The Ethiopian king Yekuno Amlak (reigned ca. 1268-1283) restored the Solomonic dynasty to the throne of Ethiopia after it had been held by the Zagwe dynasty for about 300 years.

Almost everything that has been written about Yekuno Amlak pertains to a single, central event in his life: his restoration of the Solomonic dynasty to the Ethiopian throne. The official royal chronicles were begun about this time, but until the next century these chronicles record little more than lists of names and tell us little about Yekuno Amlak's life. Much of what has been written about the restoration of the Solomonic dynasty was in fact written several centuries later and is largely apocryphal.

According to traditions in manuscripts written after the 13th century, the Solomonic kings, whose ancestry was traced back to Solomon and Sheba, had been ousted by a northern dynasty known as the Zagwe about the 10th...