Gondar - Phi Kappa Psi

. . . Susenyos of Ethiopia ruled in succession from Emperor
Yekuno Amlak, below, of the Solomid dynasty . . .
Emperor Yekuno Amlak (throne
name Tasfa Iyasus) was nəgusä nägäst
(10 August 1270 - 19 June 1285) of
Ethiopia and restorer of the Solomonic
dynasty. He traced his ancestry through his
father, Tasfa Iyasus, to Dil Na'od, the last
king of Axum. Much of what we know
about Yekuno Amlak is based on oral
traditions and medieval hagiographies.
Most sources state that his mother was the
slave of an Amhara chieftain in Sagarat
(located in the modern Dessie Zuria district
of the Amhara Region). Yekuno Amlak
was educated at Lake Hayq's Istifanos
Monastery near Amba Sel, where later
medieval hagiographies state Saint Tekle
Haymanot raised and educated him, and
helped him to depose the last Zagwe king.
The Lion of Judah
Earlier hagiographies, however, state that it was Iyasus Mo'a, the abbot of
Istifanos Monastery in Lake Hayq, who helped him achieve power (Istifanos was
the premier monastery at that time, while Tekle Haymanot's Debre Libanos
become more prominent in the later medieval period; it is from this period the
traditions that ascribe the deed to Tekle Haymanot date), although neither of
these traditions is contemporary.
Traditional history further reports that Yekuno Amlak was imprisoned by
the Zagwe king Za-Ilmaknun ("the unknown, the hidden one") in Malot, but
managed to escape. He gathered support in the Amhara provinces and in
Shewa, and with an army of followers, defeated the Zagwe king. Taddese Tamrat
argued that this king was Yetbarak, but due to a local form of damnatio
memoriae, his name was removed from the official records. A more recent
chronicler of Wollo history, Getatchew Mekonnen Hasen, flatly states that the last
Zagwe king deposed by Yekuno Amlak was none other than Na'akueto La'ab
himself. [4]
Yekuno Amlak is also said to have campaigned against the Kingdom of
Damot, which lay south of the Abbay River.