- [Matthew] Ethiopia circa 1435.
It is a marriage that will set the Horn of Africa on fire.
The groom is Zara Yaqob, Emperor of Ethiopia.
The bride is stolen.
Her name is Eleni,
and she's the Sultan of Hadiya's daughter.
When her father refused to pay Zara Yaqob tribute,
he stormed into the Hadiya Sultanate,
sacked it and kidnapped her.
Confined in the emperor's harem
and forced to convert to Christianity,
she will now become his wife.
But her father will start a war to rescue her
and he's already convinced
the larger Adal Sultanate to invade.
But the thing no one knows is Eleni's conversion is sincere
and she will guide Ethiopia for decades to come.
(upbeat music)
Thanks so much to Brilliant
for helping us to tell today's historical tale.
When we last left off, it was 1335
and Amda Seyon had just gotten Ethiopia a bishop.
Wait a minute, 1335? Did we miss an episode?
How did we skip a century?
Why are we rushing through this?
I mean, how long did the Solomonic dynasty last?
Until 1974? Seriously?
Are you saying the Solomonic dynasty
started the year William Wallace was born
and ended with the release of Blazing Saddles?
That is bonkers.
Okay, so we will have to be jumping around a bit. Got it.
Amda Seyon was now expanding Ethiopia
through a series of wars
and establishing monasteries to help convert his population
which often practiced traditional polytheism
and a local variety of Judaism.
His priority then was turning Christianity
from a religion of elites
to one that could engender a kind of national unity,
particularly since Ethiopia spanned numerous ethnic
and linguistic groups.
But even among Ethiopian Christians, not all was well
because they often bitterly disagreed
about certain theological concepts and ritual observances.
So not only was Amda Seyon fighting crusades on his borders,
but also suppressing what he saw as heresy at home.
That religious problem wouldn't be solved for a century,
but there was also a secular problem,
how to centrally administer an empire so large, diverse,
and with extremely poor communication and travel networks.
Spoiler alert, you can't.
Building an administrative state was basically impossible
under those conditions, so Amda Seyon didn't try.
Instead, he went hard on feudalism.
He carved up Ethiopia and gave it to trusted governors
who basically could do whatever they wanted
in their own fields,
provided they regularly sent him the three T's:
taxes, troops, and tribute.
He also placed imperial garrisons into each province
to keep an eye on said governor.
And should a province get restive,
he might just come in person.
Because for centuries, Ethiopia had no capital.
Instead, it had a mobile court
that would set up in a location for several months,
plopping down wherever the emperor's attention
was needed most.
Now, was this flexible?
Certainly, but if that sounds a little chaotic,
well, it could be too,
but it was nothing compared to the succession laws.
See, Ethiopia did not have private geniture,
so the eldest son didn't automatically inherit.
Instead, every Royal death meant a fractional split
as groups backed one imperial son or another,
frequently leading to instability and violent conflict.
Now, I'd say it's kind of like Game of Thrones,
but in some ways, it was actually crazier
since these fights weren't just for the traveling throne.
They also happened over local governor positions.
To tamp down on these succession crises,
the emperor revived a Zagwe system of confinement.
Anytime a new emperor came to the throne,
they'd simply lock up his adult brothers and sons
in a fortress/monastery/jail on top of a mountain,
you know, for their safety.
Then when the emperor died,
the family and ministers of state would get together
and decide who was going to be let out
and crowned the new emperor.
This we should say was not a perfect system
and princes did manage to avoid it
by going into hiding or even escaping,
at which point they were recaptured and brought back.
And this was still going on in Zara Yaqob's time.
He'd spent his childhood in hiding so as not to be locked up
and then upon his capture spent 20 years
in said fortress prison until he took the throne in 1434.
This created a man with an indomitable will
and an education guided by monastic tutors,
but who also had no background in statecraft or diplomacy
and who found it difficult to relate to people.
His first act was to invade the Hadiya Sultanate
which was within the zone of Ethiopian influence
and therefore expected to send tribute.
You see, Ethiopia had and would continue to have
another ongoing problem.
Namely, it was a Christian kingdom
expanding into Muslim lands.
And in order to get an idea of this,
we can kind of think of it like a dart board.
The Ethiopian core, the bullseye, was in the highlands
where there was the most religious, ethnic, linguistic,
and economic unity.
Around that was the band of recently conquered provinces
that were largely Christian,
but had not yet been fully integrated into the core.
And then beyond that were the tributary states,
often Muslim, who might not formally be part of Ethiopia,
but paid tribute.
These provinces nearly always defected to the Muslim side
when Ethiopia fought wars,
meaning Ethiopia often shrank during times of instability.
Given that and knowing that war with Adal was imminent,
it was in Zara Yaqob's interest
to finally settle the religious tensions at home.
So he announced an official policy
of Tolerance for Christians,
promising not to persecute those that, for example,
observed the Sabbath on a different day of the week.
But his key achievement was military.
In 1445, the Sultan of Adal
invaded one of the Muslim provinces
Amda Seyon had conquered during his expansion
and turned it into an Adal vassal.
So in response, Zara Yaqob personally led his army
into the rebel province, defeated the Adal army,
and killed the Sultan,
shipping parts of his body all over Ethiopia.
Brutal? Yes, and perhaps a red flag for the future.
Because as the emperor aged,
he became increasingly paranoid and suspicious.
He saw plots everywhere, even amongst family
and frequently ordered those he suspected
to be beaten heavily.
And in a particular bout of cruelty,
the son who succeeded him watched his mother,
one of his father's wives, beaten to death at court.
Zara Yaqob's family increasingly lived in fear
until he died in 1468.
However, there was a steady hand on the ship of state,
Queen Eleni, who championed diplomacy
and contacts with the wider Christian world.
It was under Zara Yaqob that Ethiopia sent delegates
to the Council of Florence, another to Rome,
and what's now Spain,
a policy she continued after his death.
Made the Dowager-Empress,
filling the role of the new emperor's murdered mother,
she was really more of a co-emperor.
She had specific policies
like looser rule of the Muslim vassal states
and she signed a temporary peace treaty with Adal.
She served her husband's son until his death 10 years later.
And after that, well, it gets a bit convoluted here,
so stay with me.
First, she got forced out by the next emperor,
led a palace coup that deposed and executed that guy,
got rid of that guy's infant son,
installed Zara Yaqob's grandson
and ran the state as he fought wars,
getting himself killed by the Adal, of course,
then served as regent
until Zara Yaqob's great grandson came of age.
Yeah, it was a lot.
And by that point, she was creeping into old age,
yet still pushing her diplomatic agenda.
It was her policy that brought the first
Portuguese missionaries to Ethiopia, a gambit she undertook
because she knew the empire needed military allies
because the Adal Sultanate was bringing in the big guns,
both literally and figuratively.
Ottoman Emperor Selim the Grim captured Egypt
and wanting to wholly control the Red Sea
backed Adal against Ethiopia.
Thus, it increasingly looked like the heirs of Zara Yaqob
couldn't hold what their ancestor had taken.
And when Eleni finally passed away in the 1520s,
Ethiopia was on the cusp of war.
In 1529, the Adal launched a new campaign
and marched in with major Ottoman support.
In the first battle,
they defeated a much larger Ethiopian force,
particularly by fielding Ottoman-supplied muskets.
Gun powder weapons had never been seen in Ethiopia before
and imperial units often ran
from the very noise of cannon fire.
Then during a 1531 battle,
an Adal ambush came so close to capturing the emperor
that major items of his clothing and jewels were lost,
along with much of Southern Ethiopia.
They moved further into the Ethiopian core,
taking Axum and destroying the church
where the Ark of the Covenant was claimed to be kept.
By 1541, the empire of Ethiopia was no more than a kingdom,
a quarter of the size that it was at its greatest extent
and likely to topple in the next campaigning season.
But that's when Queen Eleni's policies bore fruit.
Adal was winning because it had a powerful ally at its back
providing arms and troops.
Ethiopia needed the same, so it called for aid.
On July 20th, 1541,
400 soldiers marched into contested Ethiopian territory,
muskets slung over their shoulders.
They were the soldiers of Portugal,
currently at war with the Ottomans,
and their arrival would tip the balance and kill a king.
Now, history has shown us again and again
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