The Agaw Zagwe dynasty takes power in highland Ethiopia, ruling about 130 years from Roha (Lalibela) until the Solomonic dynasty.
The story
Around 1137, according to the usual reckoning, Mara Takla Haymanot took the throne of the Ethiopian highlands and began the Zagwe dynasty. The Zagwe came from the Agaw people of the central highlands. Aksum had faded as a power by about the 900s, and its heirs were weak. The new rulers moved the center of the kingdom south to Roha, later renamed Lalibela after its most famous king.
Zagwe rule is best known for the churches carved from solid rock at Lalibela, traditionally ascribed to King Lalibela in the early 1200s. The dynasty ended in about 1270 when Yekuno Amlak overthrew the last Zagwe ruler and claimed descent from Solomon through the Aksumite kings. Later Solomonic writers portrayed the Zagwe as usurpers. Dates for the dynasty are uncertain, and historians give differing years. Tradition links the design of Lalibela to the idea of a new Jerusalem, and pilgrims from the highlands came there as a substitute for the long journey to the Holy Land.
Why it mattered
The Zagwe kept the Christian highland kingdom alive and linked it to Jerusalem through pilgrimage and church building.
Their rule produced the rock churches of Lalibela, now a World Heritage Site.
Their fall led to the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled Ethiopia into the twentieth century.
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