Samuel of Dabra Wagag
Ethiopian saint
Abba Samuel (Ge'ez: አባ ሳሙኤል), or commonly called Samuel of Dabra Wagag (Ge'ez: ሳሙኤል ዘደብረ ወገግ), was an Ethiopian saint living in the latter half of the 14th and the first decades of the 15th century. The source for his life is his hagiography, most accessible in Stanislas Kur's French translation of the Ge'ez original, Actes de Samuel de Dabra Wagag. The original work (Ge'ez: ገድለ ሳሙኤል ዘወገግ Gadla Sāmū'ēl za-Wagag) survives only in two 20th-century manuscripts, both copies of a 16th-century revision of an earlier composition. He founded the monastery Debra Wagag.
Early life and education
Abba Samuel was born in 1350.
Like the parents of many other saints, and reminiscent of the story of Hannah and Elkanah in the opening chapters of the Books of Samuel, Abba Samuel's parents, Andreyas ("Andrew") and Arsonwa, longed for a child, but were almost too old to beget one. After a visit of the saint Tekle Haymanot (a chronological impossibility as Tekle Haymanot had died before Samuel's birth) to the aging couple, Arsonwa became pregnant and gave birth to a son, with the help of a midwife. The child was said to be born with the Holy Communion in his right hand. The saint baptised the child and called him Samuel.
When Samuel was seven (or six) years of age, he was considered old enough to learn, leaving home to live in a monastery with Tekle Haymanot, his teacher and spiritual father.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7413009. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1350.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samuel of Dabra Wagag” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.