Zemene Mesafint (1769-1855): Ethiopia's Era of the Princes

The Zemene Mesafint, or “Era of the Princes”, was a period of Ethiopian history from 1769 to 1855 when the emperors in Gondar became figureheads and real power lay with rival regional lords. It began when Ras Mikael Sehul, the ruler of Tigray, had the young Emperor Iyoas I killed in 1769. For more than eighty years warlords made and unmade emperors until Kassa Hailu reunited the country as Emperor Tewodros II.

Background: the Gondar monarchy

From the 1630s Ethiopia’s Solomonic emperors ruled from Gondar, north of Lake Tana, where they built a royal enclosure of stone castles now known as Fasil Ghebbi (see Fasil Ghebbi, Gondar). The dynasty claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a tradition told in the Kebra Nagast.

By the eighteenth century the court was weakened by palace intrigue, rebellions and the rising power of provincial nobles. Empress Mentewab, widow of Bakaffa and mother of Iyasu II (r. 1730–1755), dominated government for decades and brought her own relatives from Qwara into high office.

When Iyasu II died in 1755, his young son Iyoas I became emperor. Iyoas’s mother came from an Oromo family from Wollo, and he favoured her Oromo kinsmen at court. This set off a bitter struggle between Mentewab’s faction and the Oromo nobles.

The killing of Iyoas I (1769)

The court factions drew in Ras Mikael Sehul, an experienced and ruthless lord who controlled Tigray and its trade routes to the Red Sea. Mikael came to Gondar with a powerful army and soon made himself master of the capital.

In 1769 Mikael had Iyoas deposed and killed, by most accounts strangled in May 1769. He placed the elderly Yohannes II on the throne, but Yohannes died within months, reportedly poisoned, and Mikael crowned Yohannes’s son Tekle Haymanot II. The Scottish traveller James Bruce, who reached Gondar in 1770, witnessed Mikael’s harsh rule and described it in his later book.

The era of the lords

Mikael’s dominance was short. In 1771 a coalition of rival lords fought him in a series of battles around Sarbakusa, and he was forced to return to Tigray, where he died around 1779–1780. No single lord could take his place.

For the next eighty years power moved between regional rulers. The most enduring were the Yejju Oromo lords of Begemder, often called the Were Sheh dynasty, who held the title of ras and acted as regents in Gondar. Ras Ali I (died 1788), Ras Gugsa (regent c. 1803–1825) and Ras Ali II (from 1831) were among the most powerful. Lords of Tigray, Gojjam, Semien and Shewa fought them and each other.

Emperors became pawns. Some were placed on the throne and removed several times; Tekle Giyorgis I, for example, was enthroned and deposed repeatedly between 1779 and 1800. Gondar declined, and the court’s income and ceremony shrank.

Life during the Era of the Princes

Constant warfare brought heavy burdens for farmers, who had to feed passing armies. Trade routes became unsafe, and regional differences deepened. The church was also divided by long doctrinal disputes over the nature of Christ, which rival lords used for political ends.

At the same time, some regions flourished. Shewa in the south, under its own dynasty of rulers, grew stronger and largely independent, a development that later shaped modern Ethiopia under Menelik II.

Foreign contacts

Ethiopia was not entirely cut off during these decades. Travellers such as James Bruce in the 1770s and, in the early nineteenth century, the British envoy Henry Salt and the English adventurer Nathaniel Pearce visited the highlands, mainly through Tigray. Regional lords sought firearms from abroad to gain an edge over their rivals. Egypt’s expansion into Sudan in the 1820s also brought a new threat to Ethiopia’s western borders, a danger that helped convince later rulers of the need for unity.

The end of the era

The era ended with the rise of Kassa Hailu, a lord from the western borderland of Qwara. He defeated Ras Ali II at the Battle of Ayshal in 1853 and then other rivals, including the ruler of Tigray. On 11 February 1855 he was crowned Emperor Tewodros II and began trying to rebuild a centralised state. His successors carried this work forward, and a united Ethiopia defeated Italy at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.

Timeline

• 1755: Iyasu II dies; Iyoas I becomes emperor.
• 1769, May: Ras Mikael Sehul has Iyoas I killed; the Zemene Mesafint begins.
• 1769: Yohannes II reigns briefly and is succeeded by Tekle Haymanot II.
• 1770–1771: James Bruce stays in Gondar.
• 1771: Rival lords defeat Mikael, who withdraws to Tigray.
• 1779–1800: Tekle Giyorgis I is enthroned and deposed several times.
• 1853: Kassa Hailu defeats Ras Ali II at Ayshal.
• 1855, 11 February: Kassa is crowned Tewodros II, ending the era.

Why it matters

The Zemene Mesafint shows how an ancient monarchy could survive in name while losing its power. The divisions it created, and the struggle to overcome them, shaped the drive of Tewodros II and his successors to build a strong, centralised Ethiopian state.