1848 to 1931 Mikael Argawi (1848-1931), a Falasha or Ethiopian
Jew, was the first Ethiopian Protestant missionary. Whilst he
was still an infant his mother died in an epidemic. His sorrow-
stricken father became a hermit, leaving Argawi, who was
scarcely three years old, in the care of Johann Martin Flad, a
German missionary who had founded a Protestant mission station
for the conversion of the Falashas at Kobela near Jenda, in the
province of Begemder. Argawi attended the small mission school
and acted first as the personal servant of Mrs. Flad and later
as nursemaid to her children. When the missionaries fell into
disfavor with the Emperor Theodore (1855-1868), who suspected
them of reporting unfavorably on him, Argawi, then still a
youth, remained loyal to them. In 1863 he accompanied Mrs. Flad
and her children, as well as the other missionaries, to Gondar
whither they had been summoned by the Emperor in the absence of
Martin Flad. During the subsequent period of imprisonment of the
Flads and the other miss