Abbreviations

AOrLatin

Archives de l’Orient latin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1881–4)

BSOAS

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

DBMNT

Database for Medieval Nubian Texts, available at http://www.dbmnt.uw.edu.pl/

EA

Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, eds. S. Uhlig and A. Bausi, 5 vols. (Wiesbaden, 2003–14)

FHN

Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, eds. T. Eide, T. Hägg, R. H. Pierce, and L. Török, 4 vols. (Bergen, 1994–2000)

Golubovich, Biblioteca

G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografia della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente, first series, 5 vols. (Florence, 1906–27)

HPEC

History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, Known as the History of the Holy Church, by Sawirus ibn al-Mukaffaʿ, Bishop of al-Asmunin, eds. various authors, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1943–74)

IJAHS

International Journal of African Historical Studies

JAH

Journal of African History

JAOS

Journal of the American Oriental Society

JASR

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

JES

Journal of Ethiopian Studies

JLA

Journal of Late Antiquity

JMH

Journal of Medieval History

JOAS

Journal of Oriental and African Studies

JRAS

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

JSS

Journal of Semitic Studies

JWH

Journal of World History

MGH Auct. Ant.

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi, 15 vols. (Berlin, 1877–1919)

MGH Dt. Chron.

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Deutsche Chroniken, 6 vols. (Hannover/ Leipzig, 1895–9)

MGH SrG ns

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series, 24 vols. (Berlin/Hannover, 1922–2009)

MGH SS

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 39 vols. (Hannover, 1826–2009)

MGH SS RGUS

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatism editi, 78+ vols. (Hannover, 1871–)

OSCN

G. Vantini, Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia (Heidelberg, 1975)

PG

Patrologia Graecae, ed. J.-P. Migne, 162 vols. (Paris, 1857–86)

PL

Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–91)

RHC Doc. Arm.

Recueil Historiens des Croisades: Documents arméniens, 2 vols. (Paris, 1869–1906)

RHC HOr

Recueil Historiens des Croisades: Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–95)

RHC HOcc

Recueil Historiens des Croisades: Historiens orientaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1872–1906)

RHC Lois

Recueil Historiens des Croisades: Lois, 2 vols. (Paris, 1841–3)

RIE

E. Bernand, A. J. Drewes, R., Schneider, M., Kropp, and H. Stroomer, eds., Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite, 3 vols. in 4 parts (Paris and Wiesbaden, 1991–2019)

RRH

Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani (1097–1291), ed. R. Röhricht (Innsbruck, 1904)

RSE

Rassegna di Studi Etiopici

TCAMAPS

Travaux du Centre d’archéologie méditerranéenne de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences

A Note to the Reader – Defining Nubia and Ethiopia

The geo-cultural region of Nubia stretched from the first cataract of the Nile up to at least 300 km beyond the region of modern Khartoum, covering more than 1,200 km north to south as the crow flies. The extent of its western boundary is currently unknown, whilst its eastern boundary, at least for some periods, appears to have reached up to the Red Sea.¹ The rulers of Nubia held the title of ourou or basileu[s] (ⲟⲩⲣⲟⲩ/ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲉⲩ). The toponym Nubia is used in this work to provide consistency for the international context, but politically, there was no single Sudanese Christian kingdom called ‘Nubia’. Since the Christianisation of the kingdoms of Nobadia, Makuria, and Alwa in the sixth century by Byzantine missionaries, a continuous Christian power is known to have existed in the region until at least the late fifteenth century, when its last ourou is documented, if not into the sixteenth century. Giovanni Ruffini has shown that from the first half of the twelfth century at the latest, if not during the eleventh century, the Nubian kingdoms of Makuria (which had annexed Nobadia in the early eighth century) and Alwa united under a singular toponym of the Kingdom of Dotawo (ⲇⲱⲧⲁⲩⲟ) in Old Nubian sources.² However, as far as external commentators were concerned, Dotawo was not adopted as an international toponym. Muslim sources continued to separately reference Makuria and Alwa, under the overarching toponym of al-Nūba (النوبة) – in addition to al-Marīs, which roughly coincided with the region of Nobadia in Lower Nubia – whilst Latin Christian sources only refer to the kingdom as Nubia. They show no awareness of the toponym of Dotawo or any further geographical or political specificity that it may have had. Thus, it is unknown what exactly the Latin Christians understood as Nubia, whether it was synonymous with Dotawo or was representative of a vaguer political or cultural regional construct. Therefore, Nubian-Latin Christian relations is the term which best reflects the Nubia documented by numerous source corpora. Employing a more specific descriptor of Dotawan-Latin Christian relations, for example, might otherwise overstate the reality of sometimes imagined Nubian-Latin Christian relations by Latin Christians or the Muslims of Egypt in place of the extent of the actual direct involvement of Dotawo.

Demarcating clear geographical boundaries for Ethiopia for the period in question is more problematic; indeed, Ethiopia’s geography continually shifted. A Christian kingdom had been present in Ethiopia since ʾAksum’s conversion in the fourth century – largely centred in the modern northern Ethiopian regions of Amhara and Tigray and modern Eritrea – until the disestablishment of the Solomonic dynasty in 1974 within the more recognisable borders of modern Ethiopia. For most, if not all, of the crusading period, the Ethiopian post-ʾAksumite kingdom of Bǝg^wǝna was ruled by the so-called Zag^we dynasty until the arrival of the Solomonic dynasty in 1270, who claimed legitimacy and descent from Ethiopia’s ʾAksumite predecessors. The most common title for Ethiopian rulers was nǝguś (ንጉሠ), but rulers could also be addressed by the titles ḥaṣe/ḥaḍe or aṣe, which are most commonly translated as ‘your majesty’. What the Latin Christians came to know as ‘Abyssinia’ from the twelfth century largely centred on the region of Lasta in north-central Ethiopia, east of Lake Tana. This lasted until the first major period of Solomonic Ethiopian expansion beyond the historical northern heartlands of ʾAksum and Bǝg^wǝna, undertaken by aṣe ʿÄmdä Ṣǝyon during the first half of the fourteenth century.³

The kingdom of Ethiopia did not identify as ‘Ethiopia’ until the arrival of the Solomonids. Neither was Ethiopia the kingdom commonly referred to as Ethiopia in Latin Christian texts. Instead, the concept of Christian ‘Ethiopia’, or the comparable Kush, the latter of which was employed by Nubians themselves, centred overwhelmingly on Nubia until the fourteenth century by external commentators. Pre-Christian discourses, which remained prominent in the works of many post-classical and medieval Latin and Greek writers, located ‘Ethiopia’ anywhere from West Africa, East Africa, or India, depending on context. As will be discussed in Chapter 1, the rare examples of the ʾAksumite use of the Greek Aithiopia (Αιθιοπία) cannot be said to have been used as endonyms akin to the fourteenth-century Ethiopian emergence of ʾItyoṗya (ኢትዮጵያ), whilst the ʾAksumite non-biblical references to Kush (Kāsū, ካሱ) clearly demarcate Nubia. The need to carefully distinguish between Ethiopias is integral to understanding the antecedents and motivations behind the increasing Latin Christian desire to engage with regions across Africa from the fifteenth century. Henceforth, Ethiopia (unquoted) will be used in relation to the kingdom of Ethiopia for consistency, whereas ‘Ethiopia’ (quoted) will refer always to either Nubia or regional north-east Africa depending on the given context unless otherwise stated. By doing so, this current study will highlight the oft-ignored role of Nubia in the history of the Crusades and Ethiopian-Latin Christian interaction.

Notes

1. For background, see D. A. Welsby, Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia: Pagans, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Nile (London, 2002) and G. R. Ruffini, Medieval Nubia: A Social and Economic History (New York, 2012).

2. G. R. Ruffini, ‘Newer Light on the Kingdom of Dotawo’, in Qasr Ibrim, Between Egypt and Africa: Studies in Cultural Exchange (Nino Symposium, Leiden, 11–12 December 2009), eds. J. van der Vliet and J. L. Hagen (Leuven, 2013), pp. 179–91.

3. For background, see Sergew Hable Sellassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270 (Addis Ababa, 1972); Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (Oxford, 1972); M.-L. Derat, L’énigme d’une dynastie sainte et usurpatrice dans le royaume chrétien d’Éthiopie du XI^e au XIII^e siècle (Turnhout, 2018); M.-L. Derat, Le domaine des rois éthiopiens (1270–1527): Espace, pouvoir et monachisme (Paris, 2003); S. Kelly, ed., A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea (Leiden, 2020).