and Fasil proclaimed governor in his place; according to Bruce, Iyoas' uncles Birale and Lubo convinced him to confirm Fasil in that position.
At this point, Ya Mariam Bariaw's pride led to his losing the governorship of Begemder, replaced by the Emperor's Oromo uncle Birale. Because the governorship of Begemder included being custodian of Mount Wehni, Ya Mariam Bariaw was horrified at the prospect of a pagan outsider holding this important trust, and is said to have begged the Emperor to instead appoint any other Christian
A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
ruler to this post. (Or so a document later published by ''Ras'' Mikael Sehul, and according to Bruce, at the instigation of Aster Iyasu, the daughter of Empress Mentewab.) Despite the outcry of the non-Oromo elite, and Ya Mariam Bariaw's pledge to stop Birale at the Well of Fernay, Iyoas persisted in his decision, and sent his bodyguard to assist Birale's own followers to assume the government of Begemder. In the ensuing battle Ya Mariam Bariaw was victorious, but despite his explicit orders that Birale should either be captured or allowed to escape, his opponent was killed. Upon learning this, Ya Mariam Bariaw predicted, "Michael, and all the army of Tigre, will march against me before autumn."
Enter ''Ras'' Mikael
Once he learned of the death of his uncle Birale, Iyoas sent to Tigray's ''Ras'' Mikael Sehul for help. ''Ras'' Mikael had established himself as the most powerful lord of Ethiopia, at one point having amassed some 6,000 matchlock
A matchlock or firelock is a historical type of firearm wherein the gunpowder is ignited by a burning piece of flammable cord or twine that is in contact with the gunpowder through a mechanism that the musketeer activates by pulling a lever or Tri ...
s—six times the total number in the rest of Ethiopia. ''Ras'' Mikael first replied to the envoys that the Emperor's conduct would "end in the ruin of his family, and the state in general." Then, although extolling Ya Mariam Bariaw as "the only man in Abyssinia that knew his duty, and had courage to persevere in it", immediately set forth for Gondar, "his army encumbered by no baggage, not even provisions, women or tents, nor useless beasts of burden." He marched swiftly through Wegera
Wegera or Wogera (Amharic: ወገራ), is a woreda in Amhara Region, Ethiopia. Wegera is named for the former province Wegera, which was located roughly in the same location, and was later made part of the province of Semien. Part of the Semien ...
, cutting a swath of destruction as he marched for the capital. However, instead of taking Gondar by storm, the ''Ras'' simply took control of the city's sources of water and every entrance into Gondar; as Bruce puts it, "he intended to terrify, but to do no more." The day after his arrival, ''Ras'' Mikael visited the Emperor Iyoas, then his mother. After establishing himself as the undisputed ruler of the capital, marched on Ya Mariam Bariaw from Gondar to Begemder—only after insisting that the Emperor be the leader of this expedition, at least in name.
Upon learning of this new army, Ya Mariam Bariaw, who had remained near the site of his victory, fell back into Begemder, first to Filakit Gereger, then to Nefas Mewcha "in the farthest limits of his province" (in Bruce's words) where the armies met. In the battle that followed Ya Mariam Bariaw was defeated, and severely wounded; he fled to the nearby province of the Wollo Oromo, who returned him to Iyoas with twelve of his principal officers. Although it appeared that the Emperor, moved by the pitiful sight of Ya Mariam Bariaw covered with blood from his open wound lying supine before him, was about to pardon this rebel, his uncle Lubo spoke up and demanded, as was his right by traditional Ethiopian law, for Maryam Bariya to delivered to him for what punishment he believed was appropriate; Lubo killed the noble himself by slitting Ya Mariam Bariaw's throat. Shocked at this act, the Emperor's own officers allowed the other twelve captives, who included Wand Bewossen, to escape.
The murder of Ya Mariam Bariaw only deepened ''Ras'' Mikael's scorn for Iyoas. Eventually Mikael Sehul deposed the Emperor Iyoas (7 May 1769); one week later, Mikael Sehul had him killed. Although the details of his death are contradictory, the result was clear: for the first time an Emperor had lost his throne in a means other than his own natural death, death in battle, or voluntary abdication. Mikael Sehul had compromised the power of the Emperor, and from this point forward it lay ever more openly in the hands of the great nobles and military commanders. As Edward Ullendorff notes,
:It is this period, from 1769 to the beginning of Theodore's ow the british referred to Emperor Tewodrosreign in 1855, that is called by Ethiopian tradition the time of the ''masafent'' ("judges"), for it resembled very closely the era of the Old Testament
The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...
judges when "there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes".[ Edward Ullendorff, ''The Ethiopians'', second edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 82]
Both the Empress Mentewab and his mother Wubit were devastated at the death of Iyoas. Empress Mentewab was distraught at the death of her grandson. She arranged for him to be buried at her retreat at Qusquam, and retired permanently to her palace there, refusing to return to the capital for the rest of her life. Although she lived through the next three reigns, she played a minimal role in them.
References
Further reading
* Richard K. P. Pankhurst ''The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles'' (Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1967) contains a partial translation of the Chronicle of Iyoas' reign.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iyoas 01 Of Ethiopia
Year of birth uncertain
1769 deaths
18th-century emperors of Ethiopia
18th-century monarchs in Africa
Child monarchs from sub-Saharan Africa
Ethiopian children
Solomonic dynasty
Monarchs who died as children
Place of birth missing