Mereja Forum

[Axumezana]

Gondar during the late 19th century

By the early 19th century, the powers of the emperor in Gondar had decreased further. Virtually none of the provincial lords brought any tribute to the capital and the small palace regiment had been extinguished. In 1830 and 1840, Gondar was looted by forces of the feuding lords who exhausted all its provisions. Bagemder was ruled by Ras Ali Alula, who was virtually the "master and king" of the empire according to contemporary accounts. While Ras Ali had several subordinate lords, his power was relatively limited compared to other provincial lords such as the dynasty of Sawa, although his taxing of Gondar’s trade made his court relatively wealthy.45

The rise of Tewodros in the 1850s and his defeat of Ras Ali and other lords ended the regionalism of the previous era, but was devastating to the fortunes of Gondar. After a series of political miscalculations in the early 1860s Téwodros, began to lose any semblance of control over the nascent state. After disputes with the church, Tewodros imprisoned the Abun in 1864 at his capital in Magdala, and ordered his troops to sack the city46. His forces would again sack Gondar in December 1866 under the pretext that its inhabitants refused to pay taxes. his troops sacked both the churches of Gondar and the (Muslim) merchant houses, carrying off loot (including some manuscripts that would later be seized by the British in 1868). Following this attack, many of the inhabitants of Gondar, Christians as well as Muslims, fled the town.47

After the defeat of Tewodros by the British at Magdala in 1868, he was suceeded by Takla Giyorgis (r. 1868-1871). Takla attempted to shore up his imperial legitimacy by restoring Gondar's churches and castles, he also restored the church lands taken away by Tewodros, and arranged for a special burial for the Abun who had died at Magdala with Tewodros. A contemporary chronicler wrote that “after Fasil, there was no one who did for Gondar as Ase Takla Giyorgis did”.48