Nezahualcoyotl (tlatoani)

Nezahualcoyotl (Classical Nahuatl: Nezahualcoyōtl [nesawalˈkojoːtɬ], modern Nahuatl pronunciation^ⓘ), "Fasting Coyote" (April 28, 1402 – June 4, 1472) was a scholar, philosopher (tlamatini), warrior, architect, poet and ruler (tlatoani) of the city-state of Texcoco in pre-Columbian Mexico. Unlike other high-profile Mexican figures from the century preceding the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Nezahualcoyotl was not fully Mexica; his father's people were the Acolhua, another Nahuan people settled in the eastern part of the Valley of Mexico, on the coast of Lake Texcoco. His mother, however, was the sister of Chimalpopoca, the Mexica king of Tenochtitlan.

Nezahualcoyotl is best remembered for his poetry, his exceptional intelligence, his Hamlet-like biography as a dethroned prince with a victorious return (which led to the fall of Azcapotzalco and the rise of the Aztec Triple Alliance), and for leading important infrastructure projects, both in Texcoco and Tenochtitlan. According to accounts by his descendants and biographers, Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl and Juan Bautista Pomar, he had an experience of an "Unknown, Unknowable Lord of All" and subsequently built an entirely empty temple to this God, in which no blood sacrifices of any kind were permitted, while allowing the standard sacrifices to continue elsewhere.