[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I was born as Lij Tafari Makonnen on July 23, 1892, in the town of Ejarsa Gora in the Harage Province, some 18 miles outside the city of Harar, Ethiopia. Lij Tafari was given the religious name, Haile Selassie. He was the son of Ras Makonnen, Governor of Harar under his kinsman, Emperor Menelik II. Ras Makonnen, a Shoa Amharan noble, was married to an Oromo, Yashimabet, who died two years after Lij Tafari’s birth.1

 

His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I, wearing the sash of the Order of Solomon's Seal. The top star on his tunic is also the Order of Solomon's Seal, beneath which are stars of the US Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit (left), Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Trinity (centre right), and the Order of Emperor Menelik II (below).
Click on the image for an enlargement.

In a significant break with precedence, Lij Tafari Makonnen was raised with an understanding of world affairs, and with an exposure to the outside world. He was to become the first Emperor of Ethiopia to have traveled extensively abroad.
Ras Makonnen, and therefore Lij Tafari Makonnen, were directly of the Solomonic Line, as was Emperor Menelik himself and Tafari Makonnen’s great-great grandfather, Negus Sahela Selassie, of Shoa. King Sahela (Sahle) Selassie had already made treaties with foreign states, including Queen Victoria’s Britain.
Lij Tafari Makonnen was, unusually for the period, brought up with both a strong education in Shoan Amharic traditions and in Western history, languages and statecraft. He was named Dejazmatch — literally “keeper of the door”; the equivalent of the title of Count in Western terms — for part of Harage province at the age of 13, in 1904, only about a year before his father’s death.
The governorship of Harar, and the army which went with it, went to another — Tafari’s half-brother, Yelma — when Ras Makonnen died, and Lij Tafari Makonnen was named to the lesser governorship of Selale. But, because of palace politics, he was forced even to administer this governorship from the confines of Emperor Menelik’s palace in Addis Ababa, where he learned first hand the art of political manoeuvre. Emperor Menelik, one of Lij Tafari’s supporters, suffered a severe stroke in 1908, and Tafari was “exiled” to the southern frontier area where he served as governor of Sidamo province. There, however, he had an army of 3,000.
Emperor Menelik had, the year before, designated his 12-year-old grandson, Lij Iyasu, as his heir. Emperor Menelik’s wife, Empress Taitu, promoted the interests of Zauditu, her daughter. At this point, however, Yelma died and the governorship of Harar again became vacant. So in 1910, with the loyalty of the various armies (including Harar) and princes, Tafari, with the Shoa Amharan nobility, was able to insist that Empress Taitu devote her energies to nursing the ailing Emperor, with day-to-day management of the Empire handled by Ras Tasamma as Regent. Ras Tasamma was one of the most powerful rases, commanding an extensive army of his own; he had been the traditional advisor-guardian to Lij Iyasu.
But Tasamma died in 1911, and Lij Iyasu began a determined bid for the throne. Emperor Menelik died in 1913, but Iyasu still could not be crowned: his apparent conversion to Islam, the religion into which his father was born, discredited him in the eyes of the monophysite Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Shoan nobles. In 1916, they confirmed Zauditu as Empress and the 25-year-old Ras Tafari as “Supreme Regent and Heir Apparent (Crown Prince)”. He was to remain Regent for the next 13 years, a period during which — as de facto ruler of Ethiopia — he began the transformation of Ethiopia into a modern state, in the international sense.
Lij Iyasu attempted during this period to press his claim to the Throne and was arrested in 1921, and died 12 years later.
Empress Zauditu had, in response to the growing power and popularity of the Regent and Crown Prince, crowned Ras Tafari as Negus (king) on September 7, 1928 (Meskarem 27, 1921, in the Ethiopian calendar). It was the first occasion that an Emperor (or ruling Empress) had granted the title of Negus in the Ethiopian context; previously the title Negus had been used only by the kings of the constituent states of Ethiopia (such as the Negus of Shoa, etc.).
Empress Zauditu, herself resentful of the growing popularity of the Regent, in 1930 “sent her husband’s sizable army against Tafari’s forces, but the army was immediately crushed and her husband killed”. 2But on April 2, two days after Negus Tafari’s victory against her husband, Empress Zauditu died.
As Regent and Negus, Ras Tafari had undertaken the modernization of Ethiopia on a significant scale, bringing the country into the League of Nations in 1923 (the application had been lodged in 1919), abolishing slavery (in 1923, the trigger to admission into the League of Nations), creating schools and universities, and generally began the development of a modern national infrastructure.
The sudden death of Empress Zauditu led to the coronation of Negus Tafari as Emperor on November 2, 1930 (Tekent 23, 1922, in the Ethiopian calendar), and his elevation to the highest Throne — for which he adopted the Throne name Haile Selassie I — was the cause for a further consolidation of his programme of reforms.
He founded the Bank of Ethiopia in 1931, and encouraged the creation of newspapers.
Throughout this period, however, there were mounting tensions with Italy, which had occupied Eritrea from the 1890s. This flared into open conflict in September 1935, although the League of Nations exonerated both states. This gave confidence to Italian leader Benito Mussolini, who ordered a full invasion of Ethiopia. This time, still conscious of their defeat at the hands of Menelik’s army in the 1896 Battle of Adwa, only 40 years before, the Italians pushed forward with massive resources and an extensive use of chemical weapons. By May 2, 1936, Emperor Haile Selassie was forced into exile and in June he went before the League of Nations in Geneva to call international attention to the plight of Ethiopia.
It was this speech which both drew Ethiopia to the center-stage of world politics for the first time and at the same time highlighted the impotence of the League of Nations. But World War II was to prove Italy’s undoing in Ethiopia and elsewhere. When Italy joined the Axis powers in June 1940, Britain began working with Haile Selassie to remove the Italian forces from Ethiopia. The Emperor moved to the Sudan, with his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen (later Emperor Amha Selassie I), to coordinate action between his own troops and those of the British. And with an Army of British, South African, Ethiopian and other African forces, Emperor Haile Selassie re-entered Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941. Fighting, however, continued on Ethiopian soil until January 1942.
With the end of World War II, the Emperor brought Ethiopia into the United Nations as a founding member, and greatly expanded the country’s diplomatic relations. Domestically, he established a new, central judiciary, and ensured that the new, post-war Government was filled with educated ministers with more specific powers. The new judiciary had the task of appointing its own judges, removing them from the hint of political preference.
By 1955, Haile Selassie was ready to introduce the new national Constitution. It was created through a consensus of input from an Ethiopian educated class which had never before been seen in the country and which was, to a great extent, created by the international exposure many Ethiopians had received because of the war.

__________________

[Rob Instigator]

Last night I watched History Detectives on PBS and they were reseraching an old Airstream Trailer that was purporteed (erroneously) to be part of a grou[p of air stream trailers that vtravlled from south africa to egypt in 1959. (Capetown to cairo)

They showed pictures of the caravan in Ethiopia and showed Emperor Selassie visiting some of the caravan members in their Airstream trailers.

 

 

this is the inventor of the airstream visiting with the Emperor.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

HIM Haile Selassie Coronation November 2, 1930

the Lion of Judah documentary of the Emperor
Complete Lion of Judah

Haile Selassie and Pope Kyrlos of Alexandria

Silve Jubilee Celebrations 1955

Jahnoy visits the Tewahedo Orthodox Churches in Trinidad and Tobagos

[Rob Instigator]

I want to go visit LALIBELA

whole churches carved out of solid rock.

 

 

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

 

 

 

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I want to go visit LALIBELA

whole churches carved out of solid rock.

 

 

Rob, I must say you are by far the most diverse and well informed of the folks on this board. Truly, God bless you in all that you are, for your heart is true, and His Majesty is true, and God is true, and truth is truth, and truth is love, and love is eternal. Peace and love to you.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

18 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and he said:
"Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? 19 And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign LORD, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign LORD ? 20 "What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign LORD. 21 For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.
22 "How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. 23 And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? [c] 24 You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, O LORD, have become their God.
25 "And now, LORD God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised, 26 so that your name will be great forever. Then men will say, 'The LORD Almighty is God over Israel!' And the house of your servant David will be established before you.
27 "O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, 'I will build a house for you.' So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer. 28 O Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. 29 Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever in your sight; for you, O Sovereign LORD, have spoken, and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed forever."



and in Jeremiah

17 For this is what the LORD says: 'David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, 18 nor will the priests, who are Levites, ever fail to have a man to stand before me continually to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to present sacrifices.' " 19 The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: 20 "This is what the LORD says: 'If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, 21 then my covenant with David my servant—and my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me—can be broken and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne. 22 I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.' "




and in the Psalms it is sung:

17 May his name endure forever;
may it continue as long as the sun.
All nations will be blessed through him,
and they will call him blessed.

and the Prophet Isaiah spoke

Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David. 4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander of the peoples.
5 Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations that do not know you will hasten to you,
because of the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor."

[This Is Not Here]

Can people have birthdays after they're dead? I think not.

[This Is Not Here]

SuchFreindsAreDangerous, do you actually beleive anyone reads these massive *copy and paste* posts.

[mangajunky]

Originally Posted by This Is Not Here

SuchFreindsAreDangerous, do you actually beleive anyone reads these massive *copy and paste* posts.

actually...I frequently do.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by This Is Not Here

SuchFreindsAreDangerous, do you actually beleive anyone reads these massive *copy and paste* posts.

its not my business to decide who reads what when. I just post for the Emperor's birthday. it is yr business to watch the clips or not. and yes, many folks I am sure do watch the video clips and read the small above. and if they dont, they dont, its no trouble to me.

[Rob Instigator]

I read 'em
but I LOOOOVE to read.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by mangajunky

actually...I frequently do.

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I read 'em
but I LOOOOVE to read.

"take that take that..."

 

[This Is Not Here]

Well I'm willing to learn, but on a forum I come on for some degree of entertainment I just don't want to have to read all of that. I would be far more engaged if you summed up your appreciation of this guy briefly, in your own words. So, becuase I do actually want to refresh my memory on this guy - who is Halie Selassie and what does he represent to you? - in five sentances... Fire!

[Crumb's Crunchy Delights]

Originally Posted by This Is Not Here

Well I'm willing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

cut n paste this next time you want to say something. its how your posts look to me anyway.

[floatingslowly]

Selassie I liveth everytime.

ev'ry knee shall bow and ev'ry tongue shall tell dem...

[o'connor]

one of my best friends in the world's name is john haileselassie brown. his parents are form jamaica. that's kinda relivant right? happy birth day!

[pbradley]

 

[Cantankerous]

happy birthday dude.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

Selassie I liveth everytime.

ev'ry knee shall bow and ev'ry tongue shall tell dem...

Rastafari Selassie I Ieyesus Kiristos!