These Dates Are In Close Or
Substantial Agreement With Bruce's Chronology, But Not At All With Salt's
Or Any Chronology Throwing The Reigns Further Back.
Makrizi goes on to say
that Isaac was succeeded by Andreas, who reigned only four months, and
then by Hazbana, who died in Ramadhan 834, i.e. May-June 1431.
This last
date does not agree, but we are now justified in suspecting an error in
the Hijra date,[6] whilst the 4 months' reign ascribed to Andreas shows
that Salt again is wrong in extending it to 7 years, and Bruce
presumably right in making it 7 months.
These coincidences seem to me sufficient to maintain the substantial
accuracy of Bruce's chronology, and to be fatal to the identification of
Marco's story with that of the wars of Amda Zion. The general identity in
the duration of reigns as given by Rueppell shows that Bruce did not tamper
with these. It is remarkable that in Makrizi's report of the letter of
Igba Zion in 1289 (the very year when according to the text this
anti-Mahomedan war was going on), that Prince tells the Sultan that he is a
protector of the Mahomedans in Abyssinia, acting in that respect quite
differently from his Father who had been so hostile to them.
I suspect therefore that Icon Amlak must have been the true hero of
Marco's story, and that the date must be thrown back, probably to 1278.
Rueppell is at a loss to understand where Bruce got the long story of Amda
Zion's heroic deeds, which enters into extraordinary detail, embracing
speeches after the manner of the Roman historians and the like, and
occupies some 60 pages in the French edition of Bruce which I have been
using. The German traveller could find no trace of this story in any of
the versions of the Abyssinian chronicle which he consulted, nor was it
known to a learned Abyssinian whom he names. Bruce himself says that the
story, which he has "a little abridged and accommodated to our manner of
writing, was derived from a work written in very pure Gheez, in Shoa,
under the reign of Zara Jacob"; and though it is possible that his
amplifications outweigh his abridgments, we cannot doubt that he had an
original groundwork for his narrative.
The work of Makrizi already quoted speaks of seven kingdoms in Zaila'
(here used for the Mahomedan low country) originally tributary to the Hati
(or Negush) of Amhara, viz., Aufat,[7] Dawaro, Arababni, Hadiah,
Shirha, Bali, Darah. Of these Ifat, Dawaro, and Hadiah repeatedly occur in
Bruce's story of the war. Bruce also tells us that Amda Zion, when he
removed Hakeddin, the Governor of Ifat, who had murdered his agent,
replaced him by his brother Sabreddin. Now we find in Makrizi that
about A.H. 700, the reigning governor of Aufat under the Hati was
Sabreddin Mahomed Valahui; and that it was 'Ali, the son of this
Sabreddin, who first threw off allegiance to the Abyssinian King, then
Saif Arad (son of Amda Zion). The latter displaces 'Ali and gives the
government to his son Ahmed.
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