Bakaffa

Bakaffa (Ge'ez: በካፋ) birth name: Missah; throne name Aṣma Giyorgis (Ge'ez: ዐፅመ ጊዮርጊስ), later Masih Sagad (Ge'ez: መሲሕ ሰገድ) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 18 May 1721 to 19 September 1730, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty. He was a son of Emperor Iyasu I and brother to Emperors Tekle Haymanot I and Dawit III.

==Sources== thumb|Castle of Aṣma Giyorgis,Bakaffa James Bruce describes Aṣma Giyorgis, Bakaffa as faced with the increasing enfeeblement of the Ethiopian Empire as well as growing intrigue and conspiracies. To respond to these challenges, writes Bruce, Bakaffa was "silent, secret, and unfathomable in his designs, surrounded by soldiers who were his own slaves, and by new men of his own creation." In writing his account of this Emperor's reign, Bruce claims that at the time of his writing no Royal Chronicle of his reign existed, because it "would have been a very dangerous book to have been kept in Bacuffa's time; and, accordingly, no person chose ever to run that risk; and the king's particular behaviour afterwards had still the further effect, that nobody would supply this deficiency after his death, a general belief prevailing in Abyssinia that he is alive to this day, and will appear again in all his terrors." As a result, Bruce's account of Bakaffa's reign consists of a collection of impressionistic vignettes of selected events—his travels through Ethiopia in disguise, his feigned death, his first meetings with people who were to play an important role during his rule—which support this portrait.