Gudit

Gudit (or Yodit, meaning Judith; also known as Esato) is a semi-legendary non-Christian queen (flourished c.960) who laid waste to Axum and its countryside, destroyed churches and monuments, and attempted to exterminate the members of the ruling Axumite dynasty. Her deeds are recorded in the oral tradition and mentioned incidentally in various historical accounts.

The accounts of Gudit are contradictory and incomplete. Paul B. Henze wrote, "She is said to have killed the emperor, ascended the throne herself, and reigned for forty years. Accounts of her violent misdeeds are still related among peasants in the north Ethiopian countryside." [Paul B. Henze, "Layers of Time, A History of Ethiopia" (New York: Palgrave, 2000) p. 48] Henze continues in a footnote,

:On my first visit to the rock church of Abreha and Atsbeha in eastern Tigray in 1970, I noticed that its intricately carved ceiling was blackened by soot. The priest explained it as the work of Gudit, who had piled the church full of hay and set it ablaze nine centuries before. [Henze, "Layers of Time", p. 48 n.14. His visit among others to various churches in Ethiopia can be read [here http://www.irrob.org/page/page/2466345.htm] .]

There is a tradition that Gudit sacked and burned Debre Damo, which at the time was a treasury and a prison for the male relatives of the king of Ethiopia; this may be an echo of the later capture and sack of Amba Geshen by Ahmed Gragn. [Recorded by Thomas Pakenham, "The Mountains of Rasselas" (New York: Reynal, 1959), p. 79.]

The Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini first proposed that the account of this warrior queen in the "History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria", where she was described as "Bani al-Hamwiyah" ought to be read as "Bani al-Damutah", and argued that she was ruler of theonce-powerful kingdom of Damot, and that she was related to one of the indigenous Sidamo peoples of southern Ethiopia. [Conti Rossini's argument is taken from Taddesse Tamrat's summary in "Church and State in Ethiopia (1270 - 1526)" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 39] This would agree with the numerous references to matriarchs ruling the Sidamo polities. [See O.G.S. Crawford, "Ethiopian Itineraries, circa 1400-1524" (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1958), p. 81f for examples.]

If Gudit did not belong to one of the Sidamo peoples, then some scholars, based on the traditions that Gudit was Jewish, propose that she was of the Agaw people, who historically have been numerous in Lasta, and a number of whom (known as the Beta Israel), have professed the Jewish religion since ancient times. If she was not of a Jewish origin, she might have been a convert to Judaism by her husband, or pagan. [Edward Ullendorff, "The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People" second edition, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 60ff.]

It was during the office of Patriarch Philotheos of Alexandria when Gudit started her revolt, near the end of the reign of the king who had deposed the Abuna Petros. As Taddesse Tamrat explains, at the time "his own death in the conflict, and the military reverses of the kingdom were taken as divine retribution for the sufferings of Abuna Petros." [Taddesse Tamrat, "Church and State", pp. 40f. Although Taddesse Tamrat states that the name of this king is not known, E.A. Wallis Budge in his account of the tenure of Abuna Petros ("A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia", 1928 [Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970] , p.276) calls him Degna Djan, who reigned perhaps as late as c.1100; this would obviously conflict with Conti Rossi's chronology.]

This chronological synchronicity with the tenure of Patriarch Philotheos, and the intervention of king Georgios II of Makuria, provides us a date of c.960 for Gudit. A contemporary Arab historian, Ibn Hawqal, provides this account:

: The country of the "habasha" has been ruled by a woman for many years now: she has killed the king of the "habasha" who was called "Haḍani" [from Ge'ez "haṣ́ani", modern aṣ́e or "atse"] . Until today she rules with complete independence in her own country and the frontier areas of the country of the "Haḍani", in the southern part of [the country of] the "habashi". [Quoted in Taddesse Tamrat, "Church and State" p. 39. "Habasha" is the Arabic form of Abyssinia, i.e. Ethiopia.]

Another historian mentions that the king of Yemen sent a zebra to the ruler of Iraq in 969/970, which he had received as a gift from the Queen of al-Habasha. [Stuart C. Munro-Hay, "Aksum, an African Civilization of Late Antiquity" (Edinburgh: University Press, 1991) p. 101.]

Taddesse Tamrat has speculated that one effect of Gudit's otherwise ephemeral rule, might be the pockets of various languages related to Amharic scattered across southwestern Ethiopia (e.g. Argobba, Gurage and Gafat), which could have been Axumite military settlements isolated by her conquests and later Sidamo migrations. [Taddesse Tamrat, "Church and State", p. 41.]

References

External links

* [http://www.dacb.org/stories/ethiopia/gudit_.html "Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography" article on Gudit]