Damot

Who rules

Name

Not known for 1 January 1200

Title

King of Damot (the royal title motalami)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Not known. The Motalami of the Christian traditions (thirteenth century) is named only through his mother, Eslandane; the Wolaita tradition makes the famous Motolomi Sato a king of its Malla dynasty (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries).

Confidence

low

Taddesse Tamrat 1972, pp. 121-122, 168 (after the Gadla Takla Haymanot); Wikipedia 'Kingdom of Damot' after Huntingford, Bouanga and Ayenachew.

What the realm holds

• The plateau south of the Abay between the Gafat country and the Muger (drawn as the core)
• The Gafat, within the kingdom (separate province)
• Claims over the peoples of the Gibe basin, where Ennarea is a Damot province in the thirteenth century (not pinned for 1200)
• Raids and tribute claims north-east toward Shewa, as far as the Jamma (thirteenth century)

How it was acquired

Not known. The kingdom may go back to the tenth century; nothing records its founding.

Allies and rivals

Rivals: the Christian communities of Shewa and the Zagwe kings (tradition of Zagwe armies destroyed by Damot); the Muslim sultanate of Shewa, which it later forces to pay tribute; the Christian state of Yekuno Amlak, which in the 1270s allies with Muslim Shewa against Damot (later). Tributaries and dependants (thirteenth century): Ennarea; the forebears of the Walasma of Ifat.

The realm that morning

Not pinned. The kingdom very probably stands south of the Abay on 1 January 1200, but its king, its extent and its wars are not recorded for that date; the raids into Shewa that the hagiography remembers fall a little later, in the first half of the thirteenth century. The Christian kingdom across the Abay (zagwe) holds the highlands from Amhara northward; the Agaw and other peoples of Gojjam lie across the Abay to the north.

Wealth

Gold of the south-west and slaves (Damot, and after it Ennarea, are the great sources of both in the fourteenth-century accounts), cattle, highland farming; the Muslim trade route from Zeila through Shewa reaches it (later evidence).

Military

No figures. Remembered as a military power that destroyed Zagwe armies and raided deep into Shewa; its warriors' arms and organisation are not described for this date.

Threats

• The Christian kingdom to the north, should a strong king cross the Abay
• Revolt of tributary peoples (thirteenth-century record of Ennarea and the Gafat under it)

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. Early thirteenth century, before about 1215First invasion of Christian Shewa by Motalami, reaching the Jamma (the Christian communities of the Shewan plateau nearly destroyed, in the hagiography).Depends on: A strong king in Damot and weak resistance in Shewa. Stopped by: A Christian or Muslim defence of Shewa.
2. About 1240 (when Takla Haymanot is about twenty-five)Second invasion of Shewa; in one version the saint is carried off to Damot and converts the king.Depends on: The first invasion's success. Stopped by: As above.

Places of note

• Maldarede: Capital of Damot in the hagiography of Takla Haymanot (position after Bouanga).

Where the sources disagree

• Location: Damot lay south of the Abay and west of the Muger on most readings (Milkias), with Huntingford extending it east of the Muger to the Jamma; the later province of Damot in southern Gojjam, north of the Abay, takes its name from Damot people displaced in the sixteenth century and should not be read back to 1200.
• Some scholars equate Damot with the later kingdom of Wolaita, whose kings claim descent from Motolomi (Aalen); Taddesse Tamrat has Motalami retreat to Ennarea after defeat by Yekuno Amlak.
• The capital Maldarede is placed by Bouanga (2014) at about 9.38 N, 37.57 E from the hagiography; its position in 1200 is not known.

Evidence: Known from Christian hagiography written down long after the events (the Gadla Takla Haymanot), from Ibn Khaldun and fourteenth-century Ethiopian chronicles; nothing is dated to 1200.

On the map: A rough block for a kingdom whose borders are unknown; it may have reached further south into the Gibe basin and west into Wallagga.

Primary sources for this realm

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