Mikael Sehul (Tigrigna "Mikael the Astute"; his name at birth was Blatta Mikael; c.1690 - 1780) was a Ras or governor of Tigray. He was a major political figure from the reign of Emperor Iyasu II, and his successors until almost the time of his death.
He first enters history as having a part in some of the difficulties that the experienced by the deligation sent to Cairo to obtain a new Abuna for the Empire in 1745. On their outbound trip, the party had been held up at Massawa by the local Naib for six months, and only released them after they gave him half of their funds. On the return trip, Abuna Yohannes was held for ransom at Arqiqo until the abbot of the monastery of Debre Bizan helped him to escape. This affront was too serious to be overlooked, then Dejazmach Mikael was subjected to a punitive campaign by the Emperor. However Dejazmach Mikael remained too powerful, and he was soon forgiven.1
Early in the reign of Iyasus's successor Iyoas I, Dejazmach Mikael found himself the beneficiary of two dynastic ties to the Imperial house: Empress Mentewab married him to her daughter Aster, and Mikael's son, Wolde Hayawrat, was married to another daughter of the Empress. It was at this time that he was granted the title of Ras.2
Ras Mikael intervened in the Ethiopian Church, and was a champion of the Karva Haymanot doctrine.3
He was offended by the behavior of his superior Ras Anda Haymanot during a hunting expedition, and returned to Adowa which he fortified, and rebelled from Anda Haymanot. Eventually Ras Mikael fought, captured then executed his one-time master in 1759.4 Adowa was located at a strategic point on the trade route between Massawa and Gondar, and from the fees and duties he extracted he was able to recruit an army of 8000 men and arm them with muskets.
Upon the death of Iyasu II, his son Iyoas took the throne and rivalry exploded between the mother of the late Emperor, and and his widow. Empress Mentewab and been crowned co-ruler when her then underage son had succeeded her husband. Now that her son was gone, she believed that she was entitled to remain as co-ruler. However, Iyasu's widow, Welete Bersabe (known as Wubit), strongly believed that it was her turn to take the leading role at the court of her son Iyoas as her mother-in-law had done during the previous reign. The young Emperor took the side of his mother against his grandmother. Empress Mentewab gathered her relatives from her native Qwara and their forces flooded into Gondar to support her claims. When news of the arrival of the Qwaran troops arrived, Welete Bersabe also summoned her relatives from Yejju, and throngs of Oromo soldiers arrived from that district to uphold her claims. The city of Gondar was swamped by these two tense armies, and a bloodbath seemed imminent.
To resolve the faceoff, Empress Mentewab looked to her son-in-law Ras Mikael to intervene. Mikael Sehul arrived with an army of 26,000 promising to mediate the dispute between the two queens and their followers. He took control of the capital city of Gondar and assumed an increasingly dominant role. Emperor Iyoas became alarmed, and after secretly intreguing with Fasil ordered the Ras to return to Tigray. Ras Mikael Sehul disobeyed, and defeated Fasil's army. He returned to Gondar and demanded an assembly of the nobility before whom he announced that he had proof that the Emperor Iyoas had plotted to have him killed while he was off defending his throne for him.
The assembly was presented with testimony, and agreed that it was a grievous crime, deserving of death, but that as a monarch could not be killed, they merely confined the Emperor to his palace. Mikael Sehul then ordered the Emperor killed. As it was considered wrong to pierce the heir of Solomon with a spear, or cut him with a sword, or to strike him with bullets, Mikael Sehul ordered the Emperor strangled with a length of silk in imperial red in January 1769. The death of the Emperor put both dowager queens, Empress Mentewab and Welete Bersabe, in a distraught state. Mentewab removed herself from all political activity and secluded herself at her palace at Qusquam where she buried her grandsone with much pomp and grandure.
Ras Mikael then apointed the next two Emperors: Yohannes II, who proved to be a nonentity and was quickly gotten rid of, then Tekle Haymanot II. Despite his power over the throne, the populace rebelled; Ras Mikael responded with a reign of terror over Gondar (1770), but failed to control the countryside where the armies of Fasil, Goshu of Amhara, and Wand Bewossen of Begemder allied to fight him. The parties met at Sarbakusa, where Ras Mikael was finally defeated, and finally surrendered to Wand Bawasan on 4 June, 1771. Wand Bawasan imprisoned Mikael Sehul for a year, then either sent him back to Tigray to live out his last years as governor of that province, or Ras Mikael voluntarily retired to that province.5
Notes
- The misadventures of the delegation is described in the Royal Chronicle of Iyasus II's reign, translated in Richard R.K. Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Royal Chronicles (Oxford: Addis Ababa, 1967), pp. 125-9. It is J. Spencer Trimingham (Islam in Ethiopia [Oxford: University Press, 1952), p. 105) who states that Ras Mikael was held responsible and punished.
- Pankhurst, Royal Chronicles pp. 133f, and Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 121.
- Mordechai Abir, The era of the princes: the challenge of Islam and the re-unification of the Christian empire, 1769-1855 (London: Longmans, 1968), p.40.
- Richard R.K. Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), p. 194.
- This narrative is based on Richard R.K. Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia (London: Lalibella House, 1961), pp. 88f, with details drawn from Harold G. Marcus, A History of Ethiopia (Berkeley: University Press, 1994), pp. 46f and 51f.