27/07/2026
Remembering HIH Crown Prince Asfaw-Wossen Haile Selassie on his Birthday today.
110 years ago today in 1916, Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen Haile Selassie (later Emperor-in-exile Amha Selassie I) was born to his parents, the then Dejazmatch Tafari Makonnen and Woizero Menen Asfaw (later Emperor Haile Selassie I and Empress Menen) in the walled city of Harrar. He was the Emperor’s third child and eldest son.
He was born at a time that his father Dejazmatch Tafari’s and the then in-crowned Emperor-designate Lij Iyasu’s relationship had reached a final breakdown. Lij Iyasu and Dej. Tafari were second cousins, while Woizero Menen was also Lij Iyasu’s niece. Lij Iyasu had stripped Dej. Tafari of his governorship of Harrar, and arrived in the city just after Woizero Menen had given birth to her son, the then Lij Asfaw Wossen. Lij Iyasu callously ordered his niece to immediately vacate the Governors Palace for him to take residence while she was still in her birthing bed. Kegnazmatch (later Leul Ras) Imiru wrote in his autobiography that he had to plead with Lij Iyasu to give Woizero Menen time to recover and for the baby to be baptized (40 days after birth). Lij Iyasu relented, but then Woizero Menen got wind of a plan he had come up with to compel her to divorce her husband and marry one of his allies. So shortly after her baby was baptized, with the help of Kegnazmatch Imiru she snuck out of Harrar with her children disguised as a Somali woman and boarded the train at Dire Dawa and rejoined her husband. In September of that year during Meskel celebrations, Lij Iyasu was deposed by the nobility and Empress Zewditu assumed the throne with the now Leul Ras Tafari Makonnen as Crown Prince and Regent.
Prince Asfaw Wossen became Crown Prince of Ethiopia in 1930 when his father was crowned as Emperor Haile Selassie. Shortly thereafter he married Princess Wolete Israel Seyoum, daughter of Leul Ras Seyoum Mengesha of Tigray and a great-granddaughter of Emperor Yohannes IV. They would become the parents of Princess Idjigayehu Asfaw Wossen. The Prince and Princess separated in 1937 while in exile and divorced in 1941. Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen subsequently re-married. His second wife was Princess Medferiashwork Abebe, daughter of the Addisge nobleman Dejazmatch Abebe Damtew, and Woizero Wosenyelesh Mengesha, and granddaughter of Ras Bitwoded Mengesha Atikem, a veteran of Adwa, ruler of Damot and Agew Midr, as well as sometime regent of Gojjam. By Princess Medferiashwork Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen had three more daughters and a son, Princesses Mariam Sena, Sifrashbizu and Sehin, and Prince Zera Yacob.
Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen served as governor of Wollo with the title of Merid Azmatch which was revived for him. He also served briefly as Governor of Beghemidir (Gondar), and temporarily as Governor of Tigray. He was widely regarded as being politically more liberal than his father and much of the nobility, and was widely believed to hold the view that the crown should move towards a more ceremonial role. He of course never issued a public statement to that effect while Crown Prince. Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen suffered a debilitating stroke in 1973 and was rushed to Switzerland for treatment. He was there with his wife and children when revolution broke out in Ethiopia. They would eventually move to London.
The Crown Prince had been proclaimed Emperor briefly by the failed Imperial coup leaders in December 1960. He was again proclaimed “King” (not Emperor) by the Derg in September 1974 when they deposed his father, but he never acknowledged the proclamation. At the time he was being treated in Switzerland after suffering a major stroke a year earlier. He issued a strong denunciation of the massacre of Imperial officials in November of that year, and the Derg formally abolished the monarchy in March 1975.
Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen was proclaimed Emperor-in-Exile in London in April 1989. He took his baptismal name of Amha Selassie as his reigning name as his father had done before him. He stated that his intention was to restore the monarchy, but as a ceremonial Constitutional Monarchy under a parliamentary democracy. He established the Moa Anbessa monarchist movement and reinstituted the Crown Council in exile. While acknowledging that a federal system might be of benefit for Ethiopia he rejected an ethnic basis and advocated keeping the historic regions as the units of the Federation. He also issued a statement urging the continued union of Ethiopia and Eritrea, perhaps under a new federal arrangement. The refusal of the EPRDF to accord the remains of Emperor Haile Selassie a state funeral caused tense relations between the Imperial family and the EPRDF, and the postponement of the funeral, and the return of the Imperial family to Ethiopia.
Emperor-in-exile Amha Selassie I had moved to the suburbs of Washington DC where there was a larger Ethiopian community and it was there that he passed away in February 1997. His body was brought back to Ethiopia and he was the first member of the Ethiopian Imperial family to be given a funeral inside Ethiopia after the revolution.
May his memory be eternal.
✍🏾 by Solomon Kibriye
