$Unique_ID{COW01273} $Pretitle{228} $Title{Ethiopia Chapter 1A. Historical Setting} $Subtitle{} $Author{Richard P. Stevens} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{century muslim habesha christian oromo power peoples ethiopia christianity church} $Date{1980} $Log{Orthodox Cathedral*0127301.scf Figure 2.*0127303.scf } Country: Ethiopia Book: Ethiopia, A Country Study Author: Richard P. Stevens Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1980 Chapter 1A. Historical Setting [See Orthodox Cathedral: Ethiopian Orthodox cathedral at Aksum] Ethiopia in its current geographical form dates only from 1962 when Eritrea's federal status was formally abrogated; but a polity-formally or informally recognized by other significant states in Europe and the Middle East-has existed in some form over a substantial part of its present territory for nearly two millenia, and smaller states preceded it. The territorial scope of that polity had its primary locus in the northern and central highlands inhabited by peoples who were converted to Monophysite Christianity beginning in the fourth century A.D. and who came to be known as Amhara and Tigray. Together these peoples speaking Ethio-Semitic languages have been referred to as-and in certain contexts call themselves-Habesha (see Glossary), which is the probable source of the name "Abyssinia". During much of its history the dominant feature of state organization was the notion of an absolute monarch, but his power in fact fluctuated considerably under the impact of external onslaughts and internal obstacles to its exercise. Among other things, the pattern of local and provincial political power (theoretically under the monarch's control), problems of succession, and the sheer difficulty of movement over the mountainous terrain of much of Ethiopia militated against an institutionally stable, large-scale political system. The idea of a Christian monarchy persisted, however. The Semitic-speaking peoples, probably originating in southern Arabia, constituted part of the ancestors of the Habesha and played a major role in the political development of the area. They found a number of groups already in place-the most important of these in the northern and central highlands were peoples speaking Cushitic languages. Elsewhere lived speakers of other Cushitic languages and the tongues called Omotic, who were not to be encountered in force until the latter half of the second millenium A.D. (see Ethiopia's Peoples: Groups and Categories, ch. 2). The biological and social mixing of the Semitic and Cushitic speakers, who took on the Semitic speech of the later arrivals, led to the emergence of a society peculiar to the area. In the fourth century A.D. the rulers of the kingdom of Aksum, founded several centuries earlier, were converted to the Monophysite Christianity characteristic of the Copts of Egypt and some other Eastern churches (see Religious Life, ch. 2). Gradually its people, too, became Christian. This faith, linked to a belief in the divinely ordained position of the monarch, gave common purpose to the people of Aksum and the Habesha, who saw themselves as the heirs of the Aksumite kingdom. The highland locus of the state and the adherence of its dominant peoples to Christianity in the midst of lands inhabited by peoples converted to Islam or adhering to local religious systems led to a long period of isolation from its neighbors. That isolation was broken from time to time by armed conflict as the Habesha sought, with intermittent success, to dominate those neighbors or resisted incursions of their home territory. Habesha society was also long isolated from other Christian societies, a condition that led to forms of Christianity that differed from Monophysite and other Christianity elsewhere and to a good deal of conjecture and myth in European Christendom about the nature of that society and its monarch. Significant relations with the outside world were established only in the late nineteenth century at about the same time that Menelik II, not a pure Habesha but claiming direct connection with the Habesha monarchic line, established a degree of control over much of what is now Ethiopia. That contact was marked by two efforts to put the kingdom under colonial rule. The first failed when the forces of Emperor Menelik II defeated the Italians in 1896; the second succeeded when modern equipment and the failure to act of other European powers permitted an Italian military victory in the 1935-36 period. Italian domination was transitory, however, and was brought to an end by Ethiopian and British forces in 1941. In general there was little change in the period from the late nineteenth century through World War II, although two railroads were built and some other features of modern technology were introduced. But the life of the people and the organization of the state remained essentially as it had for centuries. Moreover, the long isolation and the nature of relations when the isolation was broken contributed to the suspicion with which Ethiopians tended to regard all outsiders. After World War II, and particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s when numbers of African territories achieved independence, Emperor Haile Selassie and his government developed a strong interest in external affairs, especially in African matters. During the same period Ethiopians became ardent champions of collective security through the United Nations (UN), a response to the failure of the League of Nations to heed Ethiopia's appeals for protection against Italy in the mid-1930s. Haile Selassie also played a prominent role in the affairs of the new African states and in the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Despite involvement with the outside world, formal adoption of modern governmental institutions, and tentative approaches to economic development, the empire retained its fundamental conservatism-a posture perpetuated by the personal influence of the aging emperor, who had in his earlier years shown occasional concern for change. The 1960s, however, were marked by the emergence of new groups tied to changes in the economy and of a generation of younger men who, educated in the West or by Westerners, demanded that the country move into the modern world at a faster pace. Change was slow in coming, however, and dissatisfactions were many. Between February 1974 and February 1977 Ethiopia experienced a political, social, and economic upheaval, which began as the expression of uncoordinated military, labor, peasant, and student grievances. As the protests continued and various forces struggled for dominance, violence became commonplace. In the end the centuries-old imperial structure was swept away and replaced by a military regime that progressively introduced a Marxist-Leninist approach with extensive Soviet assistance. By early 1977 the dominant authority of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, a member of the coup group that had deposed the emperor,was largely consolidated, and the Marxist orientation of the government was firmly established. Origins and the Early Period Details of the origins of all of the peoples who make up the population of Ethiopia are still matters for research and debate. It seems fairly clear, however, that the first peoples of the area were the ancestors of the Cushitic-speaking and Omotic-speaking peoples and that the northern and central highlands later occupied by the Tigray and Amhara, speakers of Semitic languages, were initially inhabited by Cushitic speakers of which the Agew are remnants (see Ethnic Groups, Ethnicity, and Language, ch. 2). The first complexly organized polity and economy near the limits of present-day Ethiopia was Meroe, its center established north of the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile by the sixth century B.C., perhaps earlier. In many respects Meroe was an Egyptian culture but inhabited in good part by African blacks. It was probably the people of Meroe who were first called Ethiopian (burnt faces) by the Greeks. There is no firm evidence that Meroe had political and cultural influence on the area incorporated in present-day Ethiopia. The origins of the polities that emerged in Ethiopia proper are to be found in the kingdom of Aksum and the smaller states that preceded it. In part, the stimulus for the foundation of these states was the arrival of Sabeans from southwestern Arabia no later that 500 B.C. and perhaps as early as the tenth century B.C. Speaking a Semitic tongue, the Sabeans mixed with local Cushitic speakers. This mixed population, who were speakers of Giiz-a Semitic language-and in part ancestral to the Tigrinya-speaking peoples of Tigray and southern Eritrea, slowly built a distinctive civilization centered at Aksum beginning about the first century A.D. At roughly this time another Ethio-Semitic speaking group broke off, moved south, and mixed with more southerly Cushitic-speaking inhabitants to found a number of small states in the region of Amhara. Others, perhaps the ancestors of the Hareri and the Gurage, also left northern Ethiopia at this time. The power of the Aksumite state emerged sometime in the first century A.D. and flourished from the fourth to the seventh century. Its core area lay in the highlands of southern Eritrea, Tigray, Lasta (in present-day Welo), and Angot (also Welo). At its height the kingdom's writ ran more widely, but as its power declined in the seventh century and until its demise in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Aksumite state retreated to its core area, and its center shifted southward (see fig. 2). In the fourth century during the reign of Ezana, who had much to do with extending Aksumite power, the king and court were converted to Monophysite Christianity by Syrian missionaries. After a time Monophysitism became the religion of most of Aksum's people, those who stemmed from them, and many of those ruled by them. The introduction of Christianity stimulated the production of the earliest literary works in Giiz, the language of Aksum, and Christian art and architecture. In the centuries preceding Ezana's reign, Aksum maintained trade and other connections with the Egyptian and Hellenic worlds and other areas bordering the Red Sea and the Mediterranean including the Sabean homeland in southwestern Arabia. When the kingdom was converted to Christianity it came to be considered an outpost of the faith in eastern Africa by European Christendom despite the Aksumite church's link to the Coptic church of Egypt, which both the Roman and Greek churches regarded as heretical. (see Religious Life, ch. 2). Until the rise of Islam in the seventh century A.D., Aksum played a significant political role in southern Arabia; even after that Christian rulers maintained relatively friendly political relations with Islamic rulers in the Arabian Peninsula and welcomed Muslim Arabic traders in the areas under their sovereignty. The spread of Islam to the peninsula and to Egypt did, however, cut the Christian Habesha off from European Christendom. Ethiopic Christianity retained only limited links with the Coptic church in Egypt which supplied its patriarch, but the Muslim Fatamid rulers of Egypt exercised considerable pressure by demanding that the Aksumite kings permit the building of mosques and public worship by the Muslim traders in the area. Cut off from expansion to the north by the gradual spread of Islam, the Aksumite kings sought to establish their hegemony and that of their church in the south and had some success from the ninth until the early tenth. The resistance of local rulers of societies still adhering to indigenous religions proved too strong, however, and the Aksumites had to retreat once again. During the next two centuries the encroachments of Islam became more substantial; Muslims occupied Suakin on the Red Sea north of Eritrea and converted the Beja to the north of the Tigray highlands; to the south a Muslim sultanate was established in eastern Shewa at the beginning of the twelfth century, and some of the Cushitic peoples were gradually converted. These conversions, largely among the adherents of local religions to the south and east of the Amhara-Tigray Plateau, were generally brought about by the proselytizing efforts of Arab merchants. This population, permanently Islamized, thereafter contended with the Amhara-Tigray peoples for command over the lands of the Horn of Africa. [See Figure 2.: Ethiopia: The Early Period] In 1137 or thereabouts a new force appeared in Christian Ethiopia in the form of an Agew (Cushitic) dynasty, known as the Zagwe (literally, the dynasty of the Agew). The Zagwe, who originated in the Lasta mountains, occupied the throne until 1270. Strongly committed to Christianity, they were devoted to the construction of new churches and monasteries, often modeled after those built by Christians in the Holy Land, with whom they established a connection. Patrons of Ethiopian literature and arts that could serve Christianity, the Zagwe kings were responsible, among other things, for the great churches carved into rock at Adefa (now called Lalibela, after the Zagwe king to whose reign their construction has been attributed). The Zagwe contributions to Christianity notwithstanding, leading figures in the Monophysite church tended to see them as usurpers-a position also supported by heirs of the Aksumites in Eritrea and Tigray and by the Amhara, a growing power to the south of the Zagwe center at Adefa. Between the seventh and the twelfth centuries, the isolation of the Ethiopian church fostered a strong emphasis on the Old Testament and on Judaic roots for the church and the Aksumite dynasty. Christian practice in Ethiopia resembled Old Testament practice in many ways, differentiating it not only from European Christianity but also from that of other Monophysites such as the Copts. Moreover, the Tigray and the Amhara had come to accept the notion that the Aksumite kings derived from a union between Solomon and Sheba and that a king's legitimacy depended upon his descent from a line of Solomonic kings. This view gained considerable support among the Amhara who, despite their late conversion to Christianity beginning in the ninth century, saw themselves as heirs to Aksum. Restoration of the Solomonic Line The year 1270 witnessed the end of the Zagwe dynasty and the reestablishment by force of the Solomonic line. Subsequently, Ethiopian contact increased not only with the Levant and the Middle East in general but also with Europe. The first emperor of the restored line was Yekuno Amalak, an Amhara prince who claimed descent from an earlier ruler. The political and geographic center of the state became the Amhara region. The ruler's main objective was the consolidation of control over the high plateau and the gradual weakening and destruction of the encircling power of Muslim states-initially Ifat, which threatened the heart of Shewa. The Ethiopians then carried out continuous military activity even while advancing the literary renaissance begun under the Zagwe dynasty and the religious development that led to a complete merger of church and state. On Yekuno Amalak's death in 1285 he was succeeded by his son, Yagba Siyon (reigned 1285-94). His reign and the period immediately following were marked by constant struggles among the sons and grandsons of Yekuno Amalak. The situation was dealt with sometime in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century when it became the rule for all males tracing descent from Yekuno Amalak, except the reigning emperor and his own sons, to be held in a royal prison atop Mount Gishen, which was approachable only on one side and was guarded by soldiers under a commandant loyal to the reigning monarch. When that monarch died, all of his sons, save his heir, were placed in the prison under permanent detention. That rule was followed with some exceptions until the royal prison was destroyed in a jihad (holy war) under the Muslim leader Ahmed Gran in the early sixteenth century (see Muslim Encirclement, this ch.). The institution of the royal prison was one solution to a problem that was to plague the Solomonic line throughout its history: the conflict over succession among those who has any claim to descent. Yekuno Amalak's grandson, Amda Siyon (reigned 1313-44), distinguished himself by taking the regions of Gojam, Damot, and Gonder; he then turned his attention to the problem of the encroachments of the Muslim states. During his reign a long contest was begun with the sultanate of Adal in the Afar-Somali region. His initial successes were victories over Ifat and Hadya, which gave him complete command of the highlands and enhanced the advantages of his central position. These extensions of the emperor's power were accompanied by the spreading of Christianity. Zara Yakob (reigned 1434-68) was perhaps the greatest Ethiopian ruler between the reigns of Ezana of Aksum and Menelik II. His military accomplishments were substantial, especially his defeat of some of the Sidamo (Cushitic-speaking) peoples of southern Ethiopia. More remarkable, however, were his achievements in administration and church reform. He began the monarchy's struggle to limit, if not destroy, the increasing power of the great regional rases (princes or dukes-see table 2, Appendix). His achievements, however, were not sustained by his successors. In this period the power of the negusa nagast (king of kings), as the emperor was termed, was unlimited-in theory and often in fact. The government depended directly upon the emperor's ability to control the governors, princes, and kings of the provinces. The apparatus itself was simple. The agencies of direction, except for the judiciary, were primarily provincial. When the military had to be used, it was under central control but was composed of provincial levies or troops who lived off the country or were supported by the provincial governments supplying them. The result was that the expenses borne by the imperial administration were very small and were substantially exceeded by the contributions and tribute provided by the provinces. The authority of the emperor did not depend fundamentally on physical coercion but on the obedience rendered to a monarch believed to have been ordained by God to rule the country. Forces supplied by subordinates were the major determinants of the scope and extent of power, but at the center was the idea of divine right. During this period the state was both unitary and imperial. No powers were delegated to the local provincial or regional authorities. In theory, the emperor could decree, modify, or seek any political condition he desired. In fact, however, special interests were recognized and established in particular areas where the monarch would hesitate to interfere, especially regions long under Amhara-Tigray control. The emperor, whose capital moved with him as he continually changed the location of his court, was surrounded by ceremony and protocol, which accented divine descent and legitimacy. He lived in seclusion and was shielded, except on rare occasions, from the gaze of all but his servants and high state officials. Even others of the nobility did not have access to his person. The emperor's judicial function was of primary importance. The administration of justice was centralized as a means of expressing the imperial will, conditioned by a known body of customary law, which in later years was formally based on a code, the Fetha Nagast (Law of Kings). Judges appointed by the emperor were attached to the administration of every provincial governor and every ras. They not only heard cases but also determined when cases could be referred to the governor or sent on appeal to the central government. The Trials of the Habesha and the Decline of Imperial Power From the fifteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries the Habesha were confronted by the aggressiveness of the Muslim states, the far-reaching migrations of the Oromo peoples, and the efforts of the Portuguese, who had been called upon for aid against the forces of Islam, to convert them from Monophysite Christianity to Roman Catholicism. The effects of the Muslim and Oromo activities and the civil strife engendered by the Portuguese efforts left the empire much weakened by the mid-seventeenth century, permitting the emergence of regional lords essentially independent of the throne, although in principle subject to it. Muslim Encirclement Beginning in the thirteenth century one of the chief problems confronting the Christian Habesha kingdom, then ruled by Amhara, was the pressure of Muslim encirclement. By that time a variety of peoples east and south of the highlands had embraced Islam, and some had established powerful sultanates or shaykhdoms. One of these was the sultanate of Ifat, in the Shewa foothills, which was probably inhabited by speakers of an Ethio-Semitic language as was the Islamic city of Harer farther east. Other Muslims included the ancestors of the Afar and Somali; speakers of Arabic ruled the Benedir Coast of Somalia. Ifat constituted the earliest major threat, but it was firmly and finally defeated in the first quarter of the fourteenth century by Amda Siyon after a protracted struggle. During this conflict, Ifat was supported by other sultanates and by Muslim pastoralists, but the Islamized peoples were characterized by small independent polities and divided by differences in language and culture. Many spoke Cushitic languages, unlike Ifat and Harer. Some were sedentary cultivators and traders, and others were pastoralists. Consequently, unity beyond a single campaign or even coordination of their military activities was difficult to sustain. These weaknesses notwithstanding, the Muslim forces continued to pose threats to the Habesha kingdom from time to time. By the late fourteenth century, descendents of the ruling family of Ifat had moved east to the Harer plateau and managed to reactivate the old Muslim sultanate of Adal, which became the most powerful Muslim entity in the Horn of Africa. Adal came to control the important trading routes from the Habesha highlands to the port of Zeila on the coast of the Gulf of Aden and for a time Zeila itself, thus posing a threat to Habesha trade and, when able, to the highlands directly. Although the Christian state was not able to impose its rule over the Muslim states to the east, it was strong enough to resist Muslim incursions through the fourteenth century and most of the fifteenth. As the long reign of Zara Yakob came to an end, however, the Habesha monarchy again experienced major problems of succession. It was the monarchs' practice to marry several wives, and each sought to forward the cause of her son in the struggle for the throne. In these cases and where the sons of the deceased king were too young to take office, there were also conflicts within the council of advisers. In a polity that had been held together primarily by the presence of a strong king who was himself a soldier, several generations of domestic conflict led to a decline in Habesha power. Only the persistence of internal conflicts among Muslims generally and within the sultanate of Adal precluded a Muslim onslaught. For decades, through the first quarter of the sixteenth century, relations between Christian and Muslim powers took the form of raids and counterraids. Each side sought to claim as many slaves and as much booty as possible but did not attempt to bring the other side firmly under its rule. By the second decade of the sixteenth century, however, a young soldier in the Adali army, Ahmed Bin Ibrahim al Ghazi, had begun to acquire a strong following by virtue of his successes and in time became the de facto leader of Adal; he also acquired the status of a religious leader (an imam) in the meantime. Ahmed (who came to be called Ahmed Gran-the lefthanded-by his Christian enemies) was able to rally the ethnically diverse Muslims, including many Afar and Somali, in a jihad intended to break Christian power completely. In 1525 Ahmed led his first expedition against the Christian army and continued in the next two or three years to attack Habesha territory, burning churches, taking numbers of prisoners, and collecting booty. At the battle of Shimra Kure in 1529, as the historian Tadesse Tamrat puts it, "Imam Ahmed broke the backbone of Christian resistance against his offensives." Because of his losses, Ahmed was forced to retire to Harer for a time, but "he had completely shattered the traditional strength of the Christian state and essentially broken the unity of its army." The emperor Lebna-Dengel (reigned 1508-40) was unable to organize an effective defense. In the next years Ahmed's forces were able to penetrate the heartland of the Christian state-Amhara, Tigray, and Northern Shewa-devastating the countryside and putting much of what had been subject to the Habesha emperors in the preceding centuries directly under the rule of Muslim governors. It was only in 1543 that the emperor Galawdewos (reigned 1540-59), joining with Portuguese forces requested by Lebna-Dengel earlier, was able to defeat the Muslim forces and kill Ahmed. His death completely disrupted the unity of the Muslim forces who had been held together only by their leader's successes, skill, and reputation as warrior and religious figure. The direct assault on the highlands ended, but the Habesha had suffered extraordinary material and moral losses. It would be centuries before they would be able to recover fully. The Oromo Migrations In the sixteenth century, its political organization already weakened by the Muslim assault, other pressures impinged on the Habesha highlands-the northward and eastward movements of the Oromo (Galla) peoples. These migrations also affected the Muslim peoples in the lowlands. At that time the Oromo, settled in southern Ethiopia, were primarily a pastoral people with a social structure and ideology supporting military activity by its men. That, and substantial population growth generated a tendency to predatory expansion. Unlike the Habesha or on occasion the Muslims, the Oromo were not concerned to establish an empire or impose a religious system. In a series of massive but uncoordinated movements they penetrated all the highlands. Many settled permanently on the outer fringes of the plateau; a substantial number remained in the highlands. The incursions of the Oromo affected the Muslims and the Christian peoples equally. For the next 300 years Oromo penetration was the major problem faced by the Habesha rulers. Their migrations also affected the Oromo themselves. As they moved farther and farther from their homeland and encountered new physical and human environments, sections of the Oromo adapted by changing their mode of economic life, their political and social organization, and their religious adherence (see Ethnic Groups, Ethnicity and Language; Prerevolutionary Structures: National and Local, ch. 2). Many mixed with the Amhara (particularly in Shewa), became Christians, and had a share in the imperial government. In some cases, members of the royal family sprang from unions of the Amhara and Oromo. In other cases, Oromo, without losing their identity, became part of the nobility. For the most part, however, Oromo groups, however much changed, retained their language and a sense of their local identity. So differentiated and dispersed had they become, however, that few recognized the Oromo as a whole until the twentieth century (see Ethnic Relations, ch. 2). Contact with the Christian World The neighboring Christian states of the Nile had been extinguished by Egyptian Muslims in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Limited contact with the Western and Byzantine regions had been continued somewhat tenuously through the Coptic church in Egypt. The Coptic patriarchs of Alexandria were responsible for the assignment of Ethiopian archbishops-a church policy which the Muslim rulers of Egypt occasionally tried to use to their advantage. A further and more direct contact with the outside Christian world was maintained through the Habesha Monophysite community in Jerusalem and the visits of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Ethiopian monks from the Jerusalem community attended the Council of Florence in 1441 at the invitation of the pope who was seeking to reunite the Eastern Church and Western Church. The westerners had learned of the Ethiopians through the monks and pilgrims and were attracted to them for two reasons. First, Ethiopia was identified with the long-sought land of the legendary Christian priest-king, Prester John. Second, the Ethiopians were viewed as a potentially valuable ally in the war against the Islamic forces that continued to threaten southern Europe until after the Turkish defeat at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Portugal, the first power to circumnavigate Africa and enter the Indian Ocean, displayed primary interest in this potential ally of the West and sent a representative to Ethiopia in 1493; the Habesha, in turn, sent an envoy to Portugal in 1509 to request a coordinated attack on the Muslims. Europe received its first written accounts of the country after the return of Father Alvarez, who visited with a new Portuguese embassy in the years 1520-24. His book, True Information on the Lands of Prester John, excited further European interest and was to prove a valuable source of data for future historians. The first Portuguese forces responded to a specific request for aid in 1541, although by that time the Portuguese were concerned primarily with strengthening their hegemony over the Indian Ocean trade routes and in converting the Habesha to Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, joining the Habesha forces, they succeeded eventually in defeating Ahmed Gran. Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries began to arrive in 1554. Efforts made to induce the Habesha to reject their Monophysite beliefs and to accept the supremacy of Rome continued for nearly a century and engendered great bitterness as pro- and anti-Catholic parties maneuvered for control of the state. At least two of the emperors in this period were converted to Roman Catholicism. The second of these, Susenyos, after a particularly bloody battle between adherents of the two faiths, abdicated in favor of his son Fasiladas in 1632 in order to spare the country any further bloodshed. The expulsion of the Jesuits and, later, all Roman Catholic missionaries, followed. This period of religious controversy left strong feelings of hostility toward foreign Christians and Europeans in general that continued into the twentieth century. It also contributed to the period of isolation that followed for the next 200 years. The Decline of Imperial Power Emperor Fasiladas (reigned 1632-67) kept out disruptive influences of the foreign Christians, dealt with sporadic Muslim incursions, and brought some of the weakened Islamic states on the eastern edge of the highlands under Habesha control. He revived the practice of confining members of the royal family on a remote mountaintop to lessen the challenges to his rule and distinguished himself by the construction of the cathedral at Aksum. Fasiladas' establishment of a permanent capital at Gonder-the center of what came to be called the Gonderine state-marked a new approach to government. Earlier the emperors had circulated around the empire and thereby sought to maintain direct influence over their subordinates. Although the establishment of a permanent capital produced a flowering of architecture and art that lasted for about a century, the dynasty lost power rapidly to regional contenders. Local leaders were now able to assert an independent authority and were no longer subject to removal at the emperor's whim. Moreover, during Fasiladas' reign and that of his son Yohannes (reigned 1667-82), there were substantial differences between the two monastic orders of the Ethiopian church concerning the proper response to the Jesuit challenge to Monophysite doctrine on the nature of Christ. The positions of the two orders were often linked to regional opposition to the emperor, and neither Fasiladas nor Yohannes was able to settle the issue without alienating important components of the church. The combination of regional and religious controversy and fixed imperial residence enabled the nobility to develop their own autonomous power bases. In principal, officials, that is the nobility, were appointed by the emperor. In effect they became hereditary as a consequence of imperial weakness. In theory all land in the empire belonged to the emperor, who had the right to distribute it in return for military and other services; however, in practice irreversible grants of gult rights (see Glossary) in land to the church and members of the nobility helped give the nobility a firm provincial base, severely limiting the emperor's power. Iyasu I (The Great-reigned 1682-1706) was a military leader of stature and an effective administrative reformer. The imperial authority over the church was strengthened, and some relaxation of the xenophobic policy of the two previous rulers resulted in renewed contacts with west Europeans. Iyasu could not, however, simultaneously confront all the divisive forces and the continuing incursions of the Oromo. He managed some of the Oromo groups by incorporating them into his army and converting them to Christianity, but they constituted only a portion of the total. Other Oromo sections in the meantime developed monarchies and adopted Islam, thus becoming even more powerful centers of resistance to the dynasty. When Iyasu was murdered in 1706 the situation deteriorated rapidly; by the late eighteenth century the power of the great nobility was entrenched. The Gonder emperors, particularly Bakaffa and Iyasu II (reigned ca. 1730-55) whose mother Queen Mantuob was the defacto ruler in his early years, called upon the Oromo to help counter the members of the traditional nobility, who were accustomed to substantial autonomy by this time. Iyasu II was succeeded by Iyoas, whose mother was an Oromo. By the second half of the eighteenth century the Oromo were playing an important role in political affairs; for a time Oromo was the court language and Oromo chiefs were equal to the highest nobility of the empire. During part of Iyasu II's reign and that of his son, the significant figure in the politics of the empire was Ras Mikael Suhul, who was from Tigray, where an independent self-contained power arose. The appearance at Gonder of Mikael who declined to assume the imperial title, marked the real end of imperial control. After a series of domestic conflicts, the reign of Tekla Haimanot began a period of disintegration known as the era of princes (or "age of the judges" -a reference to the Biblical period) that lasted until after the mid-nineteenth century. The kingdom no longer existed. Various principalities were ruled by autonomous princes, and warfare was constant. The five volumes of Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile by James Bruce, who arrived in Ethiopia in 1760, describe bloody dissensions and vast intrigue. During the most confused period, around 1800, there were as many as six rival emperors. The provincial rulers, usually with the title of dejazmatch, were the masters of the territories they controlled, but were subject to raids from other provinces. Peasants left the land to become soldiers or brigands, often the same thing in this era. In this period, too, Oromo chiefs with the title of ras, often nominally Christian and in a few cases Muslim, were among those who struggled for hegemony over the highlands. The Ethiopian church continually riven by theological controversy, contributed to the chaos.