S2E20: Closing the Book + Season 3 Announcement

So, we've finally reached the end of Aksumite history. Now, it's time to get ready for next season. However, I thought it would be nice to address some viewer questions about Aksum in this podcast instead of just hastily moving on.

One of the famous monolithic churches of Lalibela, built by the Zagwe Dynasty

So, I tried only to answer questions in this episode that concerned Aksum itself. However, some of you had some other questions. While I'm going to abstain from answering much about my personal life, someone asked if I went to college. The answer is yes, I have a bachelor's in political science and history from the University of North Carolina. Others wanted to know what the podcast's plans were for covering the remainder of Egyptian history. To answer this, frankly, it's not my call. When we eventually rotate back to North Africa, what topic we cover will be decided by a vote from the Patreon supporters.

Finally,  if you'd like to view the full bibliography for the season, it's available on the season's episode list here.

S2E19: The Fall of the Aksumite Empire Part 2: Gudit, the Woman who Destroyed an Empire

 

We've reached the end of our season on Aksum. As the Aksumite empire collapses back into a chaotic state of struggle between the church, nobility, and king, a mysterious woman from the north descends on the kingdom. Her name was Gudit, a rough portmanteau of Judith, the biblical woman who led an assassination of an Assyrian general, and Gud, the Ge'ez word for monster.

After decades of debate, most scholars have settled on the fact that Gudit was a historical figure, though the details of her life remain incredibly obscure. Her background varies in different sources on Aksumite histories. Some claim she is a disgraced Aksumite princess. Others state she was a Beta Israelite (Jewish) noblewoman from the kingdom of Semien. Many scholars claim she was actually Agaw, while others claim her origins can be identified in Somali and Sidama folklore. Can these contradictory origins be reconciled? Or is Gudit simply a character that we cannot understand from current knowledge.

The evidence for Gudit's historicity comes from a mixture of Aksumite and foreign sources. For example, the Coptic History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria confirms that a woman ruled the Ethiopian highlands after the fall of the Aksumite Empire. Arab sources make similar claims, that a woman dominated the Ethiopian highlands and engaged in political correspondence with the Najahid dynasty of Yemen. Local Ethiopian sources, including written church documents alleged to be contemporaneous with Gudit's rule, are compiled in the church histories of Tekle Hayamanot. Additionally, the oral histories of the Sidama, Agaw, and Somali peoples feature tales of female tyrants who ruled over their male subjects with an iron fist. While these women are rarely explicitly identified as Gudit, their similar era of existence has led many scholars to conclude that Gudit and these women are different historical identities for the same figure.

The details of Gudit's life as presented by scholars are somewhat contradictory. One of the most well known stories that attempts to explain Gudit's future enmity towards the Aksumite church and state claims that Gudit's branch of the royal family fell on hard financial times when they were passed over in the royal succession. To earn money, Gudit began to work as a prostitute. However, Gudit was no woman of the night, but is rather thought of as a highly desired escort. When Gudit received the attraction of an Aksumite deacon, she rejected him, but offered him the challenge of making for her gilded sandals and a gilded parasol to win her affection. He accepted the challenge, but decided to use a holy relic, a golden cloth donated to the church by Saint Ezana himself, to fashion these items. When the locals of Aksum discovered the deacons sacrilegious actions, they blamed Gudit for their destruction. An angry mob mutilated one of her breasts to ensure that she could never seduce men with her beauty again before exiling her from the city.

The Queen Gudit Stele Field. Despite its name, the site's actual relationship to Gudit herself is tenuous.
Photo Courtesy of Wolff Chronicles

However, Gudit did not peacefully accept her exile. After years of planning she returned to Aksum when her spies within the city informed her of government instability. She returned with an army, though the origins of this army vary depending on the version of the story. Traditional accounts claim that Gudit rode with the support of a Syrian Arab prince, but Arab records do not indicate any sort of intervention in Ethiopia during this time. For this reason, most scholars believe that Gudit led an alliance of Aksum's various enemies. The recent revival of Aksumite expansion, the theory goes, led to the formation of an informal anti-Aksumite coalition among the Sidama, Semien, Harla, and possibly some Agaw peoples. This coalition defeated the Aksumite king in battle, and began a reign of terror over the former Aksumite empires. Churches, palaces, and monasteries were laid waste to, and anyone with even a vague relation to the Aksumite royal family was hunted down and eliminated.

That is, unless, you believe the later retellings by the Ethiopian Orthodox church and the Solomonic dynasty. They claim that one member of the Aksumite royal dynasty, Del Naod, escaped Gudit's wrath by fleeing into the Amhara country, where he sired the descendants who would later form the Solomonic dynasty. However, most academic scholars dismiss this story as royal propaganda to link the Solomonic dynasty to Aksum.

Gudit's religion is also a subject of immense debate. Ethiopian tradition generally states that she is Jewish, usually claiming that she converted to the faith after marrying a Jewish spouse. Aksumite church records seem to support this interpretation, with many supposedly contemporary documents compiled by church historian Tekle Hayamanot forthrightly identify her as Jewish, and one even claims that her Jewish beliefs motivated her to convert several churches into synagogues. However, her biographical similarities to several non-Jewish queens from this era has led some scholars to question this interpretation. In this episode, I support the hypothesis that Gudit converted to multiple faiths for the sake of political convenience. That among the Beta Israelites, she professed Judaism, while among the Harla she professed Islam and among the Sidama she professed belief in Paganism. This would explain why her supposed aliases profess so many different faiths, as well as why Arab and Coptic sources are less consistent in identifying her faith than Aksumite records.

S2E18: The Fall of the Aksumite Empire Part 1: Anbasa Wedem, Wise Regent or Cruel Usurper?

 

A Mural from the Dega Istefanos Monastery on Ethiopia's Lake Tana. This monastery is sometimes attributed to the reign of Del Naod, but this is highly contested.

Degna Djan is dead, and his sons, Anbasa Wedem and Del Naod, have begun a struggle for the throne. Or did they? As we dive into this episode, we examine the strange and confounding history behind the end of the Aksumite Empire

S2E17: Degna Jan, the Last Great King of Aksum

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of the History of Africa podcast. This latest episode focuses on Degna Djan, one of the last kings of Aksum, and, somehow, one of the greatest kings in Aksumite history. During his rule, he oversaw an Aksumite renaissance, leading to the final period of Aksum as the hegemon of East Africa. 

Lake Hayq, one of the likely locations of the Late Aksumite capital of Ku'bar

Despite his importance to Late Aksumite history, Degna Djan is an elusive figure. There are no surviving contemporary depictions of him, and even the exact date of his rule is unknown. However, what sources we do have of his reign are composed of a combination of Coptic church records, the later works of Ethiopian monk Tekle Hayamanot, and the various oral histories of post-Askumite Ethiopia. When compiled and viewed critically, these sources form a picture of an incredibly impressive reign which revitalized the Aksumite Empire and even expanded its frontiers.

Tekle Hayamanot, a prominent Ethiopian saint, abuna, and historian, depicted in a church mural

The primary defining development of Degna Djan's reign was an emphasis on the recentralization of power. Askum, throughout the last several centuries, experienced a gradual decline in the authority of the Negus. The empire's nobility and church had increasingly gained power, with the king now essentially relying on the church as a mechanism to persuade the nobility to respect his authority. Degna Djan, however, cooked up a scheme to recentralize power in his control.

Notably, the kingdom of Aksum had lacked an abuna, or patriarch, to rule its church for several decades. The abuna was typically a foreign (usually Egyptian) bishop. Due to their lack of local connections, the abuna was incredibly dependent on the negus to legitimize his authority, and in turn the abuna gave the negus a greater degree of control over the church. In order to prevent this threat to their power, the increasingly influential priests and bishops of Aksum had long blocked the appointment of a new abuna. However, Degna Djan cleverly schemed to distract them. The Amhara and Agaw communities of the southern Aksumite territories, while technically under Aksumite suzerainty, were only loosely subjects of the empire. While their leaders paid tribute to the Aksumite king, they were largely independent in terms of governance. Many of them even continued to practice traditional religions, as opposed to the staunch Christianity that dominated the interior of the empire. Degna Djan ordered that the church officials, in order to more fully integrate the Amhara and southern Agaw into the Aksumite Empire, should convert the locals to the Orthodox Christianity practiced by the Aksumites.

However, while the majority of priests and bishops led missionaries into the Amhara region, Degna Djan used their absence to appoint a new abuna. The new abuna, Peter, was especially reliant on the king due to the unexpected nature of his appointment, so he acted essentially as a puppet of Degna Djan. With this move, Degna Djan vastly improved his power within the Aksumite state, as he now de-facto commanded the Aksumite church.

With the newly centralized state's resources at his disposal, Degna Djan raised the largest army that Aksum had seen since the era of Kaleb and began a series of conquests against the empire's neighbors. The people of the south and east were relegated into tributaries, while the territories to the north, lost to Beja raids shortly before Degna Djan's rule, were recaptured. 

However, while Degna Djan's reign may seem to be a complete success, his time as Negus would cause several problems in the long run. For starters, he struggled to establish a clear heir, a problem which will have disastrous consequences in our next episode. Next, his conquests resulted in Aksum making many enemies outside its borders. The Sultanate of Showa, Harla, and Semien, especially, were threatened by Degna Djan's aggressive revanchist conquests. These problems would compound in a crisis so great that it would eventually end the now centuries old Aksumite Empire.

S2E16: The War for the Dahlak Islands and the Aksumite Dark Age

Hello everyone, I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of the podcast. This one was admittedly a little weird because of the circumstances surrounding the history being discussed. The podcast generally tries to focus on history from a narrative perspective, telling the podcast as a linear story. I personally like this format because it makes the show more digestible, personable, and, frankly, entertaining. However, due to the fact that this episode focuses on a historiographic dark age in Aksumite history, writing in a narrative style for this episode was simply impossible. However, the era which encompassed around 600-880 AD, despite being a time with few surviving records, is a crucial era for understanding long-term trends affecting the Aksumite state, economy, and society during its waning years.

The general trend of the era in Aksum during this era was one of decentralization. Economically, the model of centralized cities as the basis of the Aksumite economy declined. Rather than the trade and sale of finished goods and exotic materials, the new Aksumite economy was dominated by subsistence farming of teff. Politically, the once autocratic power of the Aksumite negus was divided among the increasingly powerful Tewhahedo Church and local landowners.

A Village in the Dahlak Islands

In addition to the declining power of the king, the power of the Aksumite merchants also declined during this era. Facing declining influence, the Aksumite merchant class became increasingly desperate. They began waging naval campaigns to reverse their declining fortunes. The main theater of these naval wars was the Dahlak archipelago. This region had been an Aksumite territory for centuries, but had been captured and converted into a prison colony by the Umayyad caliphate. Throughout the 8th and 9th centuries, the Aksumite merchants would repeatedly capture, lose, and recapture control over the islands from various Arabian powers on the Red Sea. At one point, the Aksumite merchants even successfully seized control of some cities on the Arabian coast, with Jeddah being the most prominent.

The City of Jeddah, captured and briefly occupied by Aksumite merchants in the 8th century, is now a major city in Saudi Arabia.

However, by the end of the 10th century, the islands inhabitants had established a local power base strong enough to challenge both Arab and Aksumite domination, resulting in the creation of an independent sultanate on the archipelago. In a final effort to reassert their power, Aksumite merchants made a desperate campaign to capture the island of Socotra in the late 10th century. The initial invasion was a success, with the Aksumite state seemingly endorsing the invasion through the decision to ordain a new bishop on the island. However, less than a decade later, Al-Salt bin Malik, the ruler of Oman, decided to respond to this challenge of Omani trade power in the region. He sent a fleet which successfully dislodged the Aksumites from the island, ending Aksumite merchant power in the Arabian and Red Seas.

S2E15: The Somali Mercantile Age

 

Hello everyone, I hope you enjoyed the newest episode. This week's episode was a little bit of a weird one. Instead of focusing on a specific period in Aksumite history or Aksumite ruler, this episode focuses on one of the multiple historical trends behind the ongoing (in our show) decline of the Aksumite empire. While we've already touched on the importance of plague, climate change, unrest, and political instability, another of the factors that contributed to Aksum's decline was the increasing out competition of Aksumite merchants by their Somali rivals.

Sort of error in the episode. In this episode, I kind of admittedly exaggerate just how grim Aksumite naval affairs were. While the Aksumite capacity for naval war was essentially destroyed by the raid on Adulis, the merchants of Aksum would quickly recover in this regard. As we'll talk about next episode, Aksumite merchant fleets were, in anything, more aggressive after the fall of Adulis. They fought an extended war over the Dahlak archipelago, and successfully raided Jeddah and Socotra. This isn't to downplay the devastation of the raid either, but just to note that ending the episode on such a bleak note without further listening may lead you to the wrong impression.

The Somali people have always existed in something of a background role in this podcast, with their most significant mention coming in the episode on Kaleb's war, when a group of Somalis (likely from the Dir clan) served as mercenaries during the invasion of Himyar. This episode provides some more details on what exactly the Somali people were doing throughout this era. Those in the northern cities served as an important hub for merchants that travelled between India and Egypt, while those on the Southern coast trafficked in the exotic goods of southern Africa. However, I didn't mention what the average Somali of the inland regions were doing. The answer there was primarily living a lifestyle of nomadic pastoralism. The Somali peninsula was one of the first regions of sub-saharan Africa to make widespread use of the geel, while also herding sheep and goats. Much like how the Aksumite empire was essentially a group of cities dependent on the vast tracts of farmland in between, the same applies to Somalia except with massive herds of sheep instead of teff fields. This, however, was less true in southern Somalia, or the Shebelle region. This relatively fertile region could maintain a combination of agrarian and pastoral living.

However, while Somali cities were able to acquire a degree of wealth from trading on the Indian ocean, the potential profits of these commercial ventures were severely limited by the Aksumite domination of Red Sea trade. By dominating the only trade route through the Red Sea, Aksumite merchants were able to successfully insert themselves between Somali merchants and markets in Egypt and the Mediterranean as middlemen. Additionally, Aksumite merchants engaged in direct competition by ferrying goods from India to Egypt, offering lower princes by avoiding the tarriffs that Aksum levelled on foreigners.

However, as Aksumite power in the Red Sea diminished over the 6th century, Somali merchants were able to break the Aksumite monopoly over the Red Sea. Additionally, the conversion of many urban Somalis to Islam gave them a competitive advantage when trading with the growing Muslim powers of the middle east. Somalis could avoid the Jizya tax that the caliphate leveled against non-Muslims, while also generally achieving better relations with Muslim states through the adoption of a common faith.

A small version of a Somali woven ship, called a beden.

With Somali merchants now outcompeting Aksumite merchants, Somali city states began a golden age of economic prosperity. From the 8th until the 17th century, Somali merchants maintained a dominant grip on trade in the Western Indian Ocean.

An early modern depiction of a larger Somali ship from a European atlas

S2E14: The Rise of Islam (From the Aksumite Perspective)

 

I hope you all enjoy the latest episode of the History of Africa podcast. This episode focuses on the Rise of Islam, but from the perspective of the Aksumites.

The story of the flight of the Muslims to Aksum, while obscure in the West, is a famous story in the Islamic world. However, the political and historical context behind the migration to Aksum is fairly obscure globally.

Depiction of Armah rejecting the demands of Amr ibn al-As to turn over the Muslims illus. Rashid ad-Din Sinan

Aksum, at the time of the First Hijrah, had fallen a long way since its apex a century prior. The once dynamic mercantile economy of the empire had fallen into crisis ever since the arrival of plague and the loss of Yemen, so the countryside of Aksum reverted from a wealthy, urbanized society into an agrarian, rural society. As the economy of Aksum declined and poverty became rampant, so too did criminality. In the region of Wolqayt, a few small groups of bandits rapidly grew into large, organized armies that ravaged the countryside. Soon enough, these bandits were a threat to the city of Aksum itself. To put down these bandits, the emperor of Aksum, Armah, appointed a local noble (or possible relative) named Daniel to serve as Hatsani. The Hatsani of Aksum was a title that had long been used to describe the head military leader of Aksum during times of war. Saizana, for example, was Hatsani during the Aksumite conquest of Nubia, as was Germa during the invasion of Arabia under Datwinas. After Armah's rule, the title would be adopted by the kings of Aksum. Hatsani Daniel proved to be incredibly successful in his effort to destroy the bandits

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, I am Hatsani Danael, son of Dabra Ferem. When the people of Wolqayt devastated the land and came to Aksum, I expelled them, treated them harshly, and killed them. I captured 102 of their foals and 802 of their cattle. And I exiled the survivors. -Inscription attributed to Daniel

However, Daniel was, if anything, too successful at his task. Soon after he defeated the bandits, Daniel himself began ravaging the countryside himself, robbing the locals of their livestock. When Armah dispatched an army now to stop this looting, Daniel turned on Armah. He declared himself to be the new king of Aksum, and his looting soon transformed into an outright revolt.

Map of the two migrations of Muslims: the first to Aksum and the second to Medina

It may be confusing as to why Armah was bothering to dedicate so much attention to protecting refugees when his kingdom was falling apart around him. However, due to the study of this event usually stemming from the Arab perspective, the motives of Armah are not often considered. Armah's decision to welcome refugees from a city in Arabia that was persecuting a religious minority of monotheists closely mirrors another event in Aksumite history, and this comparison may provide us some insight into his motives. Before the invasion of Himyar, the Aksumite King Kaleb and his father welcomed Christian Himyarite refugees into his court. Later, after Kaleb's invasion of Himyar, one of these refugees, Sumyafa Ashwa, was elevated to the status of King of Himyar, ruling as an Aksumite client. Perhaps Armah sought to do a similar thing with the Muslim refugees of Mecca. Mecca, in this era, had notably stayed neutral in the competition for influence between Aksum, Rome, and Persia in Arabia. Should these Muslims ever take power, then Aksumite influence in Mecca would be secured. Others have argued that, rather than political concerns, Armah was simply drawing from a long Aksumite tradition of relative religious tolerance. This, however, is a questionable assertion, as Aksum possessed no reputation for tolerance ever since the zealot king Mehadyis had forcefully ended the remnants of Aksumite paganism in the late fourth century.

The silver coins of Armah, the last Aksumite coins ever minted

Regardless of whether Armah's decision to welcome the refugees was motivated by religious principles or geopolitical concerns, the decision certainly paid geopolitical dividends. After the Muslim refugees left Aksum to join the Islamic community in Medina, the Muslims would do a lot more than simply take power in Mecca. By the end of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the Muslims had expanded to encompass the entire Arabian peninsula. Under the successors of Muhammad, known as the Rashidun Caliphs, the fledgling Muslim state began an expansionist streak. Sassanid Persia fell in its entirety, while Rome lost 2/3s of its territory. However, despite being in a position of weakness, Aksum remained untouched by the expanding Islamic power.