ABYSSINIA. 269 



pillaged. Nur, content with the recompense of his 

 undertaking, did not care to renew the struggle, and 

 he returned to Adel attired as a private soldier, for- 

 bidding any of the demonstrations which usually 

 greet a victorious soldier, and declaring that the glory 

 of the triumph was due to God alone. 



Since that time the Moors have scarcely ever inter- 

 fered with the Abyssinian empire, and the reigns of 

 the kings of the Solomon dynasty who succeeded 

 Claudius, from 1559 to 1770, were marked by a series 

 of rebellions, of internal struggles, and of wars, many 

 of them unsuccessful, with the Gallas tribes bordering 

 on Abyssinia. 



v. 



Modern and Contemporary Period. 



At the end of the eighteenth century the governors 

 of the principal provinces refused obedience to the 

 monarch descended from Solomon. The princes of 

 that family had lost their authority, and, up to the 

 present time, Abyssinia has been governed by the ras 

 or kings of the two large divisions which form the 

 empire of Abyssinia : Tigre and the Ambara. 



Tigre, with its dependencies, comprises all the region 

 between the Ked Sea and the Tacazze. The Ambara, 

 with its dependent provinces, is formed by the terri- 

 tories between the Tacazze and the Nile. In 1855 an 

 Abyssinian chief, who was merely governor of a 



