Beyte Yisrael

The Beta Israel, whose name means house of Israel in Ge'ez, later called Falasha by Christian neighbours, are the Jewish community of the Ethiopian highlands around the Semien Mountains and Lake Tana. Long cut off from world Jewry, they kept Haymanot, a Judaism without the Talmud, speaking Agaw dialects.

In the mid-tenth century Queen Gudit of Semien overthrew Aksum's kings and sacked the city. The Solomonic restoration of 1270 under Yekuno Amlak opened centuries of warfare: Amda Seyon I campaigned in Semien in 1329, and in 1445 Zara Yaqob married a daughter of their king Gideon.

Under Susenyos in the early seventeenth century, Jesuits backed forced conversion and conquest of the last strongholds; Fasilides, who expelled the Jesuits in 1632, settled many near Gondar as weavers and smiths. From the mid-eighteenth century the era of the princes isolated them further.