There is a tradition that in the tenth century the Jews obtained ascendency in Ethiopia, and preserved their supremacy for about three centuries. “In the year 960 the Jews, supported by their king and by his daughter Judith, a woman of great beauty, resolved to attempt the subversion of the Christian religion and the destruction of the race of Solomon (Queen Maqueda’s descendants having been converted to the Alexandrian doctrines). They surprised the mountain of Damo, the residence of the Christian princes, the whole of whom, about four hundred, were massacred, excepting one infant, who escaped into the powerful and loyal province of Shoa. A solitary representative of the blood of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was thus preserved. Judith took possession of the throne, and not only enjoyed it herself for forty years, but transmitted it to five of her posterity. On the death of the last of these the crown descended to one of his relations, a Christian, and is said to have remained in his family (who, though Christians, were not of the line of Solomon) for five generations. Finally, Tekla Haimanot, the famous saint, persuaded the reigning king to restore the crown to the house of Solomon, whose descendants had survived in Shoa.”[193]
Differing accounts of the former political status of the Hebrews in the land have been given by various writers; Stern said that in their “mountain fastnesses of Simien and Bellesa they maintained, under their own kings and queens, called Gideon and Judith, a chequered and independent existence till the beginning of the seventeenth century.”[194] Harris, following Bruce more closely, wrote, “Christianity became the national religion of Abyssinia in the beginning of the fourth century. The Falashas, descendants of the Jews who were believed to have accompanied Menelek from Jerusalem, had meanwhile waxed extremely powerful, and refusing to abandon the faith of their forefathers, they now declared independence. Electing a sovereign of their own creed, they took possession of the almost impregnable mountain fastnesses of Simien, where their numbers were augmented by continual accessions from the Jews who were expelled from Palestine and from Arabia. Under the constant titles of Gideon and Judith, a succession of kings and queens held a limited sway until, in the middle of the tenth century,” the Princess Esther brought about the revolution which Bruce ascribed to Judith—one writer probably using the name and the other the title of the usurper in question. Whatever the circumstances may really have been, there seems reason to believe that the Jews were at one time sufficiently influential to impose a dynasty of their choice upon the nation.
Stern has given a full and very interesting account of the Falashas whom he saw. According to this they dwell as a rule, though not invariably, apart from the remainder of the population, and “their settlements are strikingly distinguished from the Christian villages by the red earthen pot on the apex of their mesquid, or place of worship, which towers from the centre of the thatched huts by which it is environed. . . . Husbandry and a few simple trades—such as smiths, potters, and weavers—constitute the sole occupations in which they engage; commerce they unanimously repudiate as incompatible with their Mosaic Creed, and it is quite a disappointment not to find a single merchant among a quarter of a million of people, the lineal descendants of those who are supposed to have acquired a taste for traffic and riches on the very eve of their emancipation from Egyptian servitude.”
Though they had very few copies of the Scriptures in Stern’s time they were well acquainted with the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch and the Psalms. “Their sacrifices,” he wrote, “are most capriciously offered, and with the exception of the Paschal Lamb, neither the offering on the Sabbath nor on the day of atonement is in accordance with the original command. . . . Every Falasha settlement has a hut at its outskirts, and there the unclean and impure must take refuge during the prescribed number of days. This ritual scrupulosity involves many social hardships and inflicts on numbers many a keen pang. Particularly in the hour of dissolution, when the sweet expressions of friendship and love are so soothing to the agonized soul and anguished frame, the dying Falasha has no affectionate hand clasped in his, and no words of comfort from beloved objects whispered in his ears. The inflexible law forbids the last offices to the weeping relative, and the helpless sufferer is in death’s agonizing convulsions dragged from the weary couch into the open air, where the polluted and unclean remove him from the bare ground to the tainted and lonely hut.”
On the Sabbath “the service, which consists in chanting psalms and hymns relieved by allegorical stories and a few verses or a chapter of the book of Leviticus, lasts a considerable time, and in some places the plaintive notes of the worshippers may even be heard across the quiet valley and around the lonely hill throughout the night. . . . Broad phylacteries and the garments of fringes are utterly unknown among them, nor do they wash the cup or practise any of the decrees of the rabbins. . . . About the advent of the Messiah they have no intelligent or definite idea. ‘We believe that Jerusalem will again be rebuilt,’ is the answer on the lip of every Falasha, when questioned as to the future destiny of his nation. This event they regard as the consummation of their brightest hopes—the realization of their fondest mundane visions. . . .”
Asceticism, borrowed from the Christian hermits, has become a practice among the Falasha priests, who “after their initiation frequently pass months and years in swampy marshes, stern wilds and poisonous jungles, where roots or dried peas, which latter they carry with them, are their only means of subsistence. Numbers succumb to the noxious influence of the atmosphere, others perish of famine, whilst not a few become the prey of the lion, hyena, and other voracious beasts which inhabit those unsightly tracts.” There are also Falasha monks, and “the dwellings and convents of these ascetics are carefully isolated from the abodes of the impure and unholy people.”
There were, in Stern’s day, three Falasha high-priests in Abyssinia, one in the province of Quara, the other in Armatgioho, and the third, Aboo Maharee, in Dembea. The missionary had some indecisive discussion with the last-named, a man about sixty years of age, “of a noble and commanding figure, swathed in a white shama, and holding a long bamboo staff, which in the distance looked like the crosier of a bishop.” He had a “high and expressive forehead, melancholy restless eyes, and a countenance once no doubt mild and pleasing, but to which self-imposed penances and a repulsive practice had imparted an expression most strange and unearthly.”
“The common people have all an erect, upright carriage;” the women are intelligent and sympathiques, and the younger of them attractive. To judge by Stern’s description,[195] the Falashas are generally a worthy, simple and devout race, bigoted but “exemplary in their morals, and cleanly in their habits”—in which latter respect they form a striking contrast to their co-religionists in the slums of London. Plowden said of the Abyssinian Jews, “They are still found in some numbers, and, though despised, are not persecuted; this may be owing to their poverty. They know nothing of the Hebrew tongue, but some read the Mosaic books in Geez, and are as scrupulous in their ceremonials as their brethren elsewhere. They are the best masons in the country.”[196]
“The mesquids, like the Christian churches, consist of three divisions, with an entrance towards the east. The admission into these different courts is rigorously regulated by Levitical law, and the severest penalty would be inflicted on any one who should incautiously pollute the sacred edifice. In the rear of every place of worship is a small enclosure with a huge stone in the centre; and on this crude altar the victim is slaughtered, and all other sacrificial rites performed.”[197]
For a notice of a curious superstition of which a class of Jewish people are often the object among Christian Abyssinians, see [p. 288.]