Life and Legend of King Lalibela

The Ethiopian city of Roha, today known as Lalibela, owes its last name to the king who ruled the country in the 12th century.

King Lalibela, a member of the Zagwe dynasty, was the mind behind the masterpieces found today in the city. Supposedly, all medieval rock churches were commissioned by King Lalibela.

The events and the life of King Lalibela are wrapped up in legend to the point that it is difficult to separate the real story of his life from the myth.

It is said that at his birth a swarm of bees covered him completely without receiving even a puncture.This fact was interpreted by his mother as an auspicious sign of the future of the child, since, at that time, bees were given the power to predict the future. The future king was thus called Lalibela, which means “bees recognize his power”.

Once he became an adult, Lalibela had to face the court intrigues that led him to embrace a hermit’s life in Orthodox monasteries. Legend has it that the brothers of Lalibela tried to kill him by poisoning him. The future king was in a coma three days and three nights, during which he dreamt that he was transported to heaven where God and the angels asked him to build churches carved in solid rock.

The angelic instructions were that the churches had to be dug under the surface of the ground so that not even a pillar or an arch were visible until the pilgrims arrived near the excavation containing the churches.

The culmination of the holy project would have been a church carved into the rock even larger than the temple of King Solomon whose son, born from the queen of Sheba, Menelik, had been the first ruler of Ethiopia.

Later on in his life, Lalibela made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, crossing the Muslim faith territories. Once he had returned home, Lalibela became king, succeeding his older brother, and took the name of Gabra Masqal or “Servant of the Cross”.

Being in power, King Lalibela dedicated himself to fulfill what the angels had ordered him to do in his dream: Bringing the splendor of Jerusalem to his homeland creating a place of pilgrimage that allowed the Ethiopian faithful to receive the holy blessing as if they had gone to the old Jerusalem, by now conquered by the Muslims in 1187 and too dangerous to reach. Following the angelic instructions of his dream, he had to create a Jerusalem in Ethiopia and thus began the construction of the rock churches and the necessary infrastructures.

Several legends surround the creation of these churches, one of which relates to the time taken to build the sacred sites: men are said to have worked during the day and angels accelerated construction during the night.

As construction advanced, Lalibela began to assign to churches and places the same names that are found in Jerusalem, such as the “Church of Golgotha”, that now contains the alleged tomb of King Lalibela, the “Church of the Holy Sepulcher”, located in the heart of the Lalibela complex, “Yordanos” or “the Jordan River”, a name that was given to the stream that divides the two groups of churches. On one side of the Jordan is the representation of the earthly Jerusalem, while the churches on the opposite side represent the heavenly Jerusalem. A nearby hill he named “Debre Zeit”, which means “Mount of Olive Trees”.

Another myth, that surrounds this sacred place for faithful Orthodox Christians, is linked to the church of St. George; legend has it that the saint was enraged at the king because there was no church dedicated to him and that he directly supervised the work on his “House”.

According to historians the construction was completed at a remarkable pace. They were employed around 23 years, thanks to the work of numerous artisans and sculptors who came from distant lands to give life to the divine project.

In reality, observing the style with which the various churches were carved and sculpted, some historians question the fact that they were built in such a short time; in particular some churches present architectural elements typical of the period of the reign of Axum, that is prior to the period in which the Lalibela kings lived; others say that artisans and sculptors, coming from different places, may have been influenced by different styles.