surprise and decimate the forces of Za Sellase at Manta Dafar in Begemder; when Za Sellase escaped to Yaqob's camp, the Emperor's derision caused Za Sellase to defect to Susenyos. For several days, the armies of the two rival emperors maneuvered in the mountains of Gojjam, to at last meet in the Battle of Gol 10 March 1607, where Yaqob and the Coptic Archbishop Abuna Petros II were killed in battle, and his troops slaughtered. Issue According to Zaga Christ, Yaqob had married some years before a foreigner named Nazarena, by whom he had three sons, one of whom had died before the Battle of Gol. Nazarena sent her surviving sons to safety in exile: Cosmas, the older, went south and was not heard of again; the younger, Saga Krestos, went to the safety of the Kingdom of Sennar where he was treated well and came of age. When King Rabat proposed that Saga Krestos marry his daughter, Saga Krestos refused, and was forced to flee to another refuge, adopting Roman Catholicism while at Jerusalem. Eventually he found his way to Rome (1632), and eventually to Paris, where he was given lodgings by Cardinal Richelieu. Saga Krestos died of pleurisy in 1638 at the age of 38. Thomas Pakenham provides a brief sketch of Saga Krestos' European life in his The Mountains of Rasselas, and the book ends with a description of Pakenham's visit to Saga Krestos' grave in Rueil-Malmaison. However, O. G. S. Crawford has cast doubts on this story. In an article that discusses the surviving sources for the story of Saga Krestos, he points out a number of problems in his story which include a discrepancy over the possible date of his birth (i.e., Saga Krestos is likely to have been born in either 1610 or 1616, whereas Yaqob died in 1607), and the story of three Ethiopian monks who report that Saga Krestos was an apostate monk who wandered from place to place begging for money. References Partly based on the narrative of E. A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970). The sections about Yaqob and his cousin Za Dengel cover pp. 375–383. |- 1590 births 1607 deaths 16th-century emperors of Ethiopia 17th-century emperors of Ethiopia 16th-century monarchs in Africa 17th-century monarchs in Africa Child monarchs from sub-Saharan Africa Solomonic dynasty Monarchs deposed as children Year