King of Kings: The Triumph and Tragedy of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

By Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Peter Lewis and Thomas Pakenham

Haile Selassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was as brilliant as he was formidable. An early proponent of African unity and independence who claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon, he fought with the Allies against the Axis powers during World War II and was a messianic figure for the Jamaican Rastafarians. But the final years of his empire saw turmoil and revolution, and he was ultimately overthrown and assassinated in a communist coup.

Written by Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Haile Selassie’s grandnephew, this is the first major biography of this final “king of kings.” Asserate, who spent his childhood and adolescence in Ethiopia before fleeing the revolution of 1974, knew Selassie personally and gained intimate insights into life at the imperial court. Introducing him as a reformer and an autocrat whose personal history—with all of its upheavals, promises, and horrors—reflects in many ways the history of the twentieth century itself, Asserate uses his own experiences and painstaking research in family and public archives to achieve a colorful and even-handed portrait of the emperor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910376195

Book preview

book.

CHAPTER ONE

A childhood in Harar

1892 to 1910

Even nowadays, only narrow tracks lead from the shining white city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia, close to the border with Somalia, up into the mountains to the small town of Egersa Goro. It was there, a good fifty kilometres from the provincial capital, that Ras Makonnen Wolde-Mikael Gudissa, governor of the province of Harar from the 1880s onwards, had a villa built. Its veranda afforded a marvellous view over the fertile valleys of the region. Every year in May, when it began to get oppressive and humid within the precincts of Harar and the likelihood of a typhoid outbreak increased, Ras Makonnen and his entourage would decamp to his villa in Egersa Goro to spend the rainy season there. And so it was in May 1892. On this occasion, as always, he was accompanied by his wife Princess Yeshimebet Ali Gonshor, to whom he was utterly devoted. She was the daughter of a nobleman from Wollo and was widely renowned for her beauty. Prior to this relationship, Ras Makonnen had been married once before, and this union resulted in the birth of a son named Yilma. But in 1876 he left his first wife for the beautiful young princess from Wollo; his marriage to Princess Yeshimebet was what may genuinely be termed a love match.

Even so, a shadow lay over the marriage. The princess had become pregnant no fewer than nine times, yet all the children were either stillborn, or died soon after being born. In the spring of 1892, the Princess was expecting another child. And when, on 23 July 1892, in Egersa Goro, she duly gave birth to a healthy boy, the household’s joy was unconfined. He was baptized in the name of Haile Selassie.¹ No one could have suspected then that the radiant new mother Yeshimebet would die two years later giving birth to a second child.

At that time, the province of Harar, with the eponymous white city at its centre, one of the oldest centres of Islam in East Africa, had shortly before become part of the Ethiopian Empire once more. At the beginning of the 16th century, the notorious Imam Ahmed Gran ‘the Left-handed’, who had proclaimed a jihad against the Christian Empire of Ethiopia, then proceeded, step by step, to bring the Abyssinian heartland under his sway, including Harar.² For three hundred years thereafter, Harar was a Muslim city-state. Its city ramparts, over three kilometres in length, protected the city from foreign invaders. One of the first Europeans to penetrate its defensive walls, in 1854, was the British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Then, from 1875 onwards, Harar was under Egyptian rule for a decade until, in January 1887, Negus Menelik of Shoa – the later Emperor Menelik II – and his forces took control of the city. His commander-in-chief was Ras Makonnen, who was also his cousin, and in gratitude for his military achievements, Menelik named him governor of Harar province. The region is particularly fertile and to the present day remains one of the principal places where coffee is grown. Within an Ethiopian state that boasted a diversity of different peoples, the population of Harar was particularly heterogeneous, with the capital alive with a multitude of ethnicities and languages. But above all, Harar – together with the national capital Addis Ababa – was Ethiopia’s gateway to the world. The city became an important marketplace for caravans, attracting large numbers of merchants. In addition, there were delegations from the colonial powers of France, Great Britain and Italy, whose territories bordered directly on Harar province. And finally, in the very heart of this predominantly Muslim region with its many prominent mosques, the Roman Catholic Capuchin mission also decided to base itself in Harar after the monks had been expelled from Addis Ababa during the reign of Emperor

Reviews for King of Kings

[Jordan Abu · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It was a super fascinating review of an end or era not known to many of us here in the West. If you're looking for an in-depth understanding of the personal world and politics of this almost mythical figure, you'll be in for a treat.