Iyoas I of Ethiopia

Iyoas I or Joas I (Ge'ez ኢዮዋስ, throne name Adyam Sagad, Ge'ez አድያም ሰገድ, "to whom the confines of the earth bow") (1755 – 14 May 1769) was "IPA|nəgusä nägäst" (27 June 1755 – 7 May 1769) of Ethiopia, 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 Yejju district; his extreme youth required Empress Mentewab, his grandmother, to act as his regent.

Not only was the Empire broke on the death of Iyasu, it also suffered from regional conflict between regions that been part of the heart of the Empire for hundreds of years — the Agaw, Gonderes, Shewans, and Tigrayans — and the Oromo newcomers. Mentewab's attempt to strengthen ties between the monarchy and the Oromo by arranging the marriage of her son to the daughter of an Oromo chieftain failed in the long run. 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. 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 rather than in Amharic, and favored his mother's Yejju relatives over the Qwarans of his grandmothers family.

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 Brulhe and Lubo in command of them. On the death of the Ras of Amhara region, he attempted to promote his uncle Lubo governor of that province, but the outcry led his advisor Walda Nul to convince him to change his mind.

About this time, Ras Mikael Sehul of Tigray is first mentioned in the "Royal Chronicles" of Iyaos' reign, where he is portrayed favorably to the Emperor. [Translated in part by Richard K. P. Pankhurst in "The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles" (Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1967).] It is believed that the power struggle between the Qwarans led by the Empress Mentewab, and the Yejju Oromos led by the Emperor's mother Wubit was about to erupt into an armed conflict. Mentewab summoned Ras Mikael (who was to become her son-in-law) to mediate between her forces and her daughter-in-law's supporters. As a fellow opponent of the incoming Oromo and a lord of traditionally Christian Tigray, Empress Mentewab believed he would be sympathetic to her cause. Instead, he arrived and shrewdly maneuvered to sideline the two queens and their supporters making a bid for power for himself. Mikael settled soon as the leader of Amharic-Tigrean camp of the struggle.

The Ras came to the capital city of Gondar, and convinced Iyoas to support Badi abu Shalukh, the exiled king of Sennar. Iyoas made Badi governor of Ras al-Fil along the border with Sennar, and Walda Nul advised Badi to remain in his kingdom; however the exiled king was lured back into Sennar where he was quietly executed.

The reign of Iyaos' reign becomes a narrative of the struggle between the powerful Ras Mikael Sehul and the Oromo relatives of Iyoas. [Narrated in E. A. Walis Budge, "A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia", 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970), pp. 459-468.] As Iyoas increasingly favored Oromo leaders like Fasil, his relations with Mikael Sehul deteriorated. 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 reign 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 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 Dowager Empresses 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.

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