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An eighteenth century Ethiopian dynastic marriage contract between Empress Mentewwab of Gondar and Ras Mika'el Sehul of Tegre

The decline of the Gondarine monarchy and the concomitant increase in wealth and power of Tegre province, and of its capital Adwa, led, in the mid-eighteenth century, to a shift in the Ethiopian balance of power. This development, which threatened the then impoverished ruling house of Gondar, and the very continuity of the but weakly centralized State, resulted, as on other such occasions, in a major dynastic alliance between the contending parties. The compact involved two of the most important Ethiopian political figures of the century: Emperor Bakaffa's astute widow Empress Mentewwab, and the first of the great warlords of Tegre, Sehul Mika'el, a rich and powerful chieftain who was soon to emerge as the maker and breaker of kings. Mika'el was by then already well known in the Ethiopian metropolis where, according to the later Scottish traveller James Bruce, he was so ‘lavish in his money’ that ‘all Gondar were his friends’, as a result of which it was ‘plain’ to ‘everybody, that nothing could stop’ his ‘growing fortune’.