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Gudit ( gez, ጉዲት) is the
Classical Ethiopic name for a personage also known as Yodit in
Tigray, and
Amharic
Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...
, but also Isato in Amharic and
Ga'wa in Ţilţal. The personage behind these various alternative names is portrayed as a powerful female ruler, probably identical to Māsobā Wārq, the daughter of the last
Aksumite king,
Dil Na'ad, mentioned in an early
Arabic source. She is said to have been responsible for
laying waste the
Kingdom of Aksum
The Kingdom of Aksum ( gez, መንግሥተ አክሱም, ), also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom centered in Northeast Africa and South Arabia from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. Based primarily in wh ...
and its countryside, and the destruction of its churches and monuments. If she is the same as the ''Tirda' Gābāz'' in other Ethiopian sources, she is also said to have attempted to exterminate the members of the ruling dynasty. The deeds attributed to her are recorded in oral tradition and in a variety of historical narratives.
Name
The name "Gudit" in the Ge'ez narrative associates her positively with the Biblical
Judith. It has been conjectured that the form Gudit is connected
etymologically
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words an ...
with the Amharic word ''gud'' which connotes a range of meanings from "freak" and "monster" to "strange" and "wonderful". According to Caroline Levi, her alternative name "Isato", aside from meaning "fire", bears a similar set of meanings. The Ţilţal name for her, ''Ga'wa'' indicates she became to be associated with a 16th century Muslim queen of that name, something which suggests that the traditions concerning Gudit took centuries to achieve their final form. In one of the Ethiopian kinglists, mention is made of a certain ''Tirda' Gābāz'' as the last queen of Aksum. The tales told of her exploits are almost identical with those associated with Māsobā Wārq.
History and stories
Information about Gudit is contradictory and incomplete. Paul B. Henze wrote, "She is said to have killed the emperor, ascended the throne herself, and reigned for 40 years. Accounts of her violent misdeeds are still related among peasants in the north Ethiopian countryside." Henze continues in a footnote:
There is a tradition that Gudit sacked and burned
Debre Damo
Debre Damo (), also spelled Debre Dammo, Dabra Dāmmo or Däbrä Dammo), is the name of a flat-topped mountain, or amba, and a 6th-century monastery in Tigray Region of Ethiopia. The mountain is a steeply rising plateau of trapezoidal shape, abou ...
, an
''amba'' which at the time was a treasury and a prison for the male relatives of the king; this may be an echo of the later capture and sack of
Amba Geshen
Amba Geshen is the name of a mountain in northern Ethiopia. It is in Ambassel, South Wollo Zone of the Amhara Region, northwest of Dessie, at a latitude and a longitude of . Part of Ambassel woreda, Amba Geshen is one of the mountains of Ethiopi ...
by
Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi
Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi ( so, Axmed Ibraahim al-Qaasi or Axmed Gurey, Harari: አሕመድ ኢብራሂም አል-ጋዚ, ar, أحمد بن إبراهيم الغازي ; 1506 – 21 February 1543) was an imam and general of the Adal Sultana ...
.
However,
James Bruce
James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia and in 1770 became the first Eur ...
presented a tradition that Dil Na'ad was overthrown by Gudit, and that
Mara Takla Haymanot
Mara Takla Haymanot was King and the founder of Zagwe dynasty. Some king lists give his name simply as "Mararah", and other King Lists as "Takla Haymanot".
Regnal controversy
According to one tradition, Mara was born in the province of Lasta, wh ...
(whom Bruce calls "Takla Haymanot") was a cousin of Gudit who succeeded her after several of her own family.
In oral tradition, Gudit is sometimes conflated with the 16th-century Muslim queen
Ga'ewa Ga'ewa or Ga‘ǝwa (Ge'ez: ጋዕዋ), pp. 348–49. was a Muslim queen (regent) in the north of the Horn of Africa in the sixteenth century. Her kingdom stretched from Metemma in the west to the area south of the Mareb River, Mareb river in the Et ...
of Tigray.
Ethnicity
Carlo Conti Rossini
Carlo Conti Rossini (1872–1949) was an Italian orientalist.
He was director of the State Treasury from 1917 to 1925, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1921 and Royal Academy of Italy from 1939. He wrote various works on the historical g ...
first proposed that the account of this warrior queen in the ''
History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria
The ''History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria'' is a major historical work of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It is written in Arabic, but draws extensively on Greek and Coptic sources.
The compilation was based on earlier biographical ...
'', where she was described as ''Bani al-Hamwiyah'', ought to be read as ''Bani al-Damutah'', and argued that she was ruler of the once-powerful
Kingdom of Damot
The Kingdom of Damot (Amharic: ዳሞት) was a medieval kingdom in what is now western Ethiopia. The territory was positioned below the Blue Nile. It was a powerful state that forced the Sultanate of Showa (also called Shewa) to pay tributes. I ...
, and that she was related to one of the indigenous
Sidama people
The Sidama ( am, ሲዳማ) are an ethnic group traditionally inhabiting the Sidama Region, formerly part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. On 23 November 2019, the Sidama Zone became the 10th regional sta ...
of southern
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
.
Modern historian
Enrico Cerulli
Enrico Cerulli (15 February 1898 - 19 September 1988) was an Italian scholar of Somali and Ethiopian studies, a governor and a diplomat.
Biography
Cerulli was born in Naples, Italy in 1898. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Napl ...
discovered Arabic documents that mention a
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
queen named Badit daughter of Maya in the tenth century who reigned under the
Makhzumi dynasty
The Makhzumi dynasty also known as Sultanate of Shewa or Shewa Sultanate, was a Muslim kingdom in present-day Ethiopia. Its capital Walale was situated in northern Hararghe in Harla country. Its territory extended possibly to some areas west of t ...
. According to historian Tekeste Negash, Gudit was a Cushitic queen based at
Lake Hayq
Lake Hayq ( Amharic: ሐይቅ ሐይቅ, ) is a freshwater lake of Ethiopia. It is located north of Dessie, in the Debub Wollo Zone of the Amhara Region. The town of Hayq is to the west of the lake.
Lake Hayq is 6.7 km long and 6 km w ...
in
Wollo Province
Wollo (Amharic: ወሎ) was a historical province of northern Ethiopia that overlayed part of the present day Amhara, Afar, and Tigray regions. During the Middle Ages this region was known as Bete Amhara and had Amhara kings. Bete Amhara had ...
of Ethiopia. He further explains that there may have been a regional power struggle between Aksum and this queen of Wollo whom had ties to Yemeni traders through the port of
Zeila
Zeila ( so, Saylac, ar, زيلع, Zayla), also known as Zaila or Zayla, is a historical port town in the western Awdal region of Somaliland.
In the Middle Ages, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela identified Zeila (or Hawilah) with the Bibli ...
.
Somali folklore also mentions a
Harla
The Harla, also known as Harala, or Arla, are an extinct ethnic group that once inhabited Djibouti, Ethiopia and northern Somalia. They spoke the now-extinct Harla language, which belonged to either the Cushitic or Semitic branches of the Afroas ...
queen
Arawelo, who governed from Zeila into much of the interior of the Eastern Africa.
In more recent perspectives on the issue of the ethnicity of Gudit, there has been less certainty on to her actual identity and yet more certainty on the unlikelihood of her being of Judaic belief or associated with the
Beta Israel
The Beta Israel ( he, בֵּיתֶא יִשְׂרָאֵל, ''Bēteʾ Yīsrāʾēl''; gez, ቤተ እስራኤል, , modern ''Bēte 'Isrā'ēl'', EAE: "Betä Ǝsraʾel", "House of Israel" or "Community of Israel"), also known as Ethiopian Jews ...
. According to Steven Kaplan:
Despite the Judith legend's popularity and its prominent position in the traditions of both Jews and Christians to this day, there appears to be several good reasons for rejecting the depiction of the tenth century queen of the Bani al-Hamwiyah as a Falasha. Although some Ethiopic sources do portray Yodit as a Jewess, these generally identify her as a convert rather than the product of a well entrenched indigenous religious community. The material recorded by Bruce, which contains the earliest complete account of the legend, must be considered suspect on several grounds...
The suggestion that the Falasha queen Yodit, putative conqueror of Aksum, is in fact the pagan queen of the Sidama, vanquisher of the haḍani is not as startling as it might appear at first glance. By transforming the queen from a pagan to a Jewess and her primary area of activity from the south of Aksum, Christian tradition neatly places her within the primary categories of Ethiopian political-religious discourse. On some levels, the Judith traditions can be said to mirror the themes of the Kebra Nagast
The Kebra Nagast, var. Kebra Negast ( gez, ክብረ ነገሥት, ), or The Glory of the Kings, is a 14th-century national epic from Ethiopia, written in Ge'ez by Nebure Id Ishaq of Axum, by the office of Abuna Abba Giyorgis and at the comma ...
. Both the Queen of Sheba and Judith are depicted as converts to Judaism.
Historical evidence
It was during the office of
Pope Philotheos of Alexandria
Pope Philotheos of Alexandria, was the 63rd Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark.
It was during his office that a conflict between Alexandria and the King of Axum that began in the time of Cosmas III ended, helped by the ...
when Gudit started her revolt, near the end of the reign of the king who had deposed the
Abuna
Abuna (or Abune, which is the Construct state, status constructus form used when a name follows: Ge'ez alphabet, Ge'ez አቡነ ''abuna''/''abune'', 'our father'; Amharic language, Amharic and Tigrinya language, Tigrinya) is the honorific titl ...
Petros. According to Taddesse Tamrat, "his own death in the conflict, and the military reverses of the kingdom were taken as divine retribution for the sufferings of Abuna Petros."
This chronological synchronicity with the tenure of Patriarch Philotheos, and the intervention of king
Georgios II of Makuria
Georgios II (before 887–915/920?) was a ruler of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Makuria. He ascended the throne in 887, after the death of his father Georgios I, and ruled until 915 or 920, when he was succeeded by his son Zacharias II. Belong ...
, provides us a date of ca. 960 for Gudit. A contemporary Arab historian,
Ibn Hawqal
Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (), also known as Abū al-Qāsim b. ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born in Nisibis, Upper Mesopotamia; was a 10th-century Arab Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler who travelled during the ye ...
, provides this account:
Another historian mentions that the king of
Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...
sent a
zebra
Zebras (, ) (subgenus ''Hippotigris'') are African equines with distinctive black-and-white striped coats. There are three living species: the Grévy's zebra (''Equus grevyi''), plains zebra (''E. quagga''), and the mountain zebra (''E. zeb ...
to the ruler of
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
in 969/970, which he had received as a gift from the Queen of al-Habasha.
In popular culture
Yodit features in the video game ''
Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms''. The story is based on a Ge'ez tradition that she was a ruler who was exiled: With her Syrian husband Zānobis, she returns, and rallying people from her homeland in Hahayle, she destroys Aksum, and by decree declares that she had
become Jewish and would persecute the Levites.
See also
*
Furra, a queen of the
Sidama people
The Sidama ( am, ሲዳማ) are an ethnic group traditionally inhabiting the Sidama Region, formerly part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. On 23 November 2019, the Sidama Zone became the 10th regional sta ...
*
Kingdom of Simien
The Kingdom of Simien ( he, ממלכת סאמיאן), sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Beta Israel ( he, ממלכת ביתא ישראל, label=none), refers to a probably legendary Jewish kingdom said to have been located in the northwester ...
Notes
Citations
Sources
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{{Refend
10th-century Jews
10th-century monarchs in Africa
10th-century women rulers
African women in war
Aksumite Empire people
Jewish monarchs
Jewish royalty
Jews and Judaism in Ethiopia
Legendary Ethiopian people
Legendary Jews
Legendary rulers
Rulers of Ethiopia
Women in 10th-century warfare
Women in medieval warfare
Women rulers in Africa