Harbai

Harbai
Reign	13th-century
Predecessor	Mairari
Successor	n/a
Dynasty	Zagwe dynasty

Harbai was a King (negus) of Ethiopia. The Paris Chronicle and a manuscript Pedro Páez and Manuel de Almeida saw at Axum, list him as the last of the Zagwe dynasty.^[1] He is considered the ancestor of the kings of the Ethiopian province of Lasta.

Little is known about his reign, which E.A. Wallis Budge states lasted 20 years.^[2] Budge wrote that Harbai died around 1330; other authorities date his death before 1270, when Yekuno Amlak became ruler. Huntingford assumes that this ruler is a dublet of Kedus Harbe, who is mentioned in the Gadl Lalibela, or the hagiography of king Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, as his brother.^[3]

Notes

1. G.W.B. Huntingford, "'The Wealth of Kings' and the End of the Zāguē Dynasty", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 28 (1965), p. 9
2. E. A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970), p. 284.
3. Huntingford, "'The Wealth of Kings'", p. 10