On the southern side of the Bashilo river, where Islam is believed to have had establishment previous to the Ahmad Gragn period, the Muslim and Oromo elements were more pronounced. Known as Amhara in medieval times, the region came to be identified by the name of Wallo, after the most important tribe that had settled in the area. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a dynasty known as the Mammadoch and based at Warra Himanu established its hegemony over the whole region. The name of the dynasty was apparently derived from its founder Muhammad Ali (more popularly known by his ‘horse-name’, Abba Jebo, ‘father of Jebo’, his war-horse). The death of his grandson Abba Jerru Liban in 1825 marked the decline of Mammadoch power, as his descendants began to fight among themselves for supremacy. This state of affairs gradually reduced Wallo to a buffer zone which invited the expansion and interference of its more powerful neighbours.
In Tegre, a term denoting the Marab Melash (‘the land to the north of the Marab river’) and the Red Sea coastal region, as well as present-day Tegray, a strong ruler emerged in the person of Ras Walda-Sellase, at about the beginning of the nineteenth century. By reason of his region’s proximity to the sea, he was the first Ethiopian ruler to come into contact with European travellers of the nineteenth century. With total obliviousness to the Ethiopian reality, the British traveller and artist Henry Salt, who met Walda-Sellase at his capital Antalo in 1805, described him as the ‘Prime Minister’ of Ethiopia. Such a flattering appellation did not move Walda-Sellase into allowing Salt to pass on to the imperial seat in Gondar, which was then controlled by Walda-Sellase’s bitter opponent, Ras Gugsa Marsu.
Some years after the death of Ras Walda-Sellase in 1816, Dajjach Subagadis Waldu of Agame in eastern Tegre established himself as the lord of Tegre, and continued his predecessor’s bid for control of the imperial throne. This led him into a bloody clash with the Yajju lord, Ras Mareyye Gugsa of Bagemder, at the Battle of Dabra Abbay (14 February 1831). Both leaders lost their lives: Mareyye fell in the course of the battle, and Subagadis was executed by Mareyye’s victorious troops. The man who picked up the pieces was Dajjach Webe Hayla-Maryam of Semen, head of another important area of regional power consolidated by his father and predecessor, Dajjach Hayla-Maryam Gabre. The most significant results of the battle were the end of Tegrean autonomy and the extension of Dajjach Webe’s overlordship to that region. By the mid-nineteenth century, Webe had emerged as perhaps the most powerful regional lord of northern Ethiopia. The Battle of Dabra Tabor (7 February 1842) between him and Ras Ali Alula, known as Ali II, the Yajju ruler of Bagemder, was an outcome of Webe’s eventually abortive bid to wrest supreme power from the Yajju princes. This was another strange battle of the Zamana Masafent, in which, as he was celebrating his victory, Webe was captured by Ali II’s vassals.
Two principalities which were to dominate the history of southern Ethiopia in the latter half of the nineteenth century were somewhat peripheral to central politics. They were Gojjam and Shawa. Although both principalities were to have, as their distinctive feature, territorial expansion in neighbouring Oromo lands, Gojjam was not totally unaffected by the imperial politics at Gondar. Its most famous ruler, Dajjach Goshu Zawde, actively engaged in the bid for preeminence among the northern princes. Yet such was the political anarchy of the Zamana Masafent that his power in Gojjam itself was challenged by his own son, Dajjach Berru Goshu, who managed temporarily to defeat his father in late 1841. As the Zamana Masafent comes to its close, we find Dajjach Goshu in a position of vassalage to the Yajju ruler, Ras Ali II, both bent on checking the rise of a new challenger, Kasa Haylu. But, as we shall see, Kasa Haylu, afterwards Tewodros II, defeated Goshu, who died in the Battle of Gur Amba (27 November 1852), and Ali II in the Battle of Ayshal (29 June 1853); the latter victory symbolized the end of Yajju hegemony.
South-east of the Abbay river (the Blue Nile), Shawa was comparatively insulated from the wars and politics of northern Ethiopia. Its successive rulers steadfastly worked towards the strengthening of the principality by conquering the neighbouring Oromo lands. The stability of the region and the relative prosperity of its inhabitants were well attested by European visitors. Yet this is not to say that Shawan rulers were totally unconcerned with developments in the north. Their affiliation to the imperial idea was evident in their concern to show their Solomonic descent. At the same time, this claim encouraged them to regard themselves as central rather than peripheral to the Ethiopian polity. Their titles also demonstrated progressive confidence. They started with the modest one of abeto, and, passing through mar’ed azmach, ended up with the elevated style of negus, or king. This last title was rarely claimed by any of the northern princes.
Yet even the adoption of the title of negus showed an element of restraint. Shadowy as the emperors in Gondar were, they still retained the aura of ‘Solomonic’ legitimacy. The title of negusa nagast, king of kings, thus emperor, was still regarded as their exclusive preserve. The ultimate ambition of regional lords was thus not to crown themselves negusa nagast, but to gain pre-eminence by securing the position of power signified by the title ras bitwaddad, which would enable them to manipulate the legally crowned emperor. It required the audacity of a Kasa Haylu to crown himself negusa nagast. Even then, he had to resort to the legitimizing name of Tewodros – the apocalyptic harbinger of a new and just order. The regional conflicts of the Zamana Masafent thus showed scarcely any centrifugal tendencies. The moves of the regional lords were to dominate the centre, not to go away from it.
This same dialectic of division and unity was manifested in the doctrinal controversies which rent Abyssinian Christian society from the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. The controversy was ignited by Jesuit theology, more specifically the doctrine of the nature of Christ. It was the absence of a unanimous response to the Jesuit doctrinal challenge that gave birth to the diverse doctrines that have continued to baffle students of Ethiopian history. The party which still claimed to espouse the orthodox doctrine preferred to call itself Tawahedo (Union), although its opponents gave it the more pejorative appellation of Karra (Knife). The variations on the orthodox doctrine were known as Qebat (Unction) and Ya Sagga Lej (Son through Grace). The latter was also more popularly known as Sost Ledat (Three Births), in contradistinction to the Hulat Ledat (Two Births) thesis of the Tawahedo.
These doctrinal disputes had a political significance that exceeded their intrinsic value. The various doctrines came to be associated with the different regions, and thus abetted and sharpened the political divisions of the Zamana Masafent. Qebat, for instance, was a distinctively Gojjame doctrine, whereas Karra was associated with Tegre, and Ya Sagga Lej with Gondar. It is also significant that the first major attempt to resolve these differences was made by the same man who tried to forge Ethiopian unity, Tewodros. But final resolution of the doctrinal question had to await the Council of Boru Meda (1878), presided over by Emperor Yohannes IV (r. 1872–1889).
While the nobles fought amongst themselves and the priests engaged in over-refined theological disputes, the social order was sustained by the peasantry, practically the only productive class in society. Through a combination of a long-established plough agriculture and animal husbandry, the peasant supported the whole social edifice. Thanks to a lineage system of land-ownership known as rest, the peasant could claim a plot of land as long as he could trace his descent. But his control over his produce and his labour time was limited by the claims of the nobility, both lay and clerical. A system of surplus appropriation, the gult, gave the nobility rights of collecting tribute, often of an arbitrary nature, from the peasant. Hence the term gabbar (from geber, tribute), often used interchangeably with 14 balagar, peasant. In addition, the peasant had to undertake corvée (forced labour) such as farming, grinding corn, and building houses and fences. This claimed up to one-third of his labour time. One of the nineteenth-century travellers elaborated the theme:
The imposts are numerous, but vary according to the traditionary customs of each village. They [the peasants] pay a certain portion in kind to the Ras, or other great chief, and sometimes a regular tax in money; besides this,