Emperor Bakaffa

Masih Sagad Bakaffa was born about 1690 at the imperial court at Gondar, the son of Emperor Iyasu I (placed in this archive) and Woizero Kedeste Krestos. He was raised at the imperial court of Gondar across the succession crises of the early eighteenth century.

He received the classical Ge'ez and Amharic literary education of the Solomonic princes at the imperial library of Gondar — under the monastic clergy of the Debre Birhan Selassie Church.

He was imprisoned at the Wehni amba prison-mountain at the accession of his half-brother Tekle Haymanot I in 1706 — under the principal Solomonic succession convention of the period that confined royal princes to the amba prison-mountains. He was released at the death of his nephew Emperor Dawit III on the eighteenth of May 1721.

He was acclaimed Emperor on the eighteenth of May 1721 at Gondar at the death of Dawit III and the conclusion of the imperial council of the Solomonic nobility — and crowned at the Cathedral of Aksum.

He travelled widely through the provinces of the empire under disguise in his early reign — the practice for which he was named Bakaffa, 'the inexorable' — to inspect the conditions of the imperial subjects and the corruption of the imperial officials.

He consolidated imperial authority over the Gondarine nobility at the principal Battle of Cherecher in 1723 against the rebellious Gojjami nobility — and restored the imperial fiscal authority over the provinces of the empire.

He commissioned at Gondar the principal Bakaffa palace addition to the Fasil Ghebbi compound — the Bakaffa palace and banquet hall — which remain at this day the principal surviving Bakaffa-period monuments of the Gondarine architectural tradition.

He married Empress Mentewab (placed in this archive) of the Qwaran line in 1723 — and consolidated the principal Qwaran-Solomonic dynastic alliance of the eighteenth-century Gondarine period.

He died at Gondar on the eighth of September 1730 of complications of a long illness, at approximately forty.

He is honored here as the restorer of the imperial fisc of the Gondarine period.