© UNESCO/Jasmina Šopova
Walking Man.

The Royal City of Gondar was founded by the Ethiopian Negus Fasilides in the 17th century. Several of his successors built their palaces in the same court, forming a complex of rare beauty. The site was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979. Not far away, the ruins of a more ancient castle left in solitude have another story to tell.

An elongated figure appears against the horizon. A man is walking barefooted. He would resemble a Giacometti sculpture (Swiss), if it weren’t for the tree he is carrying over his shoulder. Dead and forked, the tree’s branches are twisted as if they were in pain. Its white trunk contrasts sharply against the man’s dark skin. The man does not stop to catch his breath, moving so quickly that one has to run to keep up with him. Where is he off to in such a hurry, with a tree taller than he?

We are on the high plateau of Dankez in northeast Ethiopia, not far from Gondar, the beautiful imperial city founded by King Fasilides in 1632.

Dankez is a three-hour journey from Gondar. By car, one sets out over 40 km of paved road, then 30 km of dirt road , followed by 8 km or so of big yellow stones. By then, the vehicle can only crawl along until finally forced to stop near a tree in the middle of nowhere. This marks the start of a long hike by foot, first passing through an immense stretch of pasture land with vivid colours, then through a village with houses scattered around (one of which surely belongs to the walking man) and finally through a vast wasteland dominated by a butte. Here, at an altitude of 2,700 m, the contours of the two ruins stand out in the vista set upon a lush green platform, surrounded by an endless chain of mountains.

Curiosity quickens the pace. In front of what was once a lavish royal castle, a farmer works his land. The plough, pulled by two oxen, moves back and forth placidly. Three age periods are intertwined in an instant.

This was the castle of Susenyos, Ethiopian Negus who fought fiercely to seize the throne in 1607, only coming to regret it bitterly, no doubt, some 20 years later. “He ended up with his tongue hanging down to his feet,” says Aseged Tesfaye, a young man with a degree in tourism management, well versed in the official and unofficial stories from the region. “God punished him for abandoning his faith, when for 1,300 years the Ethiopian kings had all been orthodox,” he continues.

Aided in his rise to power by the wily Pedro Paez, head of the Jesuit mission implanted in Ethiopia 40 years before, Susenyos converted to Catholicism to gain Portugal’s support to fight the Muslims. A century had passed by since Ahmad al Ghazi, sultan of Harare in the southeast, had launched his holy war. The specter of the sultan, nicknamed Ahmad Gragne – the Left-handed – still haunts hundreds of piles of rubble throughout the country.

But revolts proliferated against the new hated church, according to “A General History of Africa” (volume V, UNESCO Publishing, 1999). The beloved king, who had brought peace to his country, now had to subdue his subjects with bloody wars. He was finally forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Fasilides.

“After the last massacre in 1632, the Catholic church near the castle, where 60 Ethiopians were studying theology, was abandoned. Soon after, Fasilides settled in Gondar,” explains Aseged. The castle and church of the king with the protruding tongue have fallen into oblivion. Wild grass, bushes and trees grow where he once reigned.

Why did Fasilides choose Gondar? Because one day, when King Galawadewos was fiercely resisting the troops of the dreaded Ahmad the Left-Handed, a monk said to him, “Find a town that begins with the word ‘go’. When you find it, you will proclaim it the capital of your kingdom.” After Gojam, Gouzara and Gorgora, came Gondar. And Dankez? “Dankez is also called Gomenge,” declares Aseged, with a triumphant smile.

When Fasilides had his palace built in this town protected by a high range of mountains, he probably never suspected that eight of his successors would reside in the same compound for another 100 years. Each added his own palace, rivaling the others in beauty. “That’s what makes the seven-hectare complex unique in the world,” says site specialist Getnet. It was added to the World Heritage List in 1979.

After pointing out the Portuguese and Indian influences on the architecture of Fasilides’s palace, Getnet explains to me how the building was badly damaged by a 1704 earthquake, looted by the dervishes of the Sudanese Mahdi in the 19th century, and bombed by the British in 1941 because Mussolini’s top army officers were headquartered there. “But the bad repairs done by the Italians during the occupation caused as much damage as the bombing. We had to close it to the public for 11 years during a new UNESCO restoration. It reopened a little more than three years ago. You can imagine the deplorable state its ceiling was in when you see the Bacaffa palace today,” says Getnet, before showing me the home of the last king to reign in this citadel, from 1721 to 1730.

Nicknamed “The Merciless”, Bacaffa nonetheless comes off as a bon vivant when one sees how much space he devoted to his festivities: his reception hall is as large as the rest of the palace! Bacaffa is remembered mostly because he fell in love with a commoner, a young woman he supposedly met while traveling incognito around his kingdom. As Queen Mentaweb (“How beautiful you are”), the woman governed the country with a firm hand as regent when her husband died. Theexceptional beauty of this woman can be admired in a mural found in the very middle of Lake Tana, the largest in Ethiopia (see “The intangible treasures of Lake Tana”). It is thought to be the only portrait of the queen done in her lifetime.

Mentaweb’s palace in Gondar has been transformed today into a culture and handicrafts centre. Aschalew Worku Tassew, chief of the culture and tourism department, expresses pride: “With the help of the World Bank, more than 130 people have been trained for different jobs. There are now seven handicraft associations, headed by a federation. They have begun to export their products to Frankfurt, Germany. This work is bringing in average monthly revenues of 3,000 birr (about 250 euros) per person.”

Looking calm and serious, Tassew also talks about the numerous restorations completed or underway at Gondar. But his expression darkens when he mentions Dankez: “The condition of the ruins is alarming. At this rate, the Castle of Susenyos will be lost in two years. A team of Spanish archeologists recently produced a report that can be used for future restoration. We need international aid.”

If nothing is done, nature could overcome stone and erase forever the vestiges of a fascinating chapter in Ethiopian history. And the verses inspired by Gondar in the 1930s, by the French writer and ethnologist Michel Leiris will echo all the more poignantly in the devastated landscape:

“Huts of straw and stones,
Among ruins falling away in pieces
For days on end,
I was in love with an Abyssinian woman,
Bright as straw,
Cold as stone,
Her voice, so pure, twisted my arms and legs.
At the sight of her,
My head cracked,
And my heart crumbled.
It too
Like a ruin.”

Jasmina Šopova

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Photo 2 : © UNESCO/Jasmina Šopova
Fasilides Palace.

Photo 3 : © UNESCO/Jasmina Šopova
Centre for Arts and Crafts at Queen Mentaweb’s Palace.