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.
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