Sahle Selassie - His Life

His Life

When their father had been murdered, Oromo rebels in Marra Biete kept Sahle Selassie's older brother Bakure from promptly marching to their father's capital at Qundi to claim the succession. Although still a teenager, Sahle Selassie seized this chance at rule by rushing from the monastery at Sela Dingay where he was a student "and probably with the support of his mother Zenebework's Menzian kinsmen was proclaimed the Ras and Meridazmach of Shewa." Bakure belatedly arrived at Qundi only to be imprisoned in the state prison at Gonchu with his other brothers and some of his supporters.

Once securely in control, Sahle Selassie turned his attention to the rebels, both Amhara and Oromo. He used diplomacy to win over the Abichu Oromo, who badly needed his help against their neighbors the Tulama Oromo, whom he defeated in the early 1820s. He followed this victory by rebuilding Debre Berhan, which had been burned in an Oromo raid, as well as a number of other towns and consolidated his hold by founding a number of fortified villages, like Angolalla, in the Abichu territory. He extended the frontier of Shewa into Bulga and Karayu, to the southeast into Arsi, and as far south as the territories of the Gurage.

On the other hand, he continued the policy of his ancestor Amha Iyasus in maintaining a buffer region to his north, created from the Yejju and Wollo Oromo rulers in the area. This helped keep Shewa out of the reach of the northern warlords like Ras Ali II of Yejju, who continued their own civil wars.

After a few years, Sahle Selassie felt his position secure enough that he proclaimed himself Negus, or king, of Shewa, Yifat, the Oromo and the Gurage peoples, without the authority of the Emperor of Ethiopia in Gondar, but with his apparent acquiescence. However, in 1829 Shewa suffered a famine, then for two years, starting in 1830, was striken by a cholera epidemic, where two thirds of the sick at Sahle Selassie's palace died. Then one of Sahle Selassie's generals, Medoko, rebelled and convinced a number of the elite Shewan matchlockmen to desert with him to join the Oromos. Together these adversaries threatened the existence of Shewa, and burned Angolalla. About the time Sahle Selassie put down this rebellion in 1834 or 1835, a drought afflicted Shewa for two years, killing most of the domestic animals and bringing famine to his people. Pankhurst also documents records of a second cholera epidemic in 1834, which spread south from Welo causing a great mortality. Sahle Selassie responded to the famine by opening the royal storehouses to the needy, endearing himself to his people. The famine came to an end in time for Medoko to rise again in rebellion, and although the general was quickly crushed, Sahle Selassie was then confronted by a crisis in the local church.

During the ongoing dispute over Christology that had split the Ethiopian Church into a number of hostile factions, Shewa had embraced the doctrine of the Sost Lidet in opposition to the theory of Wold Qib, which was embraced in the north. The Sost Lidet was also embraced by the influential monastery of Debre Libanos, located in Shewa. When Sahle Selassie sought to strengthen his power over the Shewan church by appointing men loyal to himself as trusties of the local monasteries—an act that brought the opposition not only of the monks themselves, but also of the Ichege, the abbot of the monastery of Debre Libanos and the second most powerful churchman in Ethiopia. Facing the threat of excommunication, Sahle Selassie relented and on 24 November 1841 dismissed his appointees—only to find himself under attack by Shewan supporters of the Wold Qib in Menz, Marra Biete, and other districts. At the moment the monarch managed to quiet this controversy, the arrival of a new Abuna, Salama III reawoke the resistance of the followers of the Wold Qib, and the new Abuna excommunicated Sahle Selassie in 1845. Despite the intervention of Imperial Regent, Ras Ali II, Abuna Salama refused to lift the interdict, and Ras Ali finally arrested the Abuna in 1846 and banished him from Gondar.

By this time, Sahle Selassie's health had begun to fail, and he was unable to pursue his intentions on the Imperial throne. Only the intervention of his close friends and advisers kept the Negus from abdicating the throne in favor of his son, and the final years of his reign are otherwise unremarkable.