Dil Na'od was the last
King
King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...
of
Aksum before the
Zagwe dynasty. He lived in either the 9th or 10th century. Dil Na'od was the younger son of Ged'a Jan (or
Degna Djan), and succeeded his older brother
'Anbasa Wedem as ''negus''. According to
E. A. Wallis Budge
Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 185723 November 1934) was an English Egyptology, Egyptologist, Orientalism, Orientalist, and Philology, philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient ...
, "The reign of Delna'ad was short, perhaps about ten years." However,
James Bruce
James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who physically confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North and East Africa and in 1770 became the fir ...
has recorded another tradition, that Dil Na'od was an infant when
Gudit slaughtered the princes imprisoned at
Debre Damo, his relatives, and forced some of his nobles to take him out of his kingdom to save his life.
Dil Na'od is recorded as both campaigning in the
Ethiopian Highlands
The Ethiopian Highlands (also called the Abyssinian Highlands) is a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia in Northeast Africa. It forms the largest continuous area of its elevation in the continent, with little of its surface falling below , whil ...
south of
Axum
Axum, also spelled Aksum (), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire.
Axum is located in the Central Zone of the Tigray Re ...
, and sending missionaries into that region. With
Abuna Salama I, he helped to build the church of
Debre Igziabher overlooking
Lake Hayq.
[Paul B. Henze, ''Layers of Time'' (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 47f.]
According to one tradition, he was defeated by
Mara Takla Haymanot, a prince from Lasta province, who married Dil Na'od's daughter, Masaba Warq. According to tradition, a son of Dil Na'od was carried to
Amhara, that son being ''Abeto''
Mehabere Widam, where he was harbored until his descendant,
Yekuno Amlak, overthrew the Zagwe Kingdom, and re-established the
Solomonic dynasty.
Dil'Naod is credited with building and establishing the original structures for both the church of Debre Egzi-'abhēr &
Istifanos Monastery at
Lake Hayq.
References
External links
* This article was previously published in B. Michael, S. Chojnacki and
R. Pankhurst (eds.), ''The Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography, Vol. 1: From Early Times to the End of the Zagwé Dynasty c. 1270 A.D'' (Addis Ababa, 1975).
Kings of Axum
10th-century monarchs in Africa
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