Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile/Volume 1/Book 2/Chapter 8
CHAP. VIII.
War of the Elephant — First Appearance of the Small-Pox — Jews persecute the Christians in Arabia — Defeated by the Abyssinians — Mahomet pretends a divine Mission — Opinion concerning the Koran — Revolution under Judith — Restoration of the Line of Solomon from Shoa.
IN the reigns of the princes Abreha and Atzbeha, the Abyssinian annals mention an expedition to have happened into the farthest part of Arabia Felix, which the Arabian authors, and indeed Mahomet himself in the Koran calls by the name of the War of the Elephant, and the cause of it was this. There was a temple nearly in the middle of the peninsula of Arabia, that had been held in the greatest veneration for about 1400 years. The Arabs say, that Adam, when shut out of paradise, pitched his tent on this spot; while Eve, from some accident or other I am not acquainted with, died and was buried on the shore of the Red Sea, at Jidda. Two days journey east from this place, her grave, of green sods about fifty yards in length, is shewn to this day. In this temple also was a black stone, upon which Jacob saw the vision mentioned in scripture, of the angels descending, and ascending into Heaven. It is likewise said, with more appearance of probability, that this temple was built by Sesostris, in his voyage to Arabia Felix, and that he was worshipped there under the name of Osiris, as he then was in every part of Egypt.
The great veneration the neighbouring nations paid to this tower, and idol, suggested the very natural thought of making the temple the market for the trade from Africa and India; the liberty of which, we may suppose, had been in some measure restrained, by the settlements which foreign nations had made on both coasts of the Red Sea. To remedy which, they chose this town in the heart of the country, accessible on all sides, and commanded on none, calling it Becca, which signifies the House; though Mahomet, after breaking the idol and dedicating the temple to the true God, named it Mecca, under which name it has continued, the centre or great mart of the India trade to this day.
In order to divert this trade into a channel more convenient for his present dominions, Abreha built a very large church or temple, in the country of the Homerites, and nearer the Indian Ocean. To encourage also the resort to this place, he extended to it all the privileges, protection, and emoluments, that belonged to the Pagan temple of Mecca.
One particular tribe of Arabs, called Beni Koreish, had the care of the Caba, for so the round tower of Mecca was called. These people were exceedingly alarmed at the prospect of their temple being at once deserted, both by its votaries and merchants, to prevent which, a party of them, in the night, entered Abreha's temple, and having first burned what part of it could be consumed, they polluted the part that remained, by besmearing it over with human excrements.
This violent sacrilege and affront was soon reported to Abreha, who, mounted upon a white elephant at the head of a considerable army, resolved, in return, to destroy the temple of Mecca. With this intent, he marched through that stripe of low country along the sea, called Tehama, where he met with no opposition, nor suffered any distrees but from want of water; after which, at the head of his army, he sat down before Mecca, as he supposed.
Abou Thaleb (Mahomet's grandfather, as it is thought) was then keeper of the Caba, who had interest with his countrymen the Beni Koreish to prevail upon them to make no resistance, nor shew any signs of wishing to make a defence. He had presented himself early to Abreha upon his march. There was a temple of Osiris at Taief, which, as a rival to that of Mecca, was looked upon by the Beni Koreish with a jealous eye. Abreha was so far misled by the intelligence given him by Abou Thaleb, that he mistook the Temple of Taief for that of Mecca, and razed it to the foundation, after which he prepared to return home.
He was soon after informed of his mistake, and not repenting of what he had already done, resolved to destroy Mecca also. Abou Thaleb, however, had never left his side; by his great hospitality, and the plenty he procured to the Emperor's army, he so gained Abreha, that hearing, on inquiry, he was no mean man, but a prince of the tribe of Beni Koreish, noble Arabs, he obliged him to sit in his pre sence, and kept, him constantly with him as a companion. At last, not knowing how to reward him sufficiently, Abreha desired him to ask any thing in his power to grant, and he would satisfy him. Abou Thaleb, taking him at his word, wished to be provided with a man, that should bring back forty oxen, the soldiers had stolen from him.
Abreha, who expected that the favour he was to ask, was to spare the Temple, which he had in that case resolved in his mind to do, could not conceal his astonishment at so silly a request, and he could not help testifying this to Abou Thaleb, in a manner that shewed it had lowered him in his esteem. Abou Thaleb, smiling, replied very calmly, If that before you is the Temple of God, as I believe it is, you shall never destroy it, if it is his will that it should stand: If it is not the Temple of God, or (which is the same thing) if he has ordained that you should destroy it, I shall not only assist you in demolishiing it, but shall help you in carrying away the last stone of it upon my shoulders: But as for me, I am a shepherd, and the care of cattle is my profession; twenty of the oxen which are stolen are not my own, and I shall be put in prison for them to-morrow; for neither you nor I can believe that this is an affair God will interfere in; and therefore I apply to you for a soldier who will seek the thief, and bring back my oxen, that my liberty be not taken from me.
Abreha had now refreshed his army, and, from regard to his guest, had not touched the Temple; when, says the Arabian author, there appeared, coming from the sea, a flock of birds called Ababil, having faces like lions, and each of them in his claws, holding a small stone like a pea, which he let fall upon Abreha's army, so that they all were destroyed. The author of the manuscript *[1] from which I have taken this fable, and which is also related by several other historians, and mentioned by Mahomet in the Koran, does not seem to swallow the story implicitly. For he says, that there is no bird that has a face like a lion, that Abou Thaleb was a Pagan, Mahomet being not then come, and that the Christians were worshippers of the true God, the God of Mahomet; and, therefore, if any miracle was wrought here, it was a miracle of the devil, a victory in favour of Paganism, and destructive of the belief of the true God. In conclusion, he says, that it was at this time that the small-pox and measles first broke out in Arabia, and almost totally destroyed the army of Abreha. But if the stone, as big as a pea, thrown by the Ababil, had killed Abreha's army to the last man, it does not appear how any of them could die afterwards, either by the small-pox or measles.
All that is material, however, to us, in this fact, is, that the time of the siege of Mecca will be the æra of the first appearance of that terrible disease, the small-pox, which we shall set down about the year 356; and it is highly probable, from other circumstances, that the Abyssinian army was the first victim to it.
As for the church Abreha built near the Indian Ocean, it continued free from any further insult till the Mahometan conquest of Arabia Felix, when it was finally destroyed in the Khalifat †[2] of Omar. This is the Abyssinian account, and this the Arabian history of the War of the Elephant, which I have stated as found in the books of the most credible writers of those times.
But it is my duty to put the reader upon his guard, against adopting literally what is here set down, without being satisfied of the validity of the objection that may be made against the narrative in general. Abreha reigned 27 years; he was converted to Christianity in 333, and died in 360; now, it is scarcely possible, in the short space of 27 years, that all Abyssinia and Arabia could be converted to Christianity. The conversion of the Abyssinians is represented to be a work of little time, but the Arab author, Hameesy, says, that even Arabia Felix was full of churches when this expedition took place, which is very improbable. And, what adds still more to the improbability, is, that part of the story which states that Abreha conversed with Mahomet's father, or grandfather. For, supposing the expedition in 356, Mahomet's birth was in 558, so there will remain 202 years, by much too long a period for two lives. I do believe we must bring this expedition down much lower than the reign of Abreha and Atzbeha, the reason of which we shall see afterwards.
As early as the commencement of the African trade with Palestine, the Jewish religion had spread itself far into Arabia, but, after the destruction of the temple by Titus, a great increase both of number and wealth had made that people absolute masters in many parts of that peninsula. In the Neged, and as far up as Medina, petty princes, calling themselves kings, were established; who, being trained in the wars of Palestine, became very formidable among the pa cific commercial nations of Arabia, deeply sunk into Greek degeneracy.
Phineas, a prince of that nation from Medina, having beat St Aretas, the Governor of Najiran, began to persecute the Christians by a new species of cruelty, by ordering certain furnaces, or pits full of fire, to be prepared, into which he threw as many of the inhabitants of Najiran as refused to renounce Christianity. Among these was Aretas, so called by the Greeks, Aryat by the Arabs, and Hawaryat, which signifies the evangelical, by the Abyssinians, together with ninety of his companions. Mahomet, in his Koran, mentions, this tyrant by the name of the Master of the fiery pits, without either condemning or praising the execution; only saying, 'the sufferers shall be witness against him at the last day.'
Justin, the Greek Emperor, was then employed in an unsuccessful war with the Persians, so that he could not give any assistance to the afflicted Christians in Arabia, but in the year 522 he sent an embassy to Caleb, or Elesbaas, king of Abyssinia, intreating him to interfere in favour of the Christians of Najiran, as he too was of the Greek church; On the Emperor's first request, Caleb sent orders to Abreha, Governor of Yemen, to march to the assistance of Aretas, the son of him who was burnt, and who was then collecting troops. Strengthened by this reinforcement, the young soldier did not think proper to delay the revenging his father's death, till the arrival of the Emperor; but having come up with Phineas, who was ferrying his troops over an arm of the sea, he entirely routed them, and obliged their prince, for fear of being taken, to swim with his horse to the near est shore. It was not long before the Emperor had crossed the Red Sea with his army; nor had Phineas lost any time in collecting his scattered forces to oppose him. A battle was the consequence, in which the fortune of Caleb again prevailed.
It would appear that the part of Arabia, near Najiran, which was the scene of Caleb's victory, belonged to the Grecian Emperor Justin, because Aretas applied directly to him at Constantinople for succour; and it was at Justin's request only, that Caleb marched to the assistance of Aretas, as a friend, but not as a sovereign; and as such also, Abreha, Governor of Yemen, marched to assist Aretas, with the Abyssinian troops, from the south of Arabia, against the stranger Jews, who were invaders from Palestine, and who had no connection with the Abyssinian Jewish Homerites, natives of the south coast of Arabia, opposite to Saba.
But neither of the Jewish kingdoms were destroyed by the victories of Caleb, or Abreha, nor the subsequent conquest of the Persians. In the Neged, or north part of Arabia, they continued not only after the appearance of Mahomet, but till after the Hegira. For it was in the 8th year of that æra that Hybar, the Jew, was besieged in his own castle in Neged, and slain by Ali, Mahomet's son-in-law, from that time called Hydar Ali, or Ali the Lion.
Now the Arabian manuscripts says positively that this Abreha, who assisted Aretas, was Governor of Arabia Felix, or Yemen; for, by this last name, I shall hereafter call the part of the peninsula of Arabia belonging to the Abyssinians; so that he might very well have been the prince who conversed with Mahomet's father, and lost his army before Mecca, which will bring down the introduction of the small-pox to the year 522, just 100 years before the Hegira, and both Arabian and Abyssinian accounts might be then true.
The two officers who governed Yemen, and the opposite coast Azab, which, as we have above mentioned, belonged to Abyssinia, were stiled Najashi, as was the king also, and both of them were crowned with gold. I am, therefore, persuaded, this is the reason of the confusion of names we meet in Arabian manuscripts, that treat of the sovereigns of Yemen. This, moreover, is the foundation of the story found in Arabic manuscripts, that Jaffar, Mahomet's brother, fled to the Najashi, who was governor of Yemen, and was kindly treated by him, and kept there till he joined his brother at the campaign of Hybarea. Soon after his great victory over the Beni Koreish, at the last battle of Beder Hunein, Mahomet is said to have written to the same Najashi a letter of thanks, for his kind entertainment of his brother, inviting him (as a reward) to embrace his religion, which the Najashi is supposed to have immediately complied with. Now, all this is in the Arabic books, and all this is true, as far as we can conjecture from the accounts of those times, very partially writ by a set of warm-headed bigotted zealots; such as all Arabic authors {historians of the time) undoubtedly are. The error only lies in the application of this story to the Najashi, or king of Abyssinia, situated far from the scene of these actions, on high cold mountains, very unfavourable to those rites, which, in low flat and warm countries, have been temptations to slothful and inactive men to embrace the Mahometan religion. A MOST shameful prostitution of manners prevailed in the Greek church, as also innumerable heresies, which were first received as true tenets of their religion, but were soon after persecuted in a most uncharitable manner, as being erroneous. Their lies, their legends, their saints and miracles, and, above all, the abandoned behaviour of the priesthood, had brought their characters in Arabia almost as low as that of the detested Jew, and, had they been considered in their true light, they had been still lower.
The dictates of nature in the heart of the honest Pagan, constantly employed in long, lonely, and dangerous voyages, awakened him often to reflect who that Providence was that invisibly governed him, supplied his wants, and often mercifully saved him from the destruction into which his own ignorance or rashness were leading him. Poisoned by no system, perverted by no prejudice, he wished to know and adore his Benefactor, with purity and simplicity of heart, free from these fopperies and follies with which ignorant priests and monks had disguised his worship. Possessed of charity, steady in his duty to his parents, full of veneration for his superiors, attentive and merciful even to his beasts; in a word, containing in his heart the principles of the first religion, which God had inculcated in the heart of Noah, the Arab was already prepared to embrace a much more perfect one than what Christianity, at that time, disfigured by folly and superstition, appeared to him to be.
Mahomet, of the tribe of Beni Koreish (at whose instigation is uncertain) took upon himself to be the apostle of a new religion, pretending to have, for his only object, the worship of the true God. Ostensibly full of the morality of the Arab, of patience and self-denial, superior even to what is made necessary to salvation by the gospel, his religion, at the bottom, was but a system of blasphemy and falsehood, corruption and injustice. Mahomet and his tribe were most profoundly ignorant. There was not among them but one man that could write, and it was not doubted he was to be Mahomet's secretary, but unfortunately Mahomet could not read his writing. The story of the angel who brought him leaves of the Koran is well known, and so is all the rest of the fable. The wiser part of his own relations, indeed, laughed at the impudence of his pretending to have a communication with angels. Having, however, gained, as his apostles, some of the best soldiers of the tribe of Beni Koreish, and persisting with great uniformity in all his measures, he established a new religion upon the ruins of idolatry and Sabaism, in the very temple of Mecca.
Nothing severe was injoined by Mahomet, and the frequent prayers and washings with water which he directed, were gratifications to a sedentary people in a very hot country. The lightness of this yoke, therefore, recommended it rapidly to those who were disgusted with long fasting, penances, and pilgrimages. The poison of this false, yet not severe religion, spread itself from that fountain to all the trading nations: India, Ethiopia, Africa, all Asia, suddenly embraced it; and every caravan carried into the bosom of its country people not more attached to trade, than zealous to preach and propagate their new faith. The Temple of Mecca (the old rendezvous of the Indian trade) perhaps was never more frequented than it is at this day, and the motives of the journey are equally trade and religion, as they were formerly. I SHALL here mention, that the Arabs begun very soon to study letters, and came to be very partial to their own language; Mahomet himself so much so, that he held out his Koran, for its elegance alone, as a greater miracle than that of raising the dead. This was not universally allowed at that time; as there were even then compositions supposed to equal, if not to surpass it. In my time, I have seen in Britain a spirit of enthusiasm for this book in preference to all others, not inferior to that which possessed Mahomet's followers. Modern unbelievers (Sale and his disciples) have gone every length, but to say directly that it was dictated by the Spirit of God. Excepting the command in Genesis chap. i ver. 3. "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light;" they defy us to shew in scripture a passage equal in sublimity to many in the Koran. Following, without inquiring, what has been handed down, from one to the other, they would cram us with absurdities, which no man of sense can swallow. They say the Koran is composed in a style the most pure, and chaste, and that the tribe of Beni Koreish was the most polite, learned, and noble of all the Arabs.
But to this I answer — The Beni Koreish were from the earliest days, according to their own *[3] account, part established at Mecca, and part as robbers on the sea-coast, and they were all children of Ishmael. Whence then came their learning, or their superior nobility? Was it found in the desert, in the temple, or did the robbers bring it from the sea? Soiouthy, one of those most famous then for knowledge in the Arabic, has quoted from the Koran many hundred words, either Abyssinian, Indian, Persian, Ethiopic, Syrian, Hebrew, or Chaldaic, which he brings back to the root, and ascribes them to the nation they came from. Indeed it could not be otherwise; these caravans, continually crowding with their trade to Mecca, must have vitiated the original tongue by an introduction of new terms and new idioms, into a language labouring under a penury of vocabules. But shall any one for this persuade me, that a book is a model of pure, elegant, chaste English, in which there shall be a thousand words of Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, French, Spanish, Malabar Mexican, and Laponian? What would be thought of such a medley? or, at least, could it be recommended as a pattern for writing pure English?
What I say of the Koran may be applied to the language of Arabia in general: when it is called a copious language, and professors wisely tell you, that there are six hundred words for a sword, two hundred for honey, and three hundred that signify a lion, still I must observe, that this is not a copious language, but a confusion of languages: these, instead of distinct names, are only different epithets. For example, a lion in English may be called a young lion, a white lion, a small lion, a big lion: I style him moreover the fierce, the cruel, the enemy to man, the beast of the desert, the king of beasts, the lover of blood. Thus it is in Arabic; and yet it is said that all these are words for a lion. Take another example in a sword; the cutter, the divider, the friend of man, the master of towns, the maker of widows, the sharp, the straight, the crooked; which may be said in English as well as in Arabic. The Arabs were a people who lived in a country, for the most part, desert; their dwellings were tents, and their principal occupation feeding and breeding cattle, and they married with their own family. The language therefore of such a people should be very poor; there is no variety of images in their whole country. They were always bad poets, as their works will testify; and if, contrary to the general rule, the language of Arabia Deserta became a copious one, it must have been by the mixture of so many nations meeting and trading at Mecca. It must, at the same time, have been the most corrupt, where there was the greatest concourse of strangers, and this was certainly among the Beni Koreish at the Caba. When, therefore, I hear people praising the Koran for the purity of its style, it puts me in mind of the old man in the comedy, whose reason for loving his nephew was, that he could read Greek; and being asked if he understood the Greek so read, he answered, Not a word of it, but the rumbling of the sound pleased him.
The war that had distracted all Arabia, first between the Greeks and Persians, then between Mahomet and the Arabs, in support of his divine mission, had very much hurt the trade carried on by universal consent at the Temple of Mecca. Caravans, when they dared venture out, were surprised upon every road, by the partizans of one side or the other. Both merchants and trade had taken their departure to the southward, and established themselves south of the Arabian Gulf, in places which (in ancient times) had been the markets for commerce, and the rendezvous of merchants. Azab, or Saba, was rebuilt; also Raheeta, Zeyla, Tajoura, Soomaal, in the Arabian Gulf, and a number of other towns on the Indian Ocean. The conquest of the Abyssinian territories in Arabia forced all those that yet remained to take refuge on the African side, in the little districts which now grew into consideration. Adel, Mara, Hadea, Aussa, Wypo, Tarshish, and a number of other states, now assumed the name of kingdoms, and soon obtained power and wealth superior to many older ones.
The Governor of Yemen (or Najashi) converted now to the faith of Mahomet, retired to the African side of the Gulf. His government, long ago, having been shaken to the very foundation by the Arabian war, was at last totally destroyed. But the Indian trade at Adel wore a face of prosperity, that had the features of ancient times.
Without taking notice of every objection, and answering it, which has too polemical an appearance for a work of this kind, I hope I have removed the greatest part of the reader's difficulties, which have, for a long time, lain in the way, towards his understanding this part of the history. There is one, however, remains, which the Arabian historians have mentioned, viz. that this Najashi, who embraced the faith of Mahomet, was avowedly of the royal family of Abyssinia. To this I answer, he certainly was a person of that rank, and was undoubtedly a nobleman, as there is no nobility in that country but from relationship to the king, and no person can be related to the king by the male line. But the females, even the daughters of those princes who are banished to the mountain, marry whom they please; and all the descendents of that marriage become noble, because they must be allied to the king. So far then they may truly assert, that the Mahometan Governor of Yemen, and his posterity, were this way related to the king of Abyssinia. But the supposition that any heirs male of this family became mussulmen, is, beyond any sort of doubt, without foundation or probability.
Omar, after subduing Egypt, destroyed the Valuable library at Alexandria, but his successors thought very differently from him in the article of profane learning. Greek books of all kinds (especially those of Geometry, Astronomy, and Medicine,) were searched for every where and translated. Sciences flourished and were encouraged. Trade at the same time kept pace, and increased with knowledge. Geography and astronomy were every where diligently studied and solidly applied to make the voyages of men from place to place safe and expeditious. The Jews (constant servants of the Arabs) imbibed a considerable share of their taste for earning.
They had, at this time, increased very much in number. By the violence of the Mahometan conquests in Arabia and Egypt, where their sect did principally prevail, they became very powerful in Abyssinia. Arianism, and all the various heresies that distracted the Greek church, were received there in their turn from Egypt; the bonds of Christianity were dissolved, and people in general were much more willing to favour a new religion, than to agree with, or countenance any particular one of their own, if it differed from that which they adopted in the merest trifle. This had destroyed their metropolis in Egypt, just now delivered up to the Saracens; and the disposition of the Abyssinians seemed so very much to resemble their brethren the Cophts, that a revolution in favour of Judaism was thought full as feasible in the country, as it had been in Egypt in favour of the newly-preached, but unequivocal religion of Mahomet.
An independent sovereignty, in one family of Jews, had always been preserved on the mountain of Samen, and the royal residence was upon a high-pointed rock, called the Jews Rock: Several other inaccessible mountains served as natural fortresses for this people, now grown very considerable by frequent accessions of strength from Palestine and Arabia, whence the Jews had been expelled. Gideon and Judith were then king and queen of the Jews, and their daughter Judith (whom in Amhara they call Esther, and sometimes Saat, i. e. fire*[4],), was a woman of great beauty, and talents for intrigue; had been married to the governor of a small district called Bugna, in the neighbourhood of Lasta, both which countries were likewise much infected with Judaism.
Judith had made so strong a party, that she resolved to attempt the subversion of the Christian religion, and, with it, the succession in the line of Solomon. The children of the royal family were at this time, in virtue of the old law, confined on the almost inaccessible mountain of Damo in Tigrè. The short reign, sudden and unexpected death of the late king Aizor, and the desolation and contagion which an epidemical disease had spread both in court and capital, the weak state of Del Naad who was to succeed Aizor and was an infant; all these circumstances together, impressed Judith with an idea that now was the time to place her family upon the throne, and establish her religion by the extirpation of the race of Solomon. Accordingly she surprised the rock Damo, and slew the whole princes there, to the number, it is said, of about 400.
Some nobles of Amhara, upon the first news of the catastrophe at Damo, conveyed the infant king Del Naad, now the only remaining prince of his race, into the powerful and loyal province of Shoa, and by this means the royal family was preserved to be again restored. Judith took possession of the throne in defiance of the law of the queen of Saba, by this the first interruption of the succession in the line of Solomon, and, contrary to what might have been expected from the violent means she had used to acquire the crown, she not only enjoyed it herself during a long reign of 40 years, but transmitted it also to five of her posterity, all of them barbarous names, originating probably in Lasta: These are said to be,
Authors, as well Abyssinian as European, have differed widely about the duration of these reigns. All that the Abyssinians are agreed upon is, that this whole period was one scene of murder, violence, and oppression.
Judith and her descendents were succeeded by relations of their own, a noble family of Lasta. The history of this revolution, or cause of it, are lost and unknown in the country, and therefore vainly sought after elsewhere. What we know is, that with them the court returned to the Christian religion, and that they were still as different from their predecessors in manners as in religion. Though usurpers, as were the others, their names are preserved with every mark of respect and veneration. They are,
Not being kings of the line of Solomon, no part of their history is recorded in the annals, unless that of Lalibala, who lived in the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century, and was a saint. The whole period of the usurpation, comprehending the long reign of Judith, will by this account be a little more than 300 years, in which time eleven princes are said to have sat upon the throne of Solomon, so that, supposing her death to have been in the year 1000, each of these princes, at an average, will have been a little more than twenty-four years, and this is too much. But all this period is involved in darkness. We might guess, but since we are not able to do more, it answers no good purpose to do so much. I have followed the histories and traditions which are thought the most authentic in the country, the subject of which they treat, and where I found them; and though they may differ from other accounts given by European authors, this does not influence me, as I know that none of these authors could have any other authorities than those I have seen, and the difference only must be the fruit of idle imagination, and ill-founded conjectures of their own.
In the reign of Lalibala, near about the 1200, there was a great persecution in Egypt against the Christians, after the Saracen conquest, and especially against the masons, builders, and hewers of stone, who were looked upon by the Arabs as the greatest of abominations; this prince opened an asylum in his dominions to all fugitives of that kind, of whom he collected a prodigious number. Having before him as specimens the ancient works of the Troglodytes, he directed a number of churches to be hewn out of the solid rock in his native country of Lasta, where they remain untouched to this day, and where they will probably continue till the latest posterity. Large columns within are formed out of the solid rock, and every species of ornament preserved, that would have been executed in buildings of separate and detached stones, above ground.
This prince undertook to realize the favourite pretensions of the Abyssinians, to the power of turning the Nile out of its course, so that it should no longer be the cause of the fertility of Egypt, now in possession of the enemies of his religion. We may imagine, if it was in the power of man to accomplish this undertaking, it could have fallen into no better hands than those to whom Lalibala gave the execution of it; people driven from their native country by those Saracens who now were reaping the benefits of the river, in the places of those they had forced to seek habitations far from the benefit and pleasure afforded by its stream. This prince did not adopt the wild idea of turning the course of the Nile out of its present channel; upon the possibility or impossibility of which, the argument (so warmly and so long agitated) always most improperly turns. His idea was to famish Egypt: and, as the fertility of that country depends not upon the ordinary stream, but the extraordinary increase of it by the tropical rains, he is said to have found, by an exact survey and calculation, that there ran on the summit, or highest part of the country, several rivers which could be intercepted by mines, and their stream directed into the low country southward, instead of joining the Nile, augmenting it and running northward. By this he found he should be able so to disappoint its increase, that it never would rise to a height proper to fit Egypt for cultivation. And thus far he was warranted in his ideas of succeeding (as I have been informed by the people of that country), that he did intersect and carry into the Indian Ocean, two very large rivers, which have ever since flowed that way, and he was carrying a level to the lake Zawaia, where many rivers empty themselves in the beginning of the rains, which would have effectually diverted the course of them all, and could not but in some degree diminish the current below.
Death, the ordinary enemy of all these stupendous Herculean undertakings, interposed too here, and put a stop to this enterprize of Lalibala. But Amha Yafous, prince of Shoa (in whose country part of these immense works were) a young man of great understanding, and with whom I lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, assured me that they were visible to this day; and that they were of a kind whole use could not be mistaken; that he himself had often visited them, and was convinced the undertaking was very possible with such hands, and in the circumstances things then were. He told me likewise, that, in a written account which he had seen in Shoa, it was said that this prince was not interrupted by death in his undertaking, but persuaded by the monks, that if a greater quantity of water was let down into the dry kingdoms of Hadea, Mara, and Adel, increasing in population every day, and, even now, almost equal in power to Abyssinia itself, these barren kingdoms would become the garden of the world; and such a number of Saracens, dislodged from Egypt by the first appearance of the Nile's failing, would fly thither: that they would not only withdraw those countries from their obedience, but be strong enough to over-run the whole kingdom of Abyssinia. Upon this, as Amha Yafous informed me, Lalibala gave over his first scheme, which was the famishing of Egypt; and that his next was employing the men in subterraneous churches; a useless expence, but more level to the understanding of common men than the former.
Don Roderigo de Lima, ambassador from the king of Portugal, in 1522 saw the remains of these vast works, and travelled in them several days, as we learn from Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of that embassy *[5], which we shall take notice of in its proper place.
Lalibala was distinguished both as a poet and an orator. The old fable, of a swarm of bees hanging to his lips in the cradle, is revived and applied to him. as foretelling the sweetness of his elocution.
To Lalibala succeeded Imeranha Christos, remarkable for nothing but being son of such a father as Lalibala, and father to such a son as Naacueto Laab; both of them distinguished for works very extraordinary, though very different in their kind. The first, that is those of the father we have already hinted at, consisting in great mechanical undertakings. The other was an operation of the mind, of still more difficult nature, a victory over ambition, the voluntary abdication of a crown to which he succeeded without imputation of any crime.
Tecla Haimanout, a monk and native of Abyssinia, had been ordained Abuna, and had founded the famous monastery of Debra Libanos in Shoa. He was a man at once celebrated for the sanctity of his life, the goodness of his understanding, and love to his country; and, by an extraordinary influence, obtained over the reigning king Naacueto Laab, he persuaded him, for conscience sake, to resign a crown, which (however it might be said with truth, that he received it from his father) could never be purged from the stain and crime of usurpation.
In all this time, the line of Solomon had been continued from Del Naad, who, we have seen, had escaped from the massacre of Damo, under Judith. Content with possessing the loyal province of Shoa, they continued their royal residence there, without having made one attempt, as far as history tells us, towards recovering their ancient kingdom. RACE of SOLOMON banished, but reigning in SHOA.
Naacueto Laab, of the house of Zaguè, was, it seems, a just and peaceable prince.
Under the mediation of Abuna Tecla Haimanout, a treaty was made between him and Icon Amlac consisting of four articles, all very extraordinary in. their kind.
The first was, that Naacueto Laab, prince of the house of Zaguè, should forthwith resign the kingdom of Abyssinia to Icon Amlac, reigning prince of the line of Solomon then in Shoa.
The second, that a portion of lands in Lasta should be given to Naacueto Laab and his heirs in absolute property, irrevocably and irredeemably; that he should preserve, as marks of sovereignty, two silver kettle-drums, or nagareets; that the points of the spears of his guard, the globes that surmounted his sendeck, (that is the pole upon which the colours are carried), should be silver, and that he should sit upon a gold stool, or chair, in form of that used by the kings of Abyssinia; and that both he and his dependents should be absolutely free from all homage, services, taxes, or public burdens for ever, and stiled Kings of Zaguè, or the Lasta king.
The third article was, That one third of the kingdom should be appropriated and ceded absolutely to the Abuna himself, for the maintenance of his own state, and support of the clergy, convents, and churches in the kingdom; and this became afterwards an æra, or epoch, in Abyssinian history, called the æra of partition.
The fourth, and last article, provided, that no native Abyssinian could thereafter be chosen Abuna, and this even tho' he was ordained at, and sent from Cairo. In virtue of this treaty, concluded and solemnly sworn to, Icon Amlac took possession of his throne, and the other contracting parties of the provisions respectively allotted them.
The part of the treaty that should appear mod liable to be broken was that which erected a kingdom within a kingdom. However, it is one of the remarkable facts in the annals of this country, that the article between Icon Amlac and the house of Zaguè was observed for near 500 years; for it was made before the year 1300, and never was broken, but by the treacherous murder of the Zaguean prince by Alio Paul in the unfortunate war of Begemder, in the reign of Joas 1768, the year before I arrived in Abyssinia; neither has any Abuna native of Abyssinia ever been known since that period. As for the exorbitant grant of one third of the kingdom to the Abuna, it has been in great measure resumed, as we may naturally suppose, upon different pretences of misbehaviour, true or alledged, by the king or his ministers, the first great invasion of it being in the subsequent reign of king Theodorus, who, far from losing popularity by this infraction, has been ever reckoned a model for sovereigns.