Garima, Alef, Saham, Afe, Likanos, Adimata and Oz or Guba. During this time the Negus extended his power mightily. Invited by the Roman Emperor, he crossed the Red Sea in the 6th century, defeated the Jewish Himyarite king in Arabia and established his Government in the Haḏramaut and Yaman. But the Persians soon came and drove out the Ethiopians, so that before the end of the 6th century thay had lost their possessions in Arabia. The "Year of the Elephant,"[1] famous in Moslem history, was an incident of the Abyssinian war in Arabia. The year of the Elephant is 570 or 571 — the year of Mohammed's birth.[2] In that year an Abyssinian Christian general, whom the Arabs call Abrahatu-lAshram, marched on Mecca with an army and elephants, threatening to destroy the Ka'ba. But he was defeated and his army was destroyed in some unknown manner, concerning which the Koran has a story of signs and wonders.[3]
We do not know how, nor at what moment, the Abyssinian Church turned Monophysite. But that it should do so was almost inevitable. We have seen that Monophysism became the national religion of Egypt. Especially Upper Egypt, with which Abyssinia was in nearest contact, was solidly Monophysite. There seems no doubt that the "Nine Saints" were Monophysites. Naturally the Coptic monks who came to Abyssinia would tell the people their version of the story; how the Roman Emperor was reviving the heresy of Nestorius, undoing the work of Ephesus and trying to force Nestorius's heresy on Egypt, how the lawful Patriarch Dioscor had been maltreated at Chalcedon, how the true Egyptian Christians were being persecuted by Greek Melkites. Naturally, too, the Ethiopians believed all that their instructors said. So the Copts easily dragged their daughter-Church into heresy with them. Ever since the Copts have been Monophysites the Abyssinians have shared their heresy, agreeing with the
- ↑ 'ām al-fīl.
- ↑ Sprenger calculates the date of the Prophet's birth as April 20, 571 (Das Leben u. die Lehre des Mohammad, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1869, vol. i. p. 138).
- ↑ Sūrah 105 (Sūratu-lfīl). The legend here told is one of the paradoxes of the Koran. The Abyssinians were Christians, and their religion, according to Mohammed, was at that time the right one. They were about to destroy the Ka'ba, then a pagan temple. Yet God interferes and works miracles to save the pagan Ka'ba from Christians.
