Ras Makonnen Welde Mikael

Welde Mikael Gudessa was born on the eighth of May 1852 at the Doba area of the Shewa province, the son of Dejazmach Welde Mikael Wolde Melekot of the Shewan Solomonic line — a cousin of the future Emperor Menelik II through the Sahle Selassie line of Shewa — and Woizero Tenagnework Sahle Selassie, a granddaughter of King Sahle Selassie of Shewa (placed in this archive). He was raised at the Shewan court of his father at Ankober.

He received the classical Ge'ez and Amharic literary education of the Shewan Solomonic nobility under the Shewan monastic clergy at Ankober — and was instructed in the military arts under his father.

He served as the principal military lieutenant of his first cousin Menelik II from the consolidation of the Shewan kingship in the late 1870s — and was named Ras of Harar in 1887 at the Shewan conquest of the Emirate of Harar.

He administered the Province of Harar from 1887 to 1906 — the principal Ethiopian outpost on the eastern frontier with the British Somaliland and the French Côte des Somalis. He modernised the customs of Harar and oversaw the construction of the first railway works of the Imperial Ethiopian Railway from Djibouti to the Awash.

He commanded the principal Ethiopian column at the Battle of Adwa on the first of March 1896 — and led the assault that captured the principal Italian artillery position at Mount Belah. He was the principal Ethiopian battlefield commander of the Adwa engagement.

He was sent on the imperial mission to the courts of Europe in 1902 — and was received at London by King Edward VII, at Paris by President Émile Loubet, and at Rome by King Victor Emmanuel III.

He died at Kulubi in the Harar province on the twenty-first of March 1906 of complications of a long illness, at fifty-three.

He is honored here as the principal commander at Adwa and the father of Haile Selassie I.