Roha

Who holds it

Name

Gebre Meskel Lalibela

Title

King

Since

Not pinned (about 1181 on the usual reckoning)

Confidence

medium

Lord in 1200

The king's own town: the royal residence of Adafa adjoins it, and the metropolitan's palace stands nearby.

How things stand that morning

Held by the king; the churches are being cut and enlarged.

Charter

None: a royal and church settlement.

Council

No town council: the clergy of the churches and the king's officers. Many courtiers are men of Bugna (Taddesse Tamrat).

Communities

Agaw Christians of Bugna; clergy; the court; the Coptic household of the metropolitan.

Fairs and markets

The great church feasts; Abu al-Makarim reports that the Ark is carried to the king's palace church four times a year (Nativity, Baptism, Easter, the Cross), which here would mean Adafa. No market days recorded for 1200.

Militia

Not recorded.

Walls and castle

No walls. The churches stand in trenches cut into the rock; some of the earliest cut structures may have been defensive (Phillipson).

Trade and crafts

Stone-cutting and church building on a huge scale; the court's demand for cloth, food and labour.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. Through Lalibela's reignContinued cutting of the churches; the priests later told Alvares that the work took 24 years.Depends on: The king's wealth and peace in the kingdom. Stopped by: War, famine or the king's death.

Places of note

• Northern group: Medhane Alem, Maryam, Golgotha-Mikael, Meskel, Danagel: Includes the largest church, Medhane Alem.
• Eastern group: Amanuel, Mercurios, Abba Libanos, Gabriel-Rufael, Lehem: Some first cut as secular buildings (Phillipson).
• Bete Giyorgis: The cross-shaped church to the west.

Where the sources disagree

• The phases and dates of the churches are debated: the king's lifetime (tradition; later local manuscripts say the churches were finished in 1208), several phases from about the tenth to the thirteenth century with a defensive wall of the mid-tenth to twelfth century later cut through (stratigraphic studies of Fauvelle-Aymar, Bosc-Tiesse, Derat), or into the fourteenth century (Buxton). Gervers dates Maryam, Medhane Alem, Abba Libanos and Amanuel to the thirteenth century, treats Danagel, Mercurios, Gabriel-Rufael, Meskel and Lehem as older structures converted then, and puts Golgotha-Debre Sina and Giyorgis in the fourteenth and fifteenth. On the later datings, little of the church programme stands complete on 1 January 1200.

Evidence: Standing monuments with archaeology and later tradition; no inscription dates any church.

Primary sources for Zagwe kingdom

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Glory of the Kings, Yeshaq of Aksum (compiler) (1314 to 1322 in Ge'ez; the colophon claims an Arabic version of 1225). Nothing on events, but the ideology that unmade the Zagwe: the story that Ethiopia's rightful kings descend from Solomon and Menelik, compiled a century after 1200 to justify Yekuno Amlak's seizure of the throne in 1270 and to brand the Zagwe as usurpers. Read online
• History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrij and continuators (Various) (compiled in Arabic 1088 to 1094 from Coptic lives; continued for the patriarchs of 1102 to 1243 and later). The Coptic church's own record. Read online
• The Golden Gospel of Dabra Libanos: Zagwe land grants (the acts were entered on the Gospel's blank leaves from the twelfth century onward; the Zagwe acts date from about 1150 to 1270). The only documents of the Zagwe state: grants of land and rights written into a Gospel book at Dabra Libanos of Ham in Eritrea, in the names of Zagwe kings (Tantawedem, Lalibela with his queen Masqal Kebra, Na'akueto La'ab) and their officers, with lists of estates and titles.
• The History of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Abu al-Makarim (formerly attributed to Abu Salih the Armenian) (about 1177 to 1208; the core about 1200). The one Christian text written in Egypt around 1200 that looks south: it describes the kingdom of the Nubians with its king at Dongola, his churches, the eparch of Nobadia, the churches of Qasr Ibrim and the raid of Shams al-Dawla Turanshah in 1173, the kingdom of Alwa (Alodia) with its 400 churches and its capital Soba, and the Abyssinians with their king, their metropolitan sent from Alexandria, the church of Aksum and the Ark, as a Coptic churchman heard of them through the patriarchate. Read online
• The Life of Lalibela (probably the fifteenth century, from earlier material; the date is disputed). The only narrative about the Zagwe king who reigned in 1200: Lalibela's birth at Roha, the persecution by his brother King Harbay (Harbe), his exile and marriage to Masqal Kebra, his vision of Jerusalem, his accession, the building of the rock churches with angelic help, and his abdication in favour of his nephew Na'akueto La'ab. Read online