The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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| 95 challenge to his authority and the Falasha army was defeated at Kosage, north of Gondar. In memory of his victory, says Bruce, the king 'built a church on the place and called it Debra Isaac, which remains there to this day'. (1) The tradition of this campaign lived on and Faitlovitch reported (2) that when he was passing through Begemeder in 1908 his guides pointed out a peak which was still called the Falashas' camp for it had been their headquarters in their fight against King Yeshaq. The Falashas maintained that the whole of Begemeder once belonged to them. These traditions support the view that their territory had once extended over a large part of the Agau-speaking country and as far south as the Bashilo tributary of the Blue Nile. This river, with its ravine nearly 4,000 feet deep, provided one of the most formidable obstacles to the opposing armies in the Abyssinian campaign of 1868 as they both converged on the fortress at Magdala. At one time it probably formed the boundary between the Amharas and the Falashas. A desire was now emerging among the Amharas to establish links with Europe and in the reign of Zar'a Yaqob (1434-68) - in the view of some scholars the greatest ruler Ethiopia had seen since Ezana - a delegation was sent from the Abyssinian church in Jerusalem to the seventeenth church council in Florence. 'From this time', writes Bruce, 'there appear marks of a party formed in favour of the church of Rome.'(3) Ethiopia was beginning to break away from its long isolation. It was during this reign that one of the king's sons, Abba Saga, rebelled against his father, adopted the Jewish religion and, according to Faitlovitch,(4) took refuge in the Hoharwa mountains with a Falasha monk called Abba Sabra. The two formed a close collaboration and together they developed the Falasha form of monasticism on lines similar to those of the Christians. Whatever may be Zar'a Yaqob's claim to be considered a great ruler the chronicles of his reign depict him as a ferocious and cruel despot and a religious fanatic. He compelled pagans to abandon their customs and persecuted those who did not conform to the orthodox tenets. Members of a reformist sect known as the children of Estifa, or Stephanites, had their noses and tongues cut off and were then stoned to death. His chronicler called him 'the exterminator of the Jews'.(5) It may seem paradoxical that he should (1) ibid., p. 66. |