Emperor Iyasu II

Berhan Sagad Iyasu was born on the twenty-first of October 1723 at Gondar, the son of Emperor Bakaffa (placed in this archive) and Empress Mentewab (placed in this archive) of the Qwaran Solomonic line. He was raised at the imperial court of Gondar under the protection of his Qwaran mother.

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 and the Qwesqwam complex founded by his mother.

He was acclaimed Emperor at seven on the eighth of September 1730 at Gondar at the death of his father Bakaffa — under the regency of his mother Empress Mentewab — and was crowned at the Cathedral of Aksum.

He ruled the Gondarine Empire under the principal regency of his mother across the long minority of the 1730s and 1740s — at the principal Qwaran ascendancy of the eighteenth-century Solomonic imperial period.

He assumed personal authority of the imperial state in 1745 — at the conclusion of the principal Qwaran-Solomonic regency settlement.

He patronised the principal expansion of the Qwesqwam imperial complex across the 1740s — adding the principal Qwesqwam palace, the principal Qwesqwam library, and the principal Qwesqwam stables — at the principal Qwaran-Solomonic imperial residence north of the original Fasil Ghebbi compound.

He extended the principal Gondarine school of religious painting at the imperial library of Gondar — including the principal Mariological frescoes of the Qwesqwam imperial chapel and the manuscript illuminations of the Iyasu II Gospel of 1747.

He led the principal Wollo and Sennar campaigns of 1744 and 1747 — at the principal Gondarine-Sennar frontier wars of the mid-eighteenth century.

He married a Wollo Oromo princess Wubit of the Yejju line in 1748 — at the principal Solomonic-Wollo dynastic alliance of the mid-eighteenth century.

He died at Gondar on the twenty-seventh of June 1755 of complications of a long illness, at thirty-one.

He is honored here as the principal Qwaran patron of the Gondarine arts.