Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Eight.

Chronicle of the Invasion of Mohammad Graan.

In connection with the foregoing remarks respecting the inhabitants of the lowlands, it is now desirable to sketch, for the reader’s information, some of those early hostilities between the Mohammadans and Christians, which find a record in the meagre annals of Abyssinia. They led, in the sixteenth century, to an event so often alluded to in these pages,—the invasion of Graan, “the Left-handed,” whose irruptions proved the greatest calamity that ever befel the country.

The allegiance claimed from the Ada?el by the emperors of Ethiopia is known to have been evaded at a very remote period. Ages ago gold was returned for gold, apparel for apparel; and the intractable Moslems were studiously kept in good humour whensoever they thought proper to visit the Christian court. Their revenues arose chiefly from the supply of camels for the transport of merchandise to various parts of Africa, and from the importation of fossil salt, which then, as now, passed instead of silver currency, and for which they purchased slaves, together with the rich staples of the interior. Thus the interests of Adel and of Abyssinia have always been so intimately linked, that the declaration of war was certain to prove disastrous alike to the victor and to the vanquished, since it must have interfered equally with the commerce by which both were enriched. Nevertheless, upon all suitable opportunities, the fanatic lowlanders, urged by religious hate, plundered the Christian churches, and massacred or tortured the priests, until they at length drew upon themselves a war of extermination.

The Abyssinian chroniclers state that Amda Zion, who died at Tegulet about the middle of the fourteenth century, first made a retributive inroad, in consequence of his rebellious vassals having, amongst many other derogatory expressions, taunted him as “an eunuch, fit only to take care of women.” But the Emperor was never beaten. He overran and laid waste the plains from the mountains to the borders of the ocean, and swept off to the highlands a prodigious amount of cattle. Every species of enormity appears to have been practised in retaliation by the Amhára, who were commanded to “leave nothing alive that drew the breath of life.” This behest was obeyed with all the rage and cruelty that revenge and a difference of religion could inspire; and before the termination of the campaign, the dauntless young King of Wypoo had been slain, together with Sáleh, the King of Mára, who boasted descent in a direct line from the Apostle.

Constant commercial intercourse had long been maintained between Cairo and Abyssinia, both across the desert and by way of the Red Sea. Great caravans, composed formerly of Pagans, but now of Mohammadans, passed in without molestation, and dispersed Indian manufactures through the heart of Africa. Friars, priests, nuns, and pious laymen, in vast numbers, also set out annually on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whither, with drums beating before the holy cross, they proceeded by the route of Suakem, making long halts for the performance of divine service. But with the power of the Mamelukes, all communication across the desert, whether for commercial or religious purposes, was closed to the Christians. After the conquest of Egypt and Arabia by Selim the First, caravans were invariably attacked, the old were butchered, and the young swept into slavery; for the Emperor of the Ottomans, fully imbued with the merciless bigotry of his creed, held it a sacred duty to convert by the sword the subjects of a monarch whose ancestor had been honoured with the correspondence of the great founder of the Saracen empire. Many Arabian merchants, flying about the same period from the violence and injustice of the Turkish tyrants, had sought an asylum in the opposite African states, whereupon the Ottomans took possession, from Aden, of the seaport of Zeyla, and not only laid the Indian trade under heavy contributions, by means of their galleys cruising in the narrow straits of Bab el Mandeb, but threatened the conquest both of Adel and Abyssinia.

Betwixt these countries there subsisted peace from the death of Amda Zion to the middle of the fifteenth century. Towards the close of the reign of Zára Yácoob, who founded Debra Berhán, the flame of discord was again fanned by a certain queen of Zeyla, who is said to have aspired to the hand of the Emperor; but the Christian arms were still in the ascendant. Baeda Mariam, the next occupant of the throne, passed his life in a constant struggle to assert supremacy over the low country; and, on his death-bed, he caused himself to be so turned that his face might be towards the sandy deserts of the Ada?el, to whose subjugation his whole energies had for ten years been devoted.

Mafoodi’s inroads, it has been seen, commenced during the reign of Alexander. They continued, with increasing horrors, throughout that of his successor Naod. Nebla Dengel being only eleven years of age when called to the throne, Helena, his mother, ruled during his minority. Albuquerque was at that period viceroy of India, and to him the queen-dowager sent to implore assistance for troubled Abyssinia. Arriving at Goa, the ambassador announced himself to be the bearer of “a fragment of wood belonging to the true Cross on which Christ died, which relic had been sent, as a token of friendship to her brother Emmanuel, by the Empress over Ethiopia;” and this overture was in due time followed by the arrival at Massowah of an embassy from the King of Portugal.

Father Alvarez has recorded the unfavourable reception experienced in Shoa at the hands of the young emperor, who could never be brought to recognise his mother’s proceedings, which had led to this influx of foreigners. At the age of sixteen, having adopted the title of Wánag Suggud, signifying “feared among the lions,” he had taken the field in person against Mafoodi, who, backed by the rebellious King of Adel, still continued his wasting inroads on the Christian frontier. At the opening of the campaign, this fanatic, who had resolved either to conquer or to die a martyr to his religion, threw the gauntlet of defiance to the Christian chivalry, and it was instantly accepted. The infidel was slain in single combat by the monk Gabriel, a soldier of tried valour, who had assumed the monastic cap during the preceding reign in consequence of having been deprived of the tip of his tongue for treasonable freedom of speech. Cutting off the head of this vanquished antagonist, he now threw it at the feet of his royal master, and exclaimed, “Behold, sire, the Goliath of the Infidels!” The green standard of the Prophet and of the faith was taken, twelve thousand of the Moslem were slain, and the youthful emperor, in defiance, struck his lance through the door of the King of Adel. The monk who had thus delivered Abyssinia from her worst scourge, was welcomed with the applause of the whole nation. Maidens pressed forward to strew flowers in his path, and matrons celebrating his achievements with songs, placed garlands on his head, and held out their babes to gaze at the warrior as he passed.

It was shortly after the departure of the Portuguese embassy that Graan, “the Left-handed”—then King of Adel—made his first appearance on the Ethiopian stage, where he was long the principal actor. In league with the Turkish Bashaw on the coast of Arabia, this mighty warrior sent his Abyssinian prisoners to Mecca, and in return was furnished with a large body of Janissaries, at the head of whom he burst into Efát and Fátigar, drove off the population, and laid waste the country with fire. In 1528 he took possession of Shoa, overran Amhára, burnt all the churches, and swept off immense booty. In his next campaign the invader wintered in Begemeder, and the following year hunted the emperor like a wild beast through Tigré to the borders of Sennaar, gave battle to the royal troops on the banks of the Nile, with his own hand slew the monk Gabriel, who had vanquished Mafoodi in single combat, cut the army to pieces, practised every species of atrocity, and set fire to half the churches in Abyssinia.

Famine and plague now raged, and carried off those whom the sword had spared. The princes of the blood were all destroyed; Axum was burnt, and the monarch himself, after being compelled to take refuge in the wilderness, was finally slain. With him died also the boasted splendour of the Abyssinian court, for he was the last monarch of Ethiopia who displayed the magnificence of a “king of kings.”

Markos, the aged Archbishop, had, on his deathbed, appointed as his successor John Bermudez, a Portuguese who had been detained in the country, and at the request of Claudius, who succeeded to the empire, he now proceeded to Europe to obtain assistance. Don Christopher de Gama, with five hundred soldiers, obtained possession of Massowah, slew the governor, and sent his head to Gondar, where, as an early pledge of future victory, it was received with raptures by the queen. The general was shortly confronted by Graan in person. Artillery and muskets were for the first time opposed in Abyssinia; and the Portuguese leader being wounded, took refuge in a cave. Deaf to persuasion, he refused to seek safety in flight; and a Turkish lady of extraordinary beauty, whom he had made prisoner, and who had affected conversion to Christianity, shortly betrayed him to the enemy. He was carried before Graan, who, with his left hand cut off his head, and sent it to Constantinople, his body being quartered, and sent in portions to Arabia.

But the Portuguese were far from being disheartened by this grievous misfortune, and the armies were shortly in a position again to try their strength. Before the engagement had well commenced, Peter Lyon, a marksman of low stature, but passing valiant withal, who had been valet to Don Christopher, having stolen unperceived along the dry channel of a ravine, shot Graan through the body. He fell from his horse some distance in advance of the troops, and the soldier, cutting off one of the infidel’s ears, put it into his pocket. This success was followed by the total rout of the Mohammadans; and an Abyssinian officer of rank finding the body of the redoubted chief, took possession of his mutilated head, which he laid at the feet of the Emperor in proof of his claim to the merit of the achievement. Having witnessed in silence the impudence of his rival, the valet produced the trophy from his pocket, with the observation that His Majesty doubtless knew Graan sufficiently well to be quite certain, “that he would suffer no one to cut off his ear that possessed not the power to take his head also.”

Delivered from his enemy, Claudius now sought to repair the ravages which had been committed in his country. A total eclipse of the sun shortly afterwards threw both army and court into consternation—every ignorant monk who practised divination declaring the phenomenon to portend another invasion from the lowlanders. But in spite of this prophecy an interchange of prisoners took place. Del Wumbarea, the widow of Graan, had thrown herself into the wilds of Atbára, and her son Ali Jeraad, who was made prisoner after his father fell, being now set at liberty, Prince Menas, only brother to the emperor, was released from his captivity in the sultry deserts of Adel, whither he had been carried during the reign of Nebla Dengel. I Noor, the Ameer of Hurrur, who was deeply enamoured of Del Wumbarea, had proved the means of her escape from the fatal field whereon her husband died. The heroine now pledged her hand in marriage to him who should lay the head of Claudius at her feet; and Noor instantly sent a message of defiance to the emperor, who was engaged in rebuilding the celebrated church of Debra-work, “the mountain of gold,” which had been burnt by the infidels. Claudius, who had almost by a miracle rescued Abyssinia from the Mohammadans, marched instantly to accept the challenge. Many prophecies were current amongst the soldiery that the campaign was to prove unfortunate, and the hot-headed monarch to lose his life; but he laughed at these monkish predictions, declaring an honourable death to be infinitely preferable to the longest and most prosperous reign.

The rival armies were on the point of engaging, in the year 1559, when the high priest of Debra Libanos rushed before the emperor to declare a vision, in which the angel Gabriel had warned him not to suffer the king of the church of Ethiopia to expose himself in a needless fight. Thus discouraged, the cowardly Abyssinians instantly fled, leaving Claudius supported only by a handful of Portuguese soldiers, who were soon slain around his person, and he immediately afterwards fell, covered with wounds. His head was cut off, and laid by Noor at the feet of Del Wumbarea, who, in observance of her pledge, became his wife, and with truly savage ferocity commanded the trophy to be suspended by the hair to the branches of a tree before her door, in order that her eyes might continually be gladdened by the sight. It hung in this position during three years, ere it was purchased by an Armenian merchant, who caused it to be interred in the holy sepulchre of Saint Claudius at Antioch; and the name of the hero who had been victorious in every action save that in which he died, has since been enrolled in the voluminous catalogue of Abyssinian saints, where it now occupies a conspicuous place, as the destroyer of Mohammad, surnamed “the Left-handed.”

To the present day the most preposterous legends are believed with reference to the personal prowess of this fierce invader, his gigantic stature, and the colossal size of his steed. He is said to have wielded a brand twenty feet in length; and although it is matter of notoriety that he fell in the manner above narrated, by the hand of a Portuguese soldier, he is represented to have received no fewer than four thousand musket bullets before yielding up the ghost. The supernatural achievements of Graan are handed down to posterity in an extant Amháric volume; and his inroads gave birth in the mind of the people of Shoa to a superstitious dread of the Ada?el, such as was long entertained of the Turks in Northern Europe, and which it has been seen extends even to the warlike monarch.