Gudit

Name

The name "Gudit" in the Geʽez narrative associates her positively with the Biblical Judith. It has been conjectured that the form Gudit is connected etymologically with the Amharic word gud which connotes a range of meanings from "freak" and "monster" to "strange" and "wonderful". According to Caroline Levi, her alternative name "Isato", aside from meaning "fire", bears a similar set of meanings. The Ţilţal name for her, Ga'wa indicates she came to be associated with a 16th century Muslim queen of that name, something which suggests that the traditions concerning Gudit took centuries to achieve their final form. In one of the Ethiopian kinglists, mention is made of a certain Tirda' Gābāz as the last queen of Aksum. The tales told of her exploits are almost identical with those associated with Māsobā Wārq.

History and stories

There are two versions of the tradition about Gudit.

• She was a princess of Gideon IV, the King of the Jewish Kingdom of Beta Israel (Kingdom of Simien). After her father was killed in battle with the Aksumite Empire, Gudit inherited his throne. Eventually, she defeated the Aksumite.
• She was a banished princess of Aksum. She married Zenobis, a Syrian prince, and converted to Judaism. Eventually, she conquered Aksum with her husband and people of Hahayle, her mother's homeland.

Information about Gudit is contradictory and incomplete. Paul B. Henze wrote, "She is said to have killed the emperor, ascended the throne herself, and reigned for 40 years. Accounts of her violent misdeeds are still related among peasants in the north Ethiopian countryside." Henze continues in a footnote:

There is a tradition that Gudit sacked and burned Debre Damo, an amba which at the time was a treasury and a prison for the male relatives of the king; this may be an echo of the later capture and sack of Amba Geshen by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, alias Ahmad Gragn.

However, James Bruce presented a tradition that Dil Na'ad was overthrown by Gudit, and that Mara Takla Haymanot (whom Bruce calls "Takla Haymanot") was a cousin of Gudit who succeeded her after several of her own family.

In oral tradition, Gudit is sometimes conflated with the 16th-century Muslim queen Ga'ewa of Tigray.

Ethnicity

Carlo Conti Rossini first proposed that the account of this warrior queen in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, where she was described as Bani al-Hamwiyah, ought to be read as Bani al-Damutah, and argued that she was ruler of the once-powerful Kingdom of Damot, and that she was related to one of the indigenous Sidama people of southern Ethiopia.

Modern historian Enrico Cerulli discovered Arabic documents that mention a Muslim queen named Badit daughter of Maya in the tenth century who reigned under the Makhzumi dynasty. According to historian Tekeste Negash, Gudit was a Cushitic queen based at Lake Hayq in Wollo Province of Ethiopia. He further explains that there may have been a regional power struggle between Aksum and this queen of Wollo whom had ties to Yemeni traders through the port of Zeila. Somali folklore also mentions a queen named Arawelo, who governed from Sanaag into much of the interior of Eastern Africa.

In more recent perspectives on the issue of the ethnicity of Gudit, there has been less certainty on to her actual identity and yet more certainty on the unlikelihood of her being of Judaic belief or associated with the Beta Israel. According to Steven Kaplan: Despite the Judith legend's popularity and its prominent position in the traditions of both Jews and Christians to this day, there appears to be several good reasons for rejecting the depiction of the tenth century queen of the Bani al-Hamwiyah as a Falasha. Although some Ethiopic sources do portray Yodit as a Jewess, these generally identify her as a convert rather than the product of a well entrenched indigenous religious community. The material recorded by Bruce, which contains the earliest complete account of the legend, must be considered suspect on several grounds...

Historical evidence

It was during the office of Pope Philotheos of Alexandria when Gudit started her revolt, near the end of the reign of the king who had deposed the Abuna Petros. According to Taddesse Tamrat, "his own death in the conflict, and the military reverses of the kingdom were taken as divine retribution for the sufferings of Abuna Petros."

This chronological synchronicity with the tenure of Patriarch Philotheos, and the intervention of king Georgios II of Makuria, provides us a date of ca. 960 for Gudit. A contemporary Arab historian, Ibn Hawqal, provides this account:

Another historian mentions that the king of Yemen sent a zebra to the ruler of Iraq in 969/970, which he had received as a gift from the Queen of al-Habasha.

In popular culture

Yodit features in the video game Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms. The story is based on a Ge'ez tradition that she was a ruler who was exiled: With her Syrian husband Zānobis, she returns, and rallying people from her homeland in Hahayle, she destroys Aksum, and by decree declares that she had become Jewish and would persecute the Levites.

Notes

Citations

Sources

• {{Cite journal | title = The Queen of the Habasha in Ethiopian History, Tradition and Chronology
• {{Cite book| title = Ethiopia
• {{Cite book| title = Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile | author-link = James Bruce
• {{Cite journal | title = Desperately Seeking the Jewish Kingdom of Ethiopia: Benjamin of Tudela and the Horn of Africa (Twelfth Century)
• {{Cite dictionary| title = Gudit
• {{cite book| title = Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia
• {{cite journal | title = The Invention of Ethiopian Jews: Three Models (Trois approches de l' "invention" des Juifs éthiopiens) | author-link = Steven Kaplan (Africanist)
• {{Cite book| title = The Beta Israel: Falasha in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century | author-link = Steven Kaplan (Africanist)
• {{Cite encyclopedia| chapter = Betä Əsraʾel | author-link = Steven Kaplan (Africanist) | editor1-last = Uhlig | editor1-first = Siegbert | editor2-last = Bausi | editor2-first = Alessandro | editor3-last = Crummey | editor3-first = Donald | editor4-last = Goldenberg | editor4-first = Gideon | editor5-last = Yemām | editor5-first = Bāya
• {{Cite encyclopedia| chapter = Beta Israel | author-link = Steven Kaplan (Africanist)
• {{cite news| title = Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms Released!
• {{cite book| title = Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity
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• {{Cite book| title = The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920
• {{cite magazine| title = Queen Araweilo | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20010627221704/http://www.anaserve.com/~mbali/letter20.htm | access-date = 20 June 2017 | archive-date = 27 June 2001
• {{Cite journal | title = Ethnographers, Rabbis and Jewish Epistemology: The Case of the Ethiopian Jews
• {{cite book| title = Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270-1527 | author-link = Taddesse Tamrat
• {{cite book| chapter = Ethiopia, the Red Sea and the Horn | author-link = Taddesse Tamrat | editor-last = Oliver | editor-first = Roland | editor-link = Roland Oliver | chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=GWjxR61xAe0C&pg=PA106