Amda-Syon Ier king d' Éthiopie under the name of Gabra Masqal Ier of (1314 - 1344). He is the son of Ouédem-Arad.

The first times of the reign of Amda-Syon are marked by difficulties with the monastic communities which reproach to the king for having taken the wives of his father Ouédem-Arad, according to a tradition of use. Amda-Syon must make mine be subjected to the excommunications launched against him by Abba Honorios, but takes later pretext of a charge of heresy to make whip this monk on the public place and temporarily banish the monks of the Debra-Libanos of Choa. But it will quickly express the zeal of its predecessors as regards pious foundations. The convents of Kévraân and Galila-Zakarias are established in the islands of the Lac Tanned. Abba Samuel institutes hermitages in the valley of Takazzé, in Ouoldebba. The convent of Debra-Damo is essential like the greatest center of monastic study after the disgrace of the convent of Ham, in 1320.

In 1320, Amda-Syon, whose wife is suzerain of Bihat, represses the revolt of Yabika-Egzi in the Tigré, helped by the monastery of Debra-Libanos de Ham.

The sultans Mamelouks of Egypt started again the persecution of the Coptes, of which they destroy the churches. The king of Ethiopia counteracts by summoning them to restore the ruined churches, if not he threatens to divert the course of the the Nile and to exert reprisals on the Moslems passing in his kingdom (1325). Its embassy returns from the Cairo without to have obtained anything, and the sultan of Ifat Haqq-ED-DIN attacks the Christian territories, burns the churches and constrained the faithful ones to apostasier. An envoy of the king is massacred. Amda-Syon reacts, and in 1328, it conquers Ifat and the Fatajar. It puts them under the authority of a brother of the overcome sultan, Sabr-ED-DIN, but this last is combined against him with the Hadya, the Daouaro and the Agao judaïsés of the North of the lake Tana. Amda-Syon precedes united, Hadya devastation, Fatajar and Daouaro and establishes on the unit another brother of the overcome sultans, Gamal ED-DIN (1335). It will have to cut down two other coalitions before being solved to destroy the capital of Ifat, with its mosques.

Amda-Syon inaugurates the fact of locking up all the princes of blood in “the mountain of the Kings”, a difficult monastery of access where they are devoted to the religious, literary and musical studies. They do not have the right to communicate with outside, which avoids the plots and the factions. When a négus dies, its successor is selected among them.

Ethiopia is then a mosaic of strongholds (a Moslem author, Maqrizi, speak about ninety kings submitted to the Emperor) and does not have, except the Holy City of Aksoum and the royal residence of Tégoulet, of precise political center. But the institutions and the religion develop. Under Amda-Syon are written the first elements of the Serata-Mangest, the Ordinance of the kingdom , defining the loads of the Court and the hierarchy, and one composes the first popular songs in the honor of the king, signs of his prestige. The well-read men revise the biblical translations of the age axoumite, and several manuscripts on parchment, decorated with miniatures, reached us ( Evangéliaire of Debra-Maryam in the Striped one, that given by king Saïfa-Arad to the convent of Cousquam of Egypt, another coming from the Lac Haïk containing an act gone back to 1350…)

His/her son Saïfa-Arad succeeded to him.