Description

Haile Selassie I (1892–1975), born Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael, was Ethiopia's regent from 1916 to 1930 and emperor from 1930 to 1974. His reign with an interruption during WWII when Italian forces invaded. During this time the king lived in exile, returning when patriotic Ethiopian forces, with the help of British troops, ousted the Italian army. He was a member of the Solomonic Dynasty. Haile Selassie died on 27 August 1975 at the age of 83, following a coup d'état.

Among the Rastafari movement, whose followers are estimated at between two and four million, Haile Selassie is revered as the returned messiah of the Bible, God incarnate. Beginning in Jamaica in the 1930s, the Rastafari movement perceives Haile Selassie as a messianic figure who will lead a future golden age of eternal peace, righteousness, and prosperity.

The Ethiopian Empire, also known as Abyssinia, was a kingdom that spanned a geographical area in the current state of Ethiopia. It existed from approximately 1137 (establishment of the Zagwe dynasty) until 1974, when the ruling Solomonic dynasty was overthrown in a coup d'état by the Derg.