The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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1307 Jacques FaitlovitchFOLLOWING the death of Emperor John while fighting against the dervishes in 1889, the imperial crown passed to Menelik, the King of Shoa. The new emperor had already shown that he was a strong and enterprising ruler and his accession heralded many important developments. His empress, a woman of strong character, called Taitu, who, like her husband, belonged to the Solomonic line, was said, according to Faitlovitch, (1) to be a descendant of the Falasha royal family of Gideon.Both before and after he became Emperor, Menelik II had greatly extended the frontiers of his territory and, by moving his seat of government to the newly-founded city of Addis Ababa ('The New Flower', built, it is said, at the request of the Empress), his capital became the centre of an enlarged, united Ethiopian Empire. The Italians, meanwhile, consolidated their possessions on the Red Sea coast and pressed further inland. By means of the Treaty of U ccialli of 1889 they gained a nominal protectorate over all Abyssinia and received formal recognition of their colony which, in 1890, by royal decree was given the name of Eritrea, from the Greek word for red to signify its association with the Red Sea. Italian ambitions, however, were not satisfied and soon war broke out, culminating in the Italian disaster at Adowa in 1896, when Menelik gained a decisive victory. Any further encroachments on Abyssinian territory were halted for forty years until Mussolini sought to avenge the defeat by his conquest of Ethiopia, which lasted only until 1941. Menelik was prepared to co-operate with the Western powers and welcomed a considerable number of foreign advisers. He also took steps to modernise his country by such measures as granting a concession for building a railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa (1) Quer durch Abessinien, p. x. |