The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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| 79 Falasha independence for all practical purposes came to an end. The Agau country extended in a wide circle around Lake Tana, from the Takazze river in the north to the Abbai or Blue Nile in the south, an area of some 400 square miles.(1) Not all the Agau became Jews and not all of the latter concentrated in the Semien mountains in the north of the area, many remaining in their original homeland in the Kwara country south and west of Lake Tana. Under the pressure of Muslim Arabs from Egypt the nomadic Beja tribes of the Red Sea coast forced the Axumite rulers to withdraw from territory in the north and extend their control further south. The latter 'penetrated central Ethiopia in an effort to subjugate the pagan and Judaized Agau to convert them to Christianity'. (2) For a while they were successful but retribution was to come. In the 970s the Agau lashed back with a campaign in which Axum was sacked, her churches were burned and most of her royalty were killed. The Agau were led by a woman, variously known as Judith or Esther, whose husband was supposed to have been the governor of the district of Bugna in Lasta province. Scholars are divided as to whether she and her followers were Jews or pagans and there is also a fairly wide discrepancy in assessing the date of the revolt. The end of the tenth century seems to be the generally accepted period. As there are no contemporary records of the rebellion it is unlikely that we shall ever know for certain whether Judith was a Jewess though, if she is more than a legend, there seems no good reason why she should not have been. It remains a matter of opinion, depending on one's view of Ethiopian history. Bruce, in relating the story, which he learnt about during his travels, had no doubt that Judith was an historical character and he claimed that her motive was 'to attempt the subversion of the Christian religion and with it the succession in the line of Solomon'.(3) He suggested that, having seen how the Christian religion had been overthrown by Islam in Egypt, Judith and her party believed that 'a revolution in favour of Judaism was thought full as feasible in the country as it had been in Egypt'. Other authors are less precise, though one modern English scholar has boldly called her 'a bloodthirsty Falasha queen', while Ullendorff, echoing Conti Rossini at the other end of the scale, says that the legend has been shown 'to possess no basis in historical fact'.(4) Perhaps it should be left as an open question for future historical research though the existence at that period of an (1) Haberland, Untersuchungen zum Aethiopischen Kiinigtum (1965). |