Ayteyef & Lij Iyasu’s vision: a counter history

“Ayteyef hono yetayal Kemise,  

Fiker yalgebaw sew min yadergal Dessie.”  

You can see Kemise from Ayteyef  

If he knows no love, what business do one have in Dessie 

After being welcomed by the soft trail of frankincense at the gate of the city, and touching the aged Italian balconies of Piassa, their wood warm and cracked with memory.

After seeing the grace and beauty of the people, tasting the fresh water from the highland springs, sweet with a flavour I still cannot name.

After praying Juma at Arab Genda Mosque and hearing my name stretched lovingly with a local suffix of endearment, “ዋ” (wa).

After absorbing Dessie through all of my five senses, I was sure I knew what love is, and it made me fit for the city.

Hence, finally, I went to see Ayteyef.

Once the palace of Ras Mikael, a powerful ruler of Wollo, Ayteyef perches quietly on a hill overlooking Dessie in north-central Ethiopia. And though it rests above, it does not feel distant. Instead, it gently leans toward the houses below, as if saying: “I am one of you.” You can see laundry lines, children playing, roosters crowing just a few steps away from its gates.

Perhaps that is the true meaning behind its name: Ayteyef, which translates as “the one that does not exclude.”

From its balcony, you can see all the way to Kemise, another town in northeastern Ethiopia, 53 km away. And from its soul, it once tried to see all of Ethiopia.

Although I was eager to see inside and even imagined myself walking through its halls, it unfortunately did not happen; the gate was closed. I was told by the soldier standing at the entrance that it is now being used as a camp. “Temporarily,” he added.

Still, I stood there for a while staring at those locked gates and thinking about the history contained behind them. And I couldn’t help but ask myself, haven’t the doors been closed on the value of Ayteyef for too long?  Born Mohammed Ali, Ras Mikael was the last ruler of the Memmadoch Dynasty, a Muslim Oromo dynasty which ruled in Wollo province from the 18th century until its conversion in 1878. This palace belonged to him.

In an empire where power was guarded by religious identity, Ras Mikael was one of those who paid the price and converted to Christianity. He was not merely a figure of compromise; he was a force as well. He commanded armies, advised emperors, and stood as one of the most powerful men of his time in East Africa. 

The ruling houses of Wollo, the dynasty to which Ras Mikael belonged, had long shaped imperial politics. Even before him, leaders such as Ras Ali II had served as kingmakers during the “Zemene Mesafint”, a period from roughly the mid-18th to the mid-19th century, marked by a decentralised state with power fragmented among various regional lords.

Ras Mikael was not the last of his ilk, for he also fathered one of the most controversial and fascinating figures of imperial Ethiopia: Lij Iyasu.

Born to Princess Shewarega, daughter of Menelik II, the emperor who expanded and modernised Ethiopia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Iyasu embodied both the heart and the fringes of the empire. In 1909, Menelik declared him heir. At only thirteen, Iyasu was appointed successor, and although he assumed power after Menelik’s death in 1913, he was never crowned. Almost immediately, Iyasu elevated his father to Negus of Wollo and Tigray in 1914. As Ethiopian historian  Misganaw Tadesse Melaku notes: “The appointment had been sought as a direct implication of the transfer of political power from Shewa to Wollo.”

But this shift alarmed Shewa’s nobility. They saw Iyasu’s rise, and Mikael’s promotion, as a direct threat to their supremacy. Iyasu’s outreach to Muslims, his travels to the Afar and Somali regions, and his court appointments that included marginalised groups were not taken as inclusive statecraft but as betrayal. As Misganaw records: “The justification the Shewan nobility put forward to depose Lij Iyasu was that he had converted to Islam.”

The decisive moment came in 1916, at the Battle of Segale. Ras Mikael marched north with tens of thousands to defend his son’s right, but the Shewan army prevailed. Iyasu’s fate was sealed. He was captured, imprisoned for nearly two decades, and died in 1935 under contested circumstances—some say poisoned, others say worn down by years of isolation. He was buried without ceremony; his memory treated as a danger. “After its defeat at Segale, the socio-political history of Wollo is said to have got worse,” Misganaw continues.

In Erlich’s account, Iyasu’s attempts to bridge divides, his overtures to Muslim communities, and his diplomatic engagement with the Ottomans were reduced to treachery. This interpretation cemented Iyasu’s legacy as a destabilising figure, successfully overshadowing his potential vision of a pluralistic empire.

Iyasu’s character, too, was buried. Figures like Fitawrari Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariam dismissed him as irresponsible and reckless. Later, the influential historian Hagai Erlich reinforced this framing, describing Iyasu’s policies not as inclusive statecraft but as a “conversion to Islam” and a reckless “gamble on the survival of Ethiopian culture and identity.” In Erlich’s account, Iyasu’s attempts to bridge divides, his overtures to Muslim communities, and his diplomatic engagement with the Ottomans were reduced to treachery. This interpretation cemented Iyasu’s legacy as a destabilising figure, successfully overshadowing his potential vision of a pluralistic empire. What could have been a story of inclusion became a story of betrayal.

But Iyasu was not a failed leader; he was blocked. He was not reckless; he was feared. He attempted to bring Ethiopia’s peripheries into the centre, but in doing so, Wollo itself was pushed into the margins. His project was never truly weighed for its possibilities. As Bahru Zewde, one of Ethiopia’s most prominent historians observed, Iyasu represented “the most radical break with the Christian imperial tradition.” That break was never allowed to stand.

Ethiopia has no shortage of historical wounds it mourns. We remember the final day of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala with pride and sorrow. We speak of the execution of the sixty officials during the Derg as a national trauma. Statues, books, and monuments keep these losses alive in public memory.

But the fall of Lij Iyasu’s vision—a vision that tried to pull Ethiopia towards a more honest version of itself—receives no such grand mourning. It is not even remembered with regret.

And yet, had his project succeeded, it might have saved us from some of the deepest contradictions we live with today: the question of religious inclusion, the problem of ethnic belonging, the divide between centre and periphery. He imagined a country where being Muslim, being Afar or Somali or Amhara were not obstacles to power or citizenship. That Ethiopia was refused. And we have spent over a century managing the consequences of that refusal. Still managing.

I walked back down from Ayteyef slowly, with the same steps I had climbed, but something had changed. I had come with love, full of affection for a city that had welcomed me through every sense. But now I was descending with a quiet regret. A heaviness. For the palace and the possibilities it once held.

Had it been Ayteyef…

Had that name—“the one who does not exclude”—been more than a memory carved into stone. Ethiopia could have been something else. That vision was once real. It stood on that hill. And though its gates are closed now, the regret remains.