Gaki Sherocho

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gaki Sherocho (died 1919) was the last king of the kingdom of Kaffa (6 April 1890 - 10 September 1897) in what is now Ethiopia.

In January 1897, Emperor Menelik II sent out three armies under the leadership of Ras Walda Giyorgis (who was appointed ahead of time governor of Kaffa), Dejazmach Demissew Nassibu, and Dejazmach Tessema Nadew to conquer Kaffa. King Abba Jifar II of Jimma supported the Ethiopian forces with his own troops. Ras Walda Giyorgis attacked Gaki Sherocho's kingdom from Konto to the southeast, which was not as strongly fortified as the Jimma-Kaffa boundary along the Gojeb River.[1]

Upon the fall of his capital Anderaccha, Gaki Sherocho fled into the wilderness of his kingdom, where he was able to elude capture for nine months. Chris Proutky claims that he was able to do this because he was "loved by his people"; Bahru Zewdu, on the other hand, describes him as despotic and states that this quality led to his downfall.[2]

Captured 11 September, Gaki Sherocho was brought in silver chains (forged out of silver looted from his own treasury) to Addis Ababa, where he lived in captivity for the rest of his life.[3] Werner Lange writes that the former kind died at Ankober, perhaps from poisoning.[4]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bahru Zewdu, A History of Modern Ethiopia, second edition (London: James Currey, 1991), pp. 65f.
  2. ^ Proutky, Empress Taytu and Menilek II: Ethiopia 1883-1910 (Trenton: The Red Sea Press, 1986), p. 204. ISBN 0932415113
  3. ^ Bahru Zewdu, p. 66.
  4. ^ Lange, History of the Southern Gonga (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982), p. 215.
 This Ethiopian biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../g/a/k/Gaki_Sherocho_eb64.html"