3

Sources of Knowledge between Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Latin Christians in the Holy Land and Egypt

Knowledge is a product. As with any material commodity, knowledge can be donated, exchanged, traded (with a particular quid pro quo motive), faked, looted, hoarded, and destroyed, all of which offer particular roles for knowledge within a variety of interactions. Historically speaking, one question often arises, particularly regarding long-distance contact: do increased interactions enhance knowledge between groups or does enhanced knowledge lead to increased interactions? In the case of the relationship between Nubian, Ethiopian, and Latin Christian knowledge and interaction it would appear to have been a case of the former. The development of knowledge, which is best attested only in the Latin Christian sources, was the result of both the dissemination and diffusion of knowledge. Importantly for our purposes, the true extent of the corpus of knowledge at any point in history is impossible to assess, not least because the production of knowledge is always framed by each individual author who chooses what to include and what not to. In other words, a surviving corpus of knowledge may only be a microcosm of what was known by an author’s contemporaries and the extent of otherwise undocumented knowledge, particularly in regions which witnessed a greater number and diversity of interactions, may be comparatively vast. Interactions were numerous, yet source survival largely only depicts such exchanges from a Latin Christian point of view. However, interactions should be viewed as having a similar impact on Nubian and Ethiopian knowledge development of Latin Christians as their influences had on Latin Christian knowledge of the Christian Africans despite the almost complete absence of Nubian and Ethiopian contemporary material on the matter. It is the aim of this chapter to assess the role of individuals and arenas of knowledge more broadly which had the ability to act as the hubs of information which informed knowledge development between these groups. Specifically, information which underpinned the foundation for the growing role of Nubia, and to an initial lesser degree Ethiopia, which can be most clearly witnessed in Latin Christian discourse following the First Crusade.

The avenues of knowledge dissemination in the wider eastern Mediterranean were centred on primary, secondary, or tertiary exchanges depending on the degrees of separation from the original knowledge source. A primary knowledge network is defined as one where the recipient received information first-hand, with a secondary network being once or twice removed from the direct source, and a tertiary network being one of news and rumour without any verifiable origin. Rumour, especially, as shown by Torsten Wollina in relation to Mamlūk knowledge, could be a powerful information tool which could supplement, both to stabilise or destabilise, other forms of news or established knowledge.¹ It is not always easy to distinguish between each method of knowledge accumulation, however. To illustrate one example which may be categorised in any of the three networks, I shall point to the early fourteenth-century itinerary of the Irish Franciscan Symon Semeonis. Scholarship has not attributed the use of a Coptic-speaking guide along at least part of his journey, particularly within Egypt. Yet, the use of the toponym of Danubia, which Symon uses for Nubia, suggests the use of an otherwise previously unattributed guide when we consider that Danubia is remarkably similar to Nanouba (ⲛⲁⲛⲟⲩⲃⲁ), one of the Coptic toponyms for Nubia, which could readily be misunderstood by a Latin-speaker as something akin to Danubia.² Only one manuscript survives, which is dated to between c.1335–52, so it may simply be a scribal error, but, as this occurs multiple times, such consistent, seemingly intentional, spelling in the text allows us to posit or reconstruct a plausible network involving a Coptic-speaking guide or informant who informed on this toponym. However, nothing else is said in the text so what exactly a guide who knew at least something of Nubia – whether from primary, secondary, or tertiary experience – told Symon in addition to the toponym is impossible to fully reconstruct. In contrast, the importance of authorial detachment from such networks should be stated, as well as occasions of a reliance on an outdated textual corpus. For instance, Latin Christian knowledge of Nubia and Ethiopia, or indeed Africa more generally, cannot be simplified to quantifying the information found in the surviving contemporary chronicles as these were often removed from experiential connectivity. For example, in 1267, Roger Bacon continued to discuss dragons flying to Ethiopia from Latin Europe and told how dragon meat was used as a remedy for old age in his influential Opus Majus amongst multiple pages of supposed information on ‘Ethiopia’.³ When viewed alongside other contemporary networks of information presented within this book, it is clear that Roger’s text did not represent the forefront of knowledge regarding ‘Ethiopia’ despite its otherwise influential status and his use of contemporary and even archival sources elsewhere in his text. Even alongside an integrated web of potential sources for knowledge, myths remained, whether they were disseminated purposefully via the recycling of classical works or through ignorance. Above all, information was disseminated via various channels, but its oral transmission, which often remained uncodified, is particularly relevant for our purposes here.

For instance, the reconstruction of what can be called ‘communal knowledge’, similarly, emphasises the importance of undocumented knowledge agents within non-textual communities who informed their knowledge corpus.⁴ This communal knowledge was produced via experience, interaction, and observation of groups but which was otherwise only noted by external sources from outside of that community. Only a handful of Latin Christian visitors to the Holy Land, for example, described the tattooing practice of the so-called ‘branding of the cross’ on Nubians and Ethiopians, though it would be safe to assume that all those present would have been aware of this cultural practice, including resident writers who fail to mention this fact. Significantly, this avenue of knowledge dissemination may actually have nurtured many of the most important knowledge developments via what Mark Granovetter called the ‘strength’ of ‘weak’ ties. Simply, the more removed that isolated potential knowledge disseminators are from each other’s regular networks, the greater the diversity of knowledge could be disseminated between themselves at one single moment of exchange and subsequent interactions with each individual’s regular contacts.⁵ The survival and reproduction of non-textual observational knowledge played an equally active role in the information networks regarding Africa as the primary, secondary, and tertiary networks of news and rumour. Certainly, Latin Christians greatly developed their knowledge of the wider region, including of Nubians and Ethiopians, during their occupation of the Crusader States largely as a result of such sustained interaction.⁶ Though we have little comparative evidence, there is no reason to suppose that this was not also true of Nubian and Ethiopian knowledge of the Latin Christians. It is, therefore, the intention of this chapter to offer reconstructions of the sources of knowledge between Nubians, Ethiopians, and Latin Christians, both directly and via other intermediaries.

Recreating a Framework for Undocumented Avenues of Knowledge Regarding Nubia and Ethiopia

Latin Christians were recipients of first-hand, secondary, and tertiary information from a host of sources. The discussion here, particularly regarding routes of non-African knowledge exchange, cannot fully be given justice. Nevertheless, the initial focus of this chapter will highlight examples of such non-Nubian or Ethiopian individuals or groups who wrote or had experience of Nubia(ns) or Ethiopia(ns) and who could have disseminated information before assessing the scope of the Nubian and Ethiopian presence in the wider Mediterranean. For instance, travellers built personalised knowledge corpuses unique to them, much of which remained undocumented and their potential significance unknown. One example can be found in the travels of a man called Masʾūd from Aleppo who accompanied the Egyptian envoy to Dongola on behalf of Tūrānshāh in 1172–3 and whose participation in the delegation was noted by both Abū Šāma (fl. 1240s) and Bar ʿEbrōyō (fl. before 1286).⁷ It would be reasonable to expect that someone like Masʾūd would have travelled through the Crusader States back to Aleppo following his trip to Dongola, illustrating just one avenue for acting as a disseminator of news regarding the brief Egyptian expedition to Nubia to audiences within or neighbouring the Crusader States. Muslim oral traditions relating knowledge of the Egyptian expedition into Nubia in 1172 can be evidenced to have influenced Latin Christian prose texts, such as in the anonymous thirteenth-century Estoires d’Outremer which was likely compiled in north-east France and contributed further to the legend of Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn, as highlighted by Uri Shachar, suggesting that the legacies of disseminated news could also have far-reaching and indirect influence.⁸ The dissemination of information by Syrian individuals, specifically, was explicitly the case in the early sixteenth century when a Syrian man was said to have informed Francisco Álvarez whilst in Ethiopia on the condition of the churches of Nubia from his own first-hand experience.⁹

In order to create a framework for avenues of knowledge diffusion, as well as being carriers of contemporary news, it is also important to highlight what codified knowledge has survived for this period, which could be said to have provided foundational elements of knowledge for certain Eastern communities who interacted with the Latin Christians. Indeed, Jacques of Vitry, the Latin bishop of Acre (wr. completed c. 1224), actively sought to enquire with Greek and Syrian monks about their affairs in the early thirteenth century, including specifically regarding the Jacobites – who he also lists Nubians amongst elsewhere in his text – on one particular occasion, further highlighting how curiosity could be a powerful tool to facilitate knowledge acquisition between groups.¹⁰ Often, the surviving works of contemporary Eastern authors detail Nubia(ns) and Ethiopia(ns) much more than those of the Latin Christians do. Not only did Eastern writers document elements of the histories of Nubia and Ethiopia, but they were also acutely aware of the differences between the Christian groups and the relationship between the African Churches with the Coptic patriarch. For instance, Eutychius of Alexandria (d. 940), the Melkite patriarch of Alexandria, was one near-contemporary author who, despite his incorrect reasoning, did correctly identify the Nubians as Jacobites (Yaʿqūbiyya: يعقوبيه).¹¹ Nubia and Ethiopia’s political and religious relationship with the Coptic patriarch was further commented on by an anonymous text wrongly attributed to the Coptic monk Abū Šākir ibn al-Rāhib (fl. c. 1257–70), despite not giving any great reflection on their varying customs and beliefs, whilst similar remarks of this relationship by others, such as the Greek monk Neilos Doxapatrios, who wrote whilst residing at the Norman court in Sicily, were made earlier in the mid-twelfth century.¹² The absence of any information regarding Nubian and Ethiopian customs and beliefs in the example of the text wrongly attributed to Ibn al-Rāhib does not necessarily reflect a general absence of knowledge of such matters, however. Instead, theological differences were more important to note than cultural or ethnic differences. For example, Paul of Antioch (fl. c. 1180–1200), the Melkite bishop of Sidon, noted the differences between Melkites, Nestorians, Jacobites, and Maronites but made no distinction between the peoples encompassed by these groups.¹³ Paul’s uninterest in distinguishing peoples, rather than theologies, was specifically highlighted by his text’s modern editor, Paul Khoury. Khoury posited that this focus in Paul’s writing helps to explain his silence on Latins and Armenians, both of whom were instead seemingly treated as Melkites and Monophysites, respectively, despite the fact that, as the co-adjutor bishop of Sidon, Paul would have been acutely aware of the differences of the Latin rite to that of other groups and would have had the knowledge to outline them clearly if he had wished.¹⁴

How widespread knowledge – whether geographical, historical, cultural, or theological – was known within wider societies of Eastern groups, particularly beyond monastic communities, to create a universal blanket of knowledge amongst those capable of disseminating relevant information to Latin Christians, or Nubians, or Ethiopians for that matter, is impossible to ascertain. Jewish knowledge is particularly illustrative of this, especially in relation to the Genizah texts which note the affairs of Jewish trading diasporas in the wider Red Sea region and beyond, including conducting trade in the Crusader States, Nubia, and Ethiopia. Yet, this knowledge corpus, which is the most relevant contemporary Jewish corpus for our study, should be best described as experiential knowledge, rather than being representative of knowledge that Jews outside of these networks may have necessarily been able to similarly disseminate.¹⁵ Elsewhere, problematically, even those who were seemingly well informed could confuse matters. For example, the Coptic priest Abū al-Makārim occasionally confused some details between Nubia and Ethiopia, such as ideas regarding their respective kings as he incorrectly claimed that the king (malik) of Makuria (Maqurrah: مقرّة) was an Ethiopian (Ḥabašī: حبشى) in his tract primarily concerned with Ethiopia.¹⁶ Another issue concerns the survival of texts and the function of recording information itself. This is particularly notable in the discrepancy between the interactions of groups and the surviving sources. For instance, Armenians were active in the Red Sea and the north-east African interior, but references to contemporary Nubians or Ethiopians are largely absent in the surviving Armenian corpus, with many notices, instead, being the products of translation rather than observation or being otherwise informed by up-to-date knowledge.¹⁷ This is even more stark when we consider the role of the Armenian prince and ambassador Het̕um of Corycus’ crusade treatise, written in French in 1307, which suggested that the Armenians could act as intermediaries between the Latin Christians and the Nubians.¹⁸ Possible inflated rhetoric aside, Het̕um’s treatise was clearly not restricted by the knowledge that surviving Armenian texts would otherwise lead us to believe regarding the extent of Armenian knowledge of, in this case, Nubia.

Furthermore, there is also suggestive evidence of the existence of Nubian-Syrian Jacobite Christian communication via Syriac. For instance, a Syriac alphabet found at Qasr Ibrim in Lower Nubia in an archaeological context which allows for the possible date of the ostrakon after at least the ninth century on the basis of the presence of paper which was only introduced to Egypt after that century, in addition to a tenth-century reference by Ibn al-Nadīm that some Nubians knew Syriac, suggests an ability to directly communicate with the Jacobite patriarch in Antioch or other Syrian communities, especially when no Syriac texts have been found in Nubia to suggest an alternate explanation for the Nubian knowledge of Syriac, such as being used for translation projects.¹⁹ This equally may have been the case for Ethiopian-Syrian communication too, though evidence for this is even more fragmentary and indirect. For example, the Ethiopian nəguś ʿÄmdä Ṣǝyon (r. 1314–44) had a Syrian secretary from Damascus, who Taddesse Tamrat posited facilitated ʿÄmdä Ṣǝyon’s desires to keep well informed about events in Syria, whilst a wooden altar tablet inscribed in Syriac, which was consecrated by Athanasius, bishop of Ethiopia (ܟܘܫ:Kūš), in 1295/6, has been noted in a church in modern Eritrea.²⁰ Syriac texts were certainly translated into Gəʿəz in late antiquity, though the later Solomonic translations have been stressed by Aaron Butts to have been facilitated by Arabic intermediaries.²¹ Moreover, whilst the arrival of the Ethiopian Thomas who desired to be consecrated as metropolitan of Ethiopia by the Syrian patriarch Ignatius III David some time between 1237–9 or 1241–2 may have been facilitated by communication in Arabic, the later example of the Syrian priest Mūše of Mardin producing Syriac texts for the benefit of the Ethiopian monk Täsfa Ṣǝyon in Rome in 1549 may be indicative of the existence of networks between Ethiopian and Syriac-speaking communities.²²

Many Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians held positions of importance and influence in the Crusader States amidst a relatively integrated society, at least in the major urban centres, who were in a position to provide diverse knowledge. Syrian Jacobite Christians were particularly notable for gaining positions in the Crusader court, though some did encounter difficulties maintaining claims.²³ Notably, the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch Michael Rabo, also known as Michael the Syrian, was known for his strong relationship with the Latin Christians.²⁴ This is perhaps significant given that Michael Rabo was well versed in Nubian and Ethiopian history, detailing their stories of conversion and even recounted future ourou Georgios I of Makuria’s visit to Baghdad in 836 during the reign of his father in his chronicle, for example.²⁵ Indeed, authors writing in Syriac were often well informed in matters of geography more generally.²⁶ For instance, Ptolemy’s second-century Geography influenced the sixth-century Syriac chronicle of Zachariah, which was, in turn, utilised in part by Patriarch Michael and other contemporaries, such as Bar ʿEbrōyō.²⁷ Specifically regarding Nubia, Bernard Hamilton has noted how it was perhaps uncoincidental that Latin Christian knowledge of Nubians further developed after Michael’s visit to Jerusalem in 1168 upon King Amalric’s (r. 1163–74) request.²⁸ Certainly, Michael was very well connected and remained well informed about a variety of contemporary matters from a range of noted and now lost sources.²⁹ More generally, King Amalric was known as the first King of Jerusalem who actively sought works of knowledge using local sources.³⁰ It is, therefore, probably no coincidence that his reign coincides with the flourishing advancement of knowledge regarding Nubia in the Latin Christian corpus. Amalric was certainly briefed about Nubia’s subordinate relationship to the Coptic patriarch no later than 1173, despite no evidence of a direct link between Amalric and Coptic informants, possibly illustrating Michael’s intellectual influence.³¹ Indeed, the importance of Eastern knowledge exchange has specifically been highlighted in a recent study by Jonathan Rubin regarding Latin Christian intellectual development of different groups in Acre during the thirteenth century, though, regrettably, Nubians and Ethiopians are not subject to his specific inquiry.³²

In addition to texts of Eastern Christians, Arabic texts produced by Muslims undoubtedly informed Latin Christian writers, as highlighted by Robin Seignobos in his discussion of Nubia’s relation with the Crusades.³³ The Arabic corpus is illustrative of the problems of tracing knowledge exchange beyond what can be directly evidenced. For instance, Raymond of Marseille noted the location of Gana (Ghāna) at 15° 30’/10° 55’ (relative to Marseille), along with Sigilmessah (Sijilmasa) at 15° 0’/22° 0’ as early as 1141, yet almost nothing else about contemporary West Africa is noted by any twelfth-century Latin Christian writer.³⁴ Raymond became acquainted with these locations only through his translations of Arabic works, which poses the question of the scale of the influence such increasing translation projects in Latin Europe could have provided in addition to the news and rumours circulating in the wider Holy Land. Many locations throughout Africa were likely known to Latin Christian translators and compilers of astrological tables many decades, if not centuries, earlier despite their otherwise absence in Latin Christian discourse. Adelard of Bath (c. 1080–c. 1152) is the first known Latin European to produce a translation of Arabic astrological tables – the Zīj of al-Khwārizmī (wr. 813–33) – in the early twelfth century, yet Adelard’s text has no mention of Dongola, Alwa, Jarma (likely an Arabic understanding of ʾAksum via the Gəʿəz toponym of Gərma (ግርማ)), Sijilmasa, or Ghāna, despite all featuring in al-Khwārizmī’s Kitāb sūrat al-arḍ alongside much other African material.³⁵ It may have been the case that the copy of al-Khwārizmī’s Zīj that Adelard used for his translation may not have featured much, if any, information which was primarily contained in al-Khwārizmī’s Kitāb, yet Raymond’s notice of Ghāna and Sijilmasa is suggestive that such Arabic knowledge of Africa, particularly regarding certain toponyms, was potentially in circulation within Latin Europe during the twelfth century despite limited codification in formalised Latin Christian translations. This is particularly important to reflect on considering that the earliest known contemporary Latin Christian reference to the capital of Dotawo, Dongola (Ducala), only appeared in 1282 in the Composition of the World of the Tuscan monk Ristoro d’Arezzo. There is no evidence that Ristoro interacted with any Nubian informants, and this is further suggested by his use of Ducala, which would appear to have been learnt through the Arabic toponym Dunqulā (دنقلا), rather than the Old Nubian form of Toungoul (ⲧⲟⲩⲅⲅⲟⲩⲗ) on which the Arabic toponym was based.³⁶ Translations of Arabic works clearly provided Latin Christians with details about Nubia, Ethiopia, and even elsewhere in Africa, but this was not necessarily reflected in Latin Christian original works immediately. It remains unclear whether this was due to a lack of access to knowledge gained from such translations or whether the authors whose texts survive chose to remain ignorant, either actively or inadvertently, of such new information.

The tracing of knowledge which appears to have been gathered from the copying of Arabic geographical tables is further problematised due to the fact that most Latin Christian translations of Arabic geographical tables commonly closely conformed to the Toledan Tables, which were produced in the late twelfth century, regardless of the texts that they were translating.³⁷ Significantly, the Toledan Tables do not feature any Nubian or Ethiopian locations. However, as we can see from the tables produced by Raymond of Marseille and the case of Gana and Sigilmessah, knowledge of at least certain African locations did exist within this scholarly field even though we cannot quantify how many such locations were equally ignored by writers in their translations. As noted by José Chabás and Bernard Goldstein, medieval Latin Christian translators often ignored places unknown to them in their translations of Arabic works, which would account for the lack of surviving evidence for the extent of distant geographical knowledge in Latin Europe.³⁸ Additionally, authors merely had different priorities for what to include in their texts regardless of what they may or may not have known. One such illustrative example of this can be found in the mid-fifteenth-century anonymous Castilian translation of the twelfth-century Kitāb al-jarʿāfiya of al-Zuhrī, which, for unknown reasons, did not copy the sections on Africa at all, yet presumably had access to the sizeable African section in the text.³⁹ Similarly, Muslim writers were equally guilty of not necessarily codifying the full extent of their knowledge of communities. For instance, some glass beads dating to the second half of the first millennium which have been found in modern Botswana have been shown to have originated from the Persian Gulf region, thus leading to the beads’ analysers James Denbow, Carla Klehm, and Laure Dussubieux to tentatively posit that a Muslim identification for the traders cannot be ruled out.⁴⁰ Surviving Arabic sources note the Muslim interaction with the east coast of Africa from the tenth century, yet their locations, descriptions, and anecdotes remained largely coastal despite noting the exchange of goods from the African interior.⁴¹ If Muslims had indeed been trading far inland of Africa’s east coast, the conspicuous lack of knowledge of the interior of southern African peoples in Muslim texts may further highlight the disparity between experiential and textual knowledge in comparative cultures. It is reasonable to assume that Latin Christian geographical knowledge was equally greater than what was codified as far as the surviving corpus indicates.

Arguably, the most indicative example of this dichotomy between available knowledge and the survival of recopied or codified original knowledge appeared in Norman Sicily during the reign of King Roger II (r. 1130–54). Non-Latin writers who were active in Roger’s court presented the king with diverse information regarding Africa, ranging from the ecclesiastical relationship between Nubia and Egypt to the geographies of known West and Central African peoples, urban centres, and kingdoms, such as Ghāna and Kānem, along with more obscure places.⁴² However, it has been argued, for example by David Abulafia, that the famous Book of Roger of al-Idrīsī (d. 1166), which was presented to King Roger in the year of the king’s death, was otherwise very limited in its contemporary circulation.⁴³ Yet, it is notable that Marino Sanudo’s crusade treatise (submitted to Pope John XXII in 1321) seemingly shows evidence of direct copying from an Arabic work, which may have been al-Idrīsī’s. For instance, the placement of Zinc (Arabic Zanj, the East African coast more broadly) and Zinziber (Zanzibar) on the East African coast could have been learnt through any knowledge networks or by lifting from an Arabic text, but Bedoni (Baḍūna, on the East African coast) and Neze (Najā, located at the southern end of the Nile) would appear to be directly influenced by Arabic geographies. Notably, the latter two toponyms appear in al-Idrīsī’s work.⁴⁴ Equally, Gaulolia, a location depicted in West Africa by Sanudo’s cartographer, Pietro Vesconte, would appear to have been copied from aūlil, or, as argued by Tadeusz Lewicki, Judāla, the former of which also appears in al-Idrīsī’s work in a similar location within West Africa.⁴⁵ Therefore, earlier Latin Christian works reflecting knowledge of al-Idrīsī’s text may simply have been lost, rather than never existing. Latin Christian knowledge of Africa would appear to have been much more diverse than its primary fixation on Nubia and, to an initial lesser extent, Ethiopia. This early focus on north-east Africa cannot necessarily be said to have been the product of an absence of sources for knowledge of elsewhere in Africa, but, rather, reflects the dominant interest that interactions with Nubians and Ethiopians within the wider Holy Land inspired and provoked.

The Question of Christian Africans in the Holy Land

A discussion of the routes of knowledge transmission between Latin Christians, Nubians, and Ethiopians cannot ignore the role of Nubians and Ethiopians themselves. Yet, the question of the presence of Ethiopians in the Holy Land during the crusading period, which, as noted in the Introduction, has long been subject to study, with more recent work increasingly separating Nubians as a distinct population of their own, remains in scholarship. Most of such discussion is based almost exclusively on Latin Christian sources. Problematically, as highlighted by Camille Rouxpetel, amongst others, discussions of these groups have thus been hindered by the interchanging of the ethnonyms of ‘Ethiopian’, Ethiopian, Nubian, and ‘Indian’ even when texts were informed by experience.⁴⁶ However, by using sources beyond the Latin Christian corpus and the approach to distinguish between Nubians and Ethiopians presented in this book, a more expansive picture appears. Whilst not every reference is clear, especially without additional context, there were distinct populations of permanent, semi-permanent, and non-permanent Nubians and Ethiopians throughout the Holy Land and Egypt. The scope of these populations should not be erased within any discussion of a framework of knowledge dissemination regarding Nubia and Ethiopia to the Latin Christians and what may be supposed for the reverse given the absence of comparative sources. Here we shall revue the current evidence for the locations and sizes of Nubian and Ethiopian populations within the Holy Land and Egypt, especially in places where they were known to reside alongside Latin Christians. Direct interactions between Latin Christians, Nubians, and Ethiopians had the potential to shape knowledge rather differently to how other intermediaries may have disseminated it. Whilst little evidence survives to illuminate any specific examples of direct transmission of knowledge between these groups, establishing areas of interaction, both brief and prolonged, provides another layer to the framework of avenues of knowledge dissemination in the Holy Land and Egypt which would otherwise be overlooked. Most importantly, interactions can be presumed to have been much more common than is often assumed.

The significance of taking a more rounded approach to analysing the Nubian and Ethiopian presence, including their interactions with Latin Christians, using sources beyond those of the Latin Christians is particularly evident if we take 1170s Cairo as an example. For instance, Burchard of Strasbourg, who travelled to Egypt in c. 1175, wrote only of Nubia that it was a Christian kingdom 20 days south of Egypt. However, his contemporary Abū al-Makārim, who has been argued by Johannes den Heijer to have been writing between 1160 and 1187, noted that envoys of the Greeks (Rūm:روم), Franks (Faranj:فرنج), Ethiopians (Ḥabaša:حبشة), and Nubians (Nūba:نوبه) customarily worshipped alongside each other at the fountain at al-Maṭariyya when received at the court in Cairo, a noticeably revealing detail that Burchard neglected but possibly, if not likely, witnessed.⁴⁷ Burchard’s omission should be understood as an authorial choice, rather than reflecting any ignorance, as he describes travelling to the shrine himself but only notes that the shrine was venerated by the Muslims – though a subsequent statement in the passage reveals that there were various other places in Cairo which were venerated by both unspecified Christians (Christianis) and Muslims (Sarracenis) alike. Similarly, despite no Latin Christian source noting either Nubians or Ethiopians in the Holy Land until the 1170s, the Jacobite patriarch Michael Rabo (r. 1166–99) insinuates in his text that Nubians (Kūšaye: ܟܘܫܝܐ) and Ethiopians (Ḥindaye: ܗܢܕܘܝܐ) were present in Syria, Palestine, Armenia, and Egypt in the late 1120s. After stating that the Greeks provoked the Syrians, Copts, and Armenians, Michael specifies that this provocation occurred in Syria, Palestine, Armenia, and Egypt, ending his statement by saying that the Greeks also provoked the Nubians and Ethiopians on occasion when possible. The text is unclear as to whether the Nubians and Ethiopians were present in all of these lands or if they were localised in only one, or even multiple, region(s), such as just in Egypt.⁴⁸ If they were to be also associated with Syria and/or Palestine, this reference to the post-First Crusade presence of Nubians and Ethiopians in the Holy Land in the 1120s would predate any Latin Christian notice by almost five decades. The picture of an African presence in the Holy Land, whether Christian or Muslim – or, indeed, any other socio-religious group – is much more complex than is often portrayed, especially when only Latin Christian sources are overwhelmingly relied on.

Both Ethiopia and Nubia had a long history of connections with Jerusalem, whom they referred to as ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ (ʾIyärusalem sämayawit/ኢየሩሳሌም፡ሰማያዊት and Jerousalēm ntpe/ϊⲉⲣⲟⲩⲥⲁⲗⲏⲙ ⲛⲧⲡⲉ, respectively), which, despite the fragmentary evidence for their respective sustained presence in the city during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, provides the first focus of the following discussion. Although no contemporary Nubian material or textual evidence survives in Jerusalem during the period of Latin occupation, Nubians (Nubiani) were first noted in Jerusalem by the German pilgrim Theodoric in 1172.⁴⁹ Ethiopians, on the other hand, were only first explicitly mentioned in the city as Abastini in a Latin document of unknown late-thirteenth-century date whose given ethnonym leaves little doubt.⁵⁰ Enrico Cerulli included a reference to ‘Ethiopians’ (Aethiopum) in his study of the Ethiopian historical presence in Jerusalem by Sebastian Brandt in 1219, but there is no reason to suppose that Brandt was not actually referring to Nubians, though, of course, both groups could have been grouped together.⁵¹ Supporting the later thirteenth-century dating of the first Latin Christian references to Ethiopians, Jabeni (a corruption of Ḥabaša) were also noted in 1283, though only in relation to the Holy Land more generally with their presence in Jerusalem only being implied.⁵² There is no doubt that an Ethiopian community resided in Jerusalem by 1290 as attested by a letter to the Ethiopian community in the city sent, along with gifts, by the Ethiopian ruler Yagbe’ä Sǝyon (r. 1285–94).⁵³ Regrettably, known surviving Ethiopian material culture from Jerusalem does not predate the fourteenth century to offer further avenues of enquiry to substantiate earlier communities.⁵⁴

The relatively late documentation of Ethiopians in Jerusalem during the Crusader period is most associated with their supposed receipt of churches by Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn following his capture of the city in 1187. Known sources for this, however, only date to 1573 and 1844, respectively. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus’ 1844 account has been argued to be a forgery by Emery van Donzel, with Stefano Lusignano’s 1573 text equally being dismissed for its late dating.⁵⁵ The lack of references to any African participation in specific ceremonies, such as the ceremony of the Feast of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem at Easter where Ethiopians are not listed as participants until 1481–3, is further illustrative of their supposed earlier absence during the Crusader period.⁵⁶ Sergew Hable Sellassie argued for an absence of an Ethiopian presence in the twelfth-century Holy Land based on the text of the gadl of the twelfth-century Ethiopian ḥaḍe Yemreḥanna Krestos.⁵⁷ The text relates how death threats were made to the Ethiopian monks in Jerusalem by other Christian monks who became jealous as only the lamps of the Ethiopians were said to be able to be lit at Easter, which led to the Coptic patriarch – who is named as Kyril, or Athanasius in some cases, but this chronologically could not have been the case – forbidding Ethiopian pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem for three years in order to maintain peace.⁵⁸ However, when exactly this referred to is difficult to ascertain, not least as the only Coptic patriarchs named Kyril in this period were Kyril II (r. 1078–92) and Kyril III ibn Laqlaq (r. 1235–43), whilst the only Athanasius was Athanasius III (r. 1250–61), which would not correlate with other details commonly attributed to Yemreḥanna Krestos, such as ruling before his cousin Lalibäla (r. c. before 1204–after 1225). The earliest manuscripts of the gadl only date from the late-fifteenth century and should be contextualised within their Solomonic environment of production which sought to offer an account of the sainthood of the nǝguś.⁵⁹ Indeed, as Marie-Laure Derat has highlighted, other fifteenth-century texts place importance on the narrative of the Ethiopian lamps in Jerusalem which may suggest that the conflict was created by the producer of the gadl to relate to a later wider trope rather than an historical event.⁶⁰ There is no evidence that the absence of Ethiopians in Jerusalem was prolonged, and the banning of pilgrims, if anything, only suggests an active Ethiopian presence in the city prior to the few years that the gadl is meant to refer to.

In addition to the lack of contemporary African texts on the matter, for the majority of the twelfth century, Latin Christian texts appear to have been much more focused on the buildings of the Holy Land and how to navigate between them, rather than their occupants. Little is documented about the geography of exchanges between Latin Christians and either Nubians or Ethiopians in the twelfth century. The absence of Ethiopians, and to a lesser extent Nubians, in texts is reflective of a wider issue of textual production, especially in a Latin Christian context, rather than as a direct result of their universal non-existence. For instance, beyond the major centres of the Holy Land – such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth – Ethiopians are documented at the Monastery of Mar Musa in Syria and on Mount Lebanon, though these references date only from the fifteenth century.⁶¹ Their appearance at Mar Musa appears linked to the expulsion of Ethiopian monks in Lebanon by the Maronites in 1488, but the scale of their prior presence, if any, is unknown.⁶² Given the need to travel to and from sites and in light of references such as those of Patriarch Michael Rabo, a sizeable Nubian and Ethiopian population remained undocumented outside of specific sites of interest. Attempts at reconstructing their populations in the earlier centuries, especially elsewhere in the Holy Land, will remain hindered.

Nevertheless, fragmentary evidence attests to both Nubians and Ethiopians in the Holy Land centuries prior to the Crusades, further questioning the validity of any such debates on their respective earlier presence. For instance, not long after the conversion of ʾAksum, ‘Ethiopians’ were witnessed in Jerusalem according to a letter from Paula and Eustochium to Marcella in 386, and St. Jerome, in a letter written in 403, though these ‘Ethiopians’ could just as likely have been Nubians from the region of Aswan who had received Christianity long before the official mid-six-century arrival of Byzantine missionaries.⁶³ Equally, the otherwise unknown sixth-century Piacenza Pilgrim describes seeing men from Aethiopiae in Jerusalem and Elusa who were said to have had their ‘nostrils split, ears cut, boots on their feet, and rings on their toes’ by orders of Emperor Trajan, which would seemingly suggest their identification as Nubians from Nobadia bordering the then Byzantine Empire in Egypt.⁶⁴ Similarly, in the eighth century, St. Willibald was said to have met two ‘Ethiopians’ (Ethiops) on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.⁶⁵ In support of the textual evidence, whilst early Nubian evidence is currently lacking, there is suggestive numismatic evidence for an ʾAksumite presence in Jerusalem, particularly in the mid-first millennium CE.⁶⁶ ʾAksum also appeared to have designed multiple churches based on those of the Holy Land, notably the Holy Sepulchre, which would have required artisans with experience of the Holy Land to build them.⁶⁷ There is also some evidence to suggest that a major disruption to pilgrimage routes did not occur following the fall of ʾAksum. One eleventh- or early twelfth-century inscription found in the Wādī al-Naṭrūn, located between Alexandria and Cairo, for example, insinuates the journey of 11 Ethiopian pilgrims to Jerusalem who left the inscription during a layover following the death of two companions.⁶⁸ Jerusalem is not mentioned by name, but the pilgrims may have ultimately desired to travel to Jerusalem after a number of other sites in Egypt. In the Nubian context, archaeological evidence from Lower Nubia at the monastery of Apa Dioscorus suggests an expansion of pilgrimage activity travelling north from the eleventh century as greater kitchen and accommodation space was built to accommodate passing visitors.⁶⁹ Both Ethiopian and Nubian pilgrimage activity was certainly active upon the onset of the Crusades.

The recording of Nubians and Ethiopians in the Holy Land by the Latin Christians largely owes itself to a significant development in pilgrimage. Towards the end of the twelfth century, Latin Christian itineraries began to shift their focus from mapping limited specific locations to documenting more inquisitive elements of their journeys.⁷⁰ This was especially the case following the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 when alternative routes had to be devised to best ensure safety and access across Holy Land sites. Nevertheless, uninterest by an author should not necessarily be mistaken for a physical absence. Indeed, Anton Schall has posited an Ethiopian connection in relation to the production of a twelfth-century liturgical drama from Rouen which he suggested transliterated some Gəʿəz words, which, Schall argued, could possibly also attest to an earlier Ethiopian presence in Jerusalem who were able to act as mediators between Europe and Ethiopia despite the otherwise limited evidence for a twelfth-century presence. What the text is meant to precisely portray is difficult to ascertain, but Schall argued that the line Ase ai ase elo allo abadac was influenced by the Gəʿəz words aṣe (lord), ʾallä (he is), and ʾabbä (father), which, when taken together, was likely meant to convey something akin to ‘Lord, Lord, he is the Father’ by the character within the drama.⁷¹ The character is not identified as an Ethiopian in the text, and there is no other evidence to support Schall’s hypothesis, but it certainly is an interesting observation. Regrettably, few other sources aid our understanding of these otherwise ‘silent’ twelfth-century African populations in the Holy Land in addition to the aforementioned statement by the Jacobite patriarch Michael Rabo prior to the beginning of Latin Christian documentation from the 1170s.

Dating the presence of both Ethiopians and Nubians in Jerusalem during the Crusader period is important for establishing their potential role in knowledge networks. Monastic communities, for instance, were not isolated from their homelands or even necessarily from each other. Ethiopia was in communication with communities in both Jerusalem and Egypt, although surviving evidence is too fragmentary to aid in questions of scale and regularity.⁷² Similarly, the Ethiopian community in Jerusalem gifted a manuscript copy of the Acts of Saints and Martyrs in 1379 to the Ethiopian community in Dayr al-Muharraq, Egypt, for example, reflecting the connectivity between Ethiopian communities beyond Ethiopia.⁷³ Regrettably, no earlier evidence for similar interconnectivity is known. Moreover, evidence within Ethiopia is suggestive of at least a cultural importance of places in the Holy Land which would suggest some interest to undertake pilgrimage to these locations. For instance, the rock-hewn churches in Lalibäla, which is also known as Roḥa and Wärwär, derive their toponym of Roḥa from Edessa (Arabic: al-Ruhā). The rock-hewn complex is traditionally dated to the twelfth century – though some churches have evidence of earlier phases of construction – and can be interpreted as symbolising numerous pilgrimage sites that Ethiopians would have most likely seen on their visits to Jerusalem. According to the gaḍl of the complex’s supposed creator ḥaḍe Lalibäla, it was designed to create a New Jerusalem in Ethiopia and to emulate the holy city.⁷⁴ As Marie-Laure Derat has pointed out, Ethiopian evidence for the site’s emulation of specific Jerusalemite sites only dates to the fifteenth century, so this narrative attribution may be of a later date, possibly only from at least the earliest surviving fourteenth-century incarnations of the Gädl Lalibäla which created the site’s mythology.⁷⁵ Whatever the reason for Roḥa’s establishment narrative, its emulation of Holy Land sites created a centre for surrogate pilgrimage similar to many other contemporary examples throughout the Christian world.⁷⁶ In addition to the other evidence, the very existence of the churches at Roḥa would suggest a prior relatively widespread interest in travelling to Jerusalem for any desire to create a New Jerusalem to fruit.

The problem of dating the Nubian presence in Jerusalem has its own issues. For example, despite Theodoric’s first reference to Nubians in the city in 1172, according to Ludolph of Sudheim in the mid-fourteenth century, ‘In my time the Nubiani did not have a place of their own, but the Sultan had a chapel specially built for them’, which suggests that a permanent Nubian presence should be attributed to a later date.⁷⁷ This would seemingly be a secondary outcome of the donation of parts of the Holy Sepulchre to the Franciscans by the Mamlūk sultan, al-Malik an-Nāṣir (r. 1293–1341), in 1333, though Sabino de Sandoli has suggested that a donation to the Nubians was always an intention of this exchange.⁷⁸ Whatever the case, Jacopo da Verona stated during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1335 that the Nubian chapel on Mount Calvary was ‘often visited’ (illam capellam sepe visitavi) by Nubiani.⁷⁹ It may not be inconsequential that fourteenth-century Latin Christian references to Nubians at Calvary increasingly appear after the 1330s.⁸⁰ Reflective of this may be an anonymous account of the Holy Land (wr. c. 1350), which was an expansion of an earlier account by Philippus Brusserius Savonensis (fl. c. 1290). It actively included this information of Nubians worshipping at Calvary despite Philippus not mentioning anything on the matter, possibly to address an increased Nubian presence following the donation of the chapel.⁸¹ It may simply be that Nubians previously resided elsewhere in the city in locations that did not have a similar shared importance with the Latin Christians and were deemed comparatively unnoteworthy. None of the earlier references to Nubians in the city attach them to a specific location beyond the more general attestation to their presence at the Holy Sepulchre. For example, in a legend on the Ebstorf mappamundi (thirteenth century), it related that Nubians made frequent visits to the Holy Sepulchre with a lot of wealth for offerings.⁸² Other Latin Christian commentators during the thirteenth century commonly only note their general presence in the city, building on the observation by Theodoric in 1172. In addition to the sources already cited, notable observations were also made by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (fl. c. 1241), who described Nubiani as one of the eight Christian orders of Jerusalem in 1234, and by Burchard of Mount Sion (fl. c. 1283), who said that he observed an innumerable number of Nubi in the Holy Land during his travels.⁸³ By no means have all the known Latin Christian references to Nubians and Ethiopians in the Holy Land been noted here, but none provide any further information than what has already been presented. In all, a picture emerges of a significant Nubian and Ethiopian presence in the Holy Land, especially in Jerusalem, alongside Latin Christians between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.

Before moving on to discuss what can be said of Nubians and Ethiopians in the role of facilitators of knowledge, a discussion of their presence in the Holy Land needs to also address Egypt. In comparison to Jerusalem, or the Holy Land more generally, the Nubian and Ethiopian presence in Egypt is equally inconsistent according to the textual record, at least until the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, similar to the Holy Land, Egypt can be shown to have been a centre of interactions between Nubians, Ethiopians, and Latin Christians which would inspire and facilitate knowledge exchange. Despite the regular exchanges between the Crusader States and Alexandria, neither Nubians nor Ethiopians are commonly described there during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.⁸⁴ Sporadic notices would attest to their prolonged presence in the city, however. For example, Benjamin of Tudela mentions Ethiopians (people from Kūš (חבש) who he associates with Ethiopia proper, Ḥabaš (חבשה), elsewhere in his text) in the city in the second half of the twelfth century; merchants from the two ‘Ethiopias’ (Ethiopes) trading in goods from ʿAidhāb in Alexandria are noted in the thirteenth-century French continuation of William of Tyre; Abassijnen were observed in the fifteenth century by Joos van Ghistele – not to mention the fact that the 1402 Ethiopian embassy to Venice travelled from Alexandria.⁸⁵ Additionally, internal Nubian evidence would allude to Alexandria possibly having been an important pilgrimage centre for Nubians given the importance of the Miracle of St Mina, which was centred in Alexandria, in Nubian culture, though current evidence restricts this to only being a suggestion.⁸⁶ Moreover, both Nubian and Ethiopian monks had a permanent presence in the Wādī al-Naṭrūn, located in the middle of the route between Cairo and Alexandria, who likely were able to act as facilitators of any pilgrimage route to Alexandria and beyond as other monasteries did in other Nubian and Ethiopian pilgrimage networks.⁸⁷ The movement of the Coptic See to Cairo in the eleventh century to aid in the reception of the numerous Nubian and Ethiopian messengers detailed in the History of the Patriarchs, would attest to relatively common diasporas arriving in the city, if not also beyond to Alexandria on occasion.⁸⁸

Elsewhere, other notable centres of exchange likely had much larger Nubian and Ethiopian communities than the textual references would suggest, such as in Cairo. Whilst the description by Abū al-Makārim of Nubians and Ethiopians in twelfth-century Cairo attests to their presence, Latin Christians remained relatively slow to record either Nubian or Ethiopian communities in either the city or its outskirts in a Christian context, either at a church or a shrine, until the fourteenth century.⁸⁹ Although, Oliver of Paderborn did make specific note of witnessing ‘Ethiopian’ traders in Cairo in the early thirteenth century.⁹⁰ The scale of merchant diasporas should not be overlooked when viewed alongside the presence of pilgrims and envoys. In the case of Dotawo, for instance, Giovanni Ruffini has highlighted how the Nubian evidence from Qasr Ibrim regarding economic exchanges, which primarily dates to the late twelfth century, appears to closely correlate, seemingly uncoincidentally, with Egyptian values.⁹¹ Such evidence is suggestive that Nubian mercantile diasporas were regularly present in Egypt, and it cannot be discounted that many operated beyond the border region around Aswan too. Whilst the scale of Nubian or Ethiopian interaction with Latin Christians in Egypt cannot be detailed with any great specificity until the fourteenth century, it should not be overlooked.

Nubians and Ethiopians as Facilitators of Latin Christian Knowledge Development

By no means has all the evidence for Nubian and Ethiopian presences in the Holy Land and Egypt been presented here, particularly in locations with no known documented, or presumed, interactions with Latin Christians. For example, possibly contemporary Old Nubian texts have been found at Edfu and Qena in Upper Egypt, but nothing can be said about either the size of any Nubian populations and if any Latin Christian would have witnessed or engaged with them.⁹² Other sources, such as the twelfth-century Old Nubian inscription concerning ourou Georgios IV from the Wādī al-Naṭrūn, still pose questions of provenance and material portability. It is unclear if the white marble tray which carries the inscription had relocated to the Lady Mary Church associated with the Syrian monastery in the valley once the ‘Abyssinian’ monks’ own desert residence had deteriorated too much by the first half of the nineteenth century.⁹³ Given the fall of Dotawo in the sixteenth century and that the ‘Abyssinians’ in question were truly Ethiopians, it is unclear why Ethiopian monks would have housed the marble tray, if, indeed, the tray was not already at the church before they had relocated to it. Nevertheless, the potential scope and scale of interactions are clear, especially involving Nubians and Latin Christians. It would appear uncoincidental that Latin Christians developed their earlier interest in Nubia during the twelfth century, rather than Ethiopia, given the geographical proximity of Dotawo to the areas of the Red Sea trade that the Latin Christians were party to and the resulting interactions in comparison to the much more southerly, and seemingly more distant, Bǝg^wǝna.⁹⁴

It cannot be denied that the current evidence for a pre-fourteenth-century Nubian and Ethiopian presence in the Holy Land and throughout the Mediterranean is very fragmentary for certain groups beyond those who may be identified as traders or pilgrims. In the case of enslaved and manumitted Nubians or Ethiopians, for example, there is little evidence of such slavery being conducted in the Crusader States, though this was not the case in the wider Mediterranean. Few sources, however, clearly attest to the origin of slaves to shed light on alternative Nubian and Ethiopian diasporas of those enslaved and manumitted – a notable exception is Mubāraka of Nūba who was sold in Alexandria to some Venetians in 1419 and is known from an Arabic document – with most Latin Christian sources describing enslaved Africans generically as ‘Ethiopians’, negri, or ‘moors’.⁹⁵ Yet, these communities should not be forgotten and could equally have integrated into society if they were manumitted. One illustrative example, albeit from the early Portuguese raids of West Africa in the mid-fifteenth century, is of a former unnamed West African captive who became a Franciscan near Sagres in Portugal after being freed.⁹⁶ The roles of slaves and the manumitted diaspora should not be overlooked even though the available evidence offers little on their potential activities in knowledge dissemination during this period.⁹⁷

Furthermore, very little scholarship has been conducted on inter-Christian conversions and their role in knowledge transmission. In one instance, whilst the rhetoric largely outweighs the historical accuracy of the statement, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines noted how some Nubiani, along with a few other Eastern groups, had converted in 1205 on account of witnessing a miracle prior to communion conducted by a certain Jonas, patriarch of Susa.⁹⁸ No other source contains this conversion story and it is likely that the description should primarily be viewed as rhetoric attesting to the importance of the preaching of the 1230s and 1240s during the time when Alberic was writing. Yet, the passage highlights the possibility that some Eastern Christians, including Nubians, could have converted to Latin Christianity, which may be expected amongst interacting societies. Indeed, the same should be noted regarding the possible reverse scenario. One example regarding Catholic ‘Ethiopians’ in Latin Europe appears in the Annals of Colmar (wr. ended 1305), a town in north-eastern France, which makes a passing suggestive reference of the participation of ‘Ethiopians’ (Ethiopem) wearing white in a mass led by Henry Bishop of Basel in the Franciscan church of Colmar in 1282.⁹⁹ There is no reason to necessarily assume that this was a rhetorical device of some sort by the author of the annal and was actually a factual observation, even if a secure identification of the ‘Ethiopians’ may be tenuous. A similar scenario could readily have occurred in the Holy Land. Certainly, there is ample documented and artistic evidence which attests to the presence of Africans throughout Europe, even if we are often unable to identify them explicitly as Nubians or Ethiopians.¹⁰⁰ Presumably many of these were Nubians and Ethiopians, however. Nubians and Ethiopians in Latin Christian society would have been further potential vessels for knowledge regarding their homeland in both the Holy Land and in Latin Europe.

For our purposes, we also cannot discount the role of Africans as elite members of the society of the Crusader States and, thus, their ability to disseminate knowledge. For example, an otherwise unknown Guido of Nubie is listed as a witness to three separate letters in 1226.¹⁰¹ Who was he? It is possible that he was from the small fief of Nubia which was documented to be in the County of Tripoli in a letter dated 1163.¹⁰² Yet, whilst little else is known about the fief, it appears likely that it would have no longer been under Latin Christian control after 1187. Moreover, the lack of other references to this fief would suggest that it had little importance, perhaps making it unlikely to have been designated as a patronym for Guido if the fief had been lost prior to 1187 – almost four decades before his role as a witness. Alternatively, Guido may have come from Bait Nuba, located between Jaffa and Jerusalem, though there is no other recorded instance of this place being referred to as Nubie.¹⁰³ Given the uncertainty of the location, should it be so readily dismissed that Guido may have been a converted Nubian on account of his, possibly adopted, Italianised name and his attributed, possibly African, origin? Guido is the only known example of someone from a place called ‘Nubia’ in Crusader society, though his case would not have been unique. There are multiple instances of people with the name Saraceni, Mauri, or Nigri – which could indicate appearance, origin of birth (either meaning of dark skin or from a place such as the Black Mountains), or their or a previous ancestors’ occupation (such as a black textile dyer) – emphasising that the Latin Christian community was not racially homogenous by any means. Specifically for inhabitants with the surname of ‘Black’ (Niger), there are five or six people who are either the content of deeds or witnesses to deeds throughout the twelfth century in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.¹⁰⁴ Whilst we cannot know for sure whether any of these were of African origin, the existence of such people, and their potential role in knowledge dissemination regarding regions of Africa, should not be dismissed out of hand.

Elsewhere throughout the wider Mediterranean, Nubians were explicitly observed in or were said to have been present in Constantinople, Cyprus, and near Santiago de Compostela in Spain, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, thus highlighting the Mediterranean nature of Nubian society.¹⁰⁵ The witnessing of the small Nubian entourage in Constantinople in 1203 by the Fourth Crusaders, which was led by a figure introduced as the ‘king of Nubia’(li rois de Nubie) to the Latins by the Byzantine emperor who was on his way to his desired destinations of Rome and Santiago de Compostela, as recorded by Robert of Clari, is further exemplary of the potential geographical scope of otherwise undocumented interactions. Whilst only one additional member of the Nubian group had reached Constantinople with the ‘king’, the original number who had set off from Nubia was said to have been 60 and highlights the difficulty in reconstructing the potential scope of interactions in locations and on journeys towards destinations.¹⁰⁶ If the identification of the Nubian figure as a ‘king’ is to be believed, it would appear to have been a retired ourou Moüses Georgios; although surviving Nubian sources are so far quiet on whether Moüses Gorgios did indeed retire or was even exiled.¹⁰⁷ The ourou during the time of the delegation was Basil, who appears in the Nubian record from 1198, providing that there was not a subsequent otherwise unknown change in ruler. Since Benjamin Hendrickx’s identification in 1985 that the ‘king’ was the Ethiopian ḥaḍe Lalibäla, this identification has continued to be repeated, often without further critique.¹⁰⁸ However, this identification would appear to make little sense as Lalibäla is known to have reigned at least until 1225, whereas the identification of Moüses Georgios aligns with the Nubian contextual evidence. Why exactly the delegation travelled to Constantinople is unknown. Motives could range from being an actual journey of pilgrimage to seeking aid following likely devastation caused in Lower Nubia by consecutive years of a failed low Nile flood, famine, and disease between 1200 and 1202, which was compounded by possible damage caused by a destructive regional earthquake which struck in 1202, based on how these events affected neighbouring Upper Egypt.¹⁰⁹ These events are not recorded in any known surviving Old Nubian documentation and current archaeology has not yet addressed these possible environmental effects on Nubia, but they cannot be discounted as possible causes for sending a delegation to Constantinople, whether as a primary or secondary concern, by Dotawo, if, indeed, it was an official delegation. Delegations to Constantinople may not have been uncommon either. According to Eustathios, the twelfth-century Archbishop of Thessaloniki, he observed ‘Ethiopians’ at the court of Emperor Manuel I in 1173/4 amongst other foreign peoples.¹¹⁰ Whilst Eustathios may well have been using rhetoric to over-represent the worldly influence of the emperor, the statement should also not be dismissed out of hand given the fragmentary nature of sources concerning Nubian diplomacy beyond Egypt throughout this period. Importantly, any travelling delegations would have had to travel either through the Holy Land or across the Mediterranean, further displaying otherwise silent possibilities for arenas of interaction.

Ethiopians, too, were present in Cyprus, Armenia, and, possibly, Rome prior to 1400, indicated by both Ethiopian and Latin Christian texts and material evidence.¹¹¹ The first established religious Ethiopian presence in Rome is traditionally associated with the donation of the Church of Santo Stefano to the Ethiopian community by Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471–84). However, according to Francesco Maria Torrigio in 1635, the learned canon and scholar active at the Vatican, Pope Alexander III was said to have first housed Ethiopi (Ethiopians) at Santo Stefano in the sixth year of his pontificate, 1165–6, though this may be an attempt at providing an origin to the later donation by Sixtus.¹¹² No other sources corroborate Torrigio’s account. That said, it is noteworthy that the same Pope Alexander III had sent a letter to the otherwise unknown ‘King of the Indies’ in 1177 who had previously asked permission to build a church in Rome. Attributing authorship to the letter is contentious, but along with Torrigio’s text, an earlier Christian African presence in Rome, though possibly brief given its silence in the sources, may need to be readdressed.¹¹³ No Ethiopian evidence sheds light on the matter, but the evidence currently points to an elaborate fabrication by later writers to provide a narrative of much earlier relations with the Ethiopians during the later years of diplomacy; though the Latin Christians had, in fact, been expelled from Ethiopia in 1633 prior to Torrigio’s writing.

No matter which groups may or may not be particularly well-evidenced, the questions such communities pose aid to interrogate the established narratives and the intimate interactions that knowledge networks had the potential to create. For example, how did people communicate? Was there a lingua franca or were there alternative methods of communication? If there was such a language, the most likely candidate would have been Arabic. Arabic is well attested in Nubia and Ethiopia and was widely known in the Crusader States and had the additional benefit of its use during travel in Egypt and the Red Sea.¹¹⁴ In the case of Nubia, there is limited evidence for Latin Christian knowledge of Coptic, which also may have facilitated interactions in some arenas.¹¹⁵ Indeed, the Latin Christians were very aware that the ability to be multilingual was a necessity to operate successfully in the East.¹¹⁶ Comparative limited evidence for linguistic knowledge in Nubia is also available. One Old Nubian document from Qasr Ibrim, which possibly dates to as early as the late twelfth century, first brought to light by Giovanni Ruffini, also seemingly reflects otherwise largely unnoted interaction. The text in question appears to be a plea to the saints Maria and Simeon. However, it is the use of santa in reference to saints Maria and Simeon (ⲥⲁⲛⲧⲁ ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ and ⲥⲁⲛⲧⲁ ⲥⲓⲙⲉⲟⲩⲟⲛ), rather than the expected Old Nubian words for ‘saint’, which would be either agios (ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ) or ngiss (ⳟⲓⲥⲥ), which is significant.¹¹⁷ Despite being the only known example of this kind, the use of the Italianised santa in reference to the saints would suggest prolonged interactions by the author with Italians, whether in Egypt or in Qasr Ibrim itself.¹¹⁸ Whilst we may not be able to speak of a blanket scenario for language exchange, it is without doubt that individuals were always capable of maintaining more intimate modes of communication with personalised linguistic knowledge beyond the surviving source corpus.

From the Nubian and Ethiopian points of view, there were also alternatives to Arabic for conducting communication. For instance, the Nubian knowledge of Syriac and the implied knowledge of Armenian in Nubia, or of Nubian languages by Armenians, by Het̕um of Corycus to facilitate communication, noted earlier, should not be overlooked for their potential scope in communication, notably in more northerly Holy Land cities pertaining to otherwise undocumented interactions, such as in Antioch. Similarly, the appearance of santa in the Old Nubian document cannot be dismissed as evidencing some outlets of Nubian knowledge of Italian, notably within Egypt. Regrettably, there is little comparative indicative evidence, no matter how slight, for the Ethiopian picture, though the Rouen manuscript analysed by Anton Schall possibly reflects at least one example of intimate linguistic interaction between a Latin and Gəʿəz speaker in the twelfth century. That said, there are alternative methods of communication other than verbal language. For example, signs and gestures are a universal technique and played vital roles elsewhere, such as in the early encounters of Latin Christians in West Africa and the Americas.¹¹⁹ Moreover, in the Latin European case, sign language was known to have developed its own specific lexicons, which, if we can transplant this into a context involving Nubians or Ethiopians, a visual lexicon may have been shared between communities in the Crusader States, including by Nubians and Ethiopians, associated with pilgrimage routes.¹²⁰ Equally, the existence of phrase books cannot be discounted.

One early fifteenth-century text reflects how valuable such a guide could be. An anonymous itinerary, dated to c. 1410, showcases demonstrable Venetian knowledge of the Ethiopian languages of Gəʿəz and Amharic, as well as Arabic.¹²¹ It is not intended here to offer a full dissection of the text but to offer some examples found within it to highlight its importance for evidencing the knowledge of language by Latin Christians to communicate with Ethiopians. The itinerary provides practical transliterated words and phrases with translations in Latin which would commonly be used by a traveller; in this case, one going to Ethiopia. Travellers are provided with the means to communicate when in need of essentials. For instance, ‘money’ (Argentum) is given as brur, closely resembling birr, the Gəʿəz and Amharic word for silver. Vaca (‘water’), appears to have been understood by the guide’s author by its Amharic form, waha (‘water’), rather than its Gəʿəz or Arabic form may/māʾ, signalling a yet more intimate means of language acquisition by the author as Gəʿəz remained the primary textual language of Ethiopia at that time. Other words, such as asa (‘fish’) and sact (‘fire’) are practically identical to the Gəʿəz or Amharic equivalent, ʿaśa and ʾǝsāt (Gəʿəz)/isati (Amharic), respectively. It is impossible to tell if the author of the guide had only learnt the required knowledge for the guide during a relatively recent and increased period of exchange between Ethiopians and Latin Christians from 1402 or if the text can be said to have been somewhat indicative of interactions elsewhere in previous decades. Nevertheless, the content of the text would be expected to have been representative of base lexicons which may have been used by interacting Nubians, Ethiopians, and Latin Christians, whether in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Cairo, or elsewhere.

The role of interpreters cannot be understated either despite direct early evidence being sparse, specifically in relation to interactions with Christian Africans. For instance, the potential role of former Latin Christians in communication may be gleaned by the interaction of Symon Semeonis with two Italian dragomen in Egypt in the early fourteenth century who were Jacobites – importantly, these Jacobites would likely have interacted with other Jacobites, including Nubians and Ethiopians via a shared knowledge of Arabic.¹²² Elsewhere, the interpreter who accompanied Niccolò da Poggibonsi in Egypt in the mid-fourteenth century was able to distinguish the language of one group of people in a set of trees as the lingua etiopica as he did not understand it, though he did single it out as he did know that it was not Arabic or Hebrew.¹²³ Equally, presumably some interpreters would have known African languages, as they would have been either Nubian or Ethiopian themselves. Regrettably, the systematic learning of either Old Nubian or Gəʿəz by Latin Christians can only be suggested. The sixteenth century is most commonly associated with the period of great Latin Christian learning of Eastern languages. Yet, it should not be forgotten that although direct evidence is limited, in addition to the early fifteenth-century Latin-Gəʿəz travel guide, it would also be likely that the missionary activity of the thirteenth century would have called for the learning of Nubian and Ethiopian languages. For example, the 1236 General Chapter of the Dominicans explicitly decreed that friars must learn the local language of their preaching area.¹²⁴ As will be discussed in Chapter 5, the dismissal of the actual engagements of such activity which largely prevails in current scholarship may not necessarily be warranted. Unfortunately, the earliest surviving Latin Christian documentation of the Ethiopian and Nubian alphabets only dates to the end of the fifteenth century.¹²⁵ Comparatively, based on current evidence, nothing more can be said either regarding Nubian or Ethiopian knowledge of Latin or other Western European languages prior to the fifteenth century.

In addition to the question of communication, another question is important: how did people gain access to accommodation and provisions whilst travelling? The case of the remnants of the Nubian entourage who were present in Constantinople in 1203 is particularly illustrative for thinking about these questions. Sixty Nubians, along with the ‘king’, were said to have originally left Nubia, with only ten surviving the journey to Jerusalem and only the ‘king’ and one other making it to Constantinople.¹²⁶ Why the number dwindled is uncertain, and it may be possible that the whole group never had the intention of reaching Constantinople together. It does not necessarily follow that the majority of the losses in number were the result of disease or banditry. In any case, the group would have needed provisions for their journey and access to accommodation. Two scenarios would appear to have been the most likely. Either the group took all provisions, including food and forms of finance, with them or they were able to access the aid of either hostels or the wider Mediterranean Latin Christian banking system. It would appear unlikely that they hauled all the necessities with them, as would be normal practice for pilgrims, especially if such a baggage train may have been dependent on the group’s number. With such a depletion of numbers, potentially vital things were at risk of having to have been left behind. Regrettably, the lack of current evidence can only be filled with suggestions. No Nubian coinage has ever been found, so their finance would seemingly have been either in goods for barter, highlighting the importance of a maintained baggage train, or, possibly, the use of Egyptian or Crusader coinage. Nubian monasteries and pilgrimage sites were known for providing hospitality to visitors, but then this comes back to the question of the dating of a permanent Nubian presence in Jerusalem and in other sites on the way to Constantinople. Sites in Nubia and Egypt are attested for this role, but if the Nubian presence was only made permanent in Jerusalem in the 1330s, at least at the Holy Sepulchre, who would they have stayed with in such situations, particularly north of Jerusalem where comparative evidence is scant?¹²⁷ There remains the possibility of ‘private’ providers if, for such illustrative purposes, we can suggest that figures, such as Adam Niger who sold land to the Hospitallers in Jerusalem in 1163, and those like him, may have been Nubian and operated hostels on their land to provide provisions and hospitality to the pilgrimage trade.¹²⁸ That is also not to say that Nubians would only have stayed with fellow Nubians either.

Notably, very little direct evidence illuminates specific Nubian churches or monasteries in locations between Jerusalem and Constantinople to support a Nubian pilgrimage network which operated solely in isolation from other groups, presuming that the Nubians took a land route – of course, the sea route via Cyprus could equally have been the likely route. Similarly, such questions equally apply to Ethiopians, though later evidence would suggest an integrated provision network. For example, the role of the mäggabi in some Ethiopian monasteries, such as in Jerusalem, Qusqam, and in the Wādī al-Naṭrūn acted as a ‘provisioner’ for visitors, whilst the 1379 donation of the community in Jerusalem to those at Dayr al-Muharraq attests to a possible network of sites that could facilitate the safe journeys of Ethiopian pilgrims.¹²⁹ Despite the lack of evidence, presumably, there were also Ethiopian pilgrims and travellers who ventured beyond the major centres, similar to the 1203 Nubian entourage to Constantinople, whose own access to finance and provisions poses similar questions. Either we need to view the Nubian and Ethiopian presence as being much greater than the sources suggest in order to oversee explicitly Nubian or Ethiopian networks or that they, along with presumably other groups, were able to gain much more intimate access to the social and economic mechanisms of the wider Mediterranean world than any evidence currently suggests.

We shall end our discussion here by highlighting the potential role of the Holy Sepulchre as a specific site of knowledge transmission. After its renovation following the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was completed in 1149, it is one of the few places where we can suggest specific knowledge development by Nubians regarding the Latin Christians. For example, according to Ludolph of Sudheim, writing in the mid-fourteenth century, the Nubians worshipped in their chapel at Calvary alongside the tombs of Godfrey of Bouillon (r. 1099–1100) and King Baldwin I (r. 1100–18).¹³⁰ It would then seem likely that resident and visiting Nubians at the Holy Sepulchre would have become intimately aware of these tombs and, perhaps, their significance to the Latin Christians as the first two Latin rulers of Jerusalem. Whilst some sources describe the tombs as being destroyed by the Kwarezmians in 1244, the tombs were still being shown to visitors until the fire of 1808.¹³¹ Indeed, Ludolph of Sudheim’s explicit use of the present tense (sunt, ‘are’) when describing the Nubian presence alongside the tombs in the chapel is indicative of the tombs’ survival. The spatial relationship between the Nubians and the tombs would likely have inspired Nubian curiosity akin to that of the Latin Christians elsewhere. Certainly, Godfrey and Baldwin remained prevalent in Latin Christian culture and would hardly have kept the Nubians isolated from Latin Christians wanting to see the tombs. For instance, both Godfrey and Baldwin were integral characters in the so-called First and, especially, Second Old French Crusade Cycles of chansons de geste whose manuscripts commonly date to between the late twelfth and the fourteenth century. The chansons were just one form of cultural memory of the Crusades and, by extension, prominent, later turned legendary, crusading figures within Latin Christendom.¹³² Dating the Nubian relationship with the space is more problematic. Based on the absence of evidence, Nubian worshippers can only be proposed to have worshipped in that specific chapel following the donation of the chapel to them in 1333 by the Mamlūk sultan, as noted earlier. However, the later donation of the chapel would suggest that it was to serve an already sizeable Nubian population – whether permanent, semi-permanent, or non-permanent – which had long been present in the Holy Sepulchre. Whether Nubians had previously been worshipping in the chapel, particularly when Jerusalem was not under the control of the Latin Christians when the choice of worshipping spaces may have been less regulated, is unknown. Nevertheless, the shared space of the Holy Sepulchre, and the contents within, would likely have inspired questioning between a range of individuals. Despite the complete lack of sources for the Nubian perspective on this sharing of space and its material consequences, we should not presume that these exchanges had no impact upon Nubians, or indeed Ethiopians in comparative circumstances, similar to what they had on the Latin Christians.

The multiplicity of interactions, both documented and not, between Latin Christians and Nubians and Ethiopians, as well as with other Eastern groups, during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, created numerous avenues for potential knowledge dissemination regarding Christian Africa. Whilst we may only be able to primarily see the Latin Christian perspective of these exchanges, they equally should be viewed as having similar impacts on Nubian and Ethiopian knowledge of the Latins. Significantly, the limited surviving evidence should not be viewed as reflecting a lack of a presence or the lack of exchange. Equally, the majority of the communal knowledge of all groups remained undocumented and should not be understated. For instance, it can safely be assumed that Latin Christians were aware of the Nubian and Ethiopian practice of scarification to create images of a cross on their skin, particularly on their faces, which Latin Christians often described as being ‘baptised by fire’ (echoing the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:11), through observation, long before the first Latin Christian texts begin to record this from the thirteenth century.¹³³ Throughout the documented history of the presence of Nubian and Ethiopian diasporas during the crusading period, a key question that is often ignored by contemporary writers is how intimate were these interactions? Whilst undocumented interaction would have been common, textual references remain relatively silent on more intimate exchanges. There is one notable exception to this, however, which is likely more illustrative than its single instance. For example, Niccolò da Poggibonsi, a Tuscan Franciscan friar who visited the Holy Land and Egypt between the years 1345–50, specifically commented that Eastern Christians, including Nubini, worshipped together on Holy Saturday after the hour of the Vespers.¹³⁴ Additionally, in Egypt, he related how he celebrated mass to a congregation of Nubbiani at the Church of St. Martin between Cairo and Babylon, where he also held the body of St. Martin, a bishop of Alexandria, in his arms, though he did not state the language or means of communication.¹³⁵ Poggibonsi did not merely observe Nubians from afar and revealed his engagements with them, albeit not in overly great additional detail. It is clear that interactions between Latin Christians, Nubians, and Ethiopians should be viewed as being much more numerous and intimate than the sources depict. What that meant for knowledge networks and avenues of dissemination can never be fully known, yet one thing is for certain: Nubians, Ethiopians, and Latin Christians were far from strangers to each other.

Notes

1. In addition to the discussion here, the later Mamlūk period has similarly been viewed within the framework of the influence of news and rumour networks: T. Wollina, ‘News and Rumour – Local Sources of Knowledge About the World’, in Everything is on the Move: The Mamluk Empire as a Node in (Trans-)Regional Networks, ed. S. Conermann (Göttingen, 2014), pp. 283–309.

2. Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis ab Hybernia ad Terrum Sanctam, ed. and trans. M. Esposito (Dublin, 1960), Chs. 71–2, pp. 90–3 (text and trans.).

3. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, ed. J. H. Bridges, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1900), Pars quarta, Geographia, pp. I:311–14, 318–26, Pars Sexta, Scientia Experimentalis Exemplum II, pp. II:210–11, Pars Septima, Moralis Philosophia Pars Tertia, Ch. IV, II:268 (text); The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, trans. R. B. Burke, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1928), pp. I:330–2, 337–43, II:622–4, 677 (trans.). The passage regarding dragons being a secret to living a long life and increasing intelligence, which is why ‘Ethiopians’ come to Latin Europe to fly them back, is on II:211 (Bridges text); II:624 (Burke trans.).

4. This concept was conceived as the antithesis of Brian Stock’s notion of ‘textual communities’: B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983).

5. M. S. Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology, 78.6 (1973), pp. 1360–80.

6. B. Hamilton, ‘The Impact of the Crusades on Western Geographical Knowledge’, in Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550, ed. R. Allen (Manchester, 2004), pp. 15–34; Seignobos, ‘L’autre Ethiopie’; Hamilton, ‘The Crusades and North-East Africa’.

7. Abū Šāma, Al-Rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-Dawlatayn al-Nūrīya wa al-Ṣalāḥīya, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1870–1), I:209 (text); OSCN, pp. 369–70 (trans.); Gregorii Barhebraei, Chronicon Syriacum, ed. P. Bedjan (Paris, 1890), 346 (text); La chronographie de Bar Hebraeus: Ktābā dMaktbānut Zabnē: L’histoire du monde d’Adam à Kubilai Khan, trans. P. Talon, 3 vols. (Fernelmont, 2013), pp. II:104–5 (trans.).

8. U. Z. Shachar, ‘“Re-Orienting” Estoires d’Outremer: The Arabic Context of the Saladin Legend’, in The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean (New York, 2018), pp. 150–78.

9. Francisco Álvarez, Verdadeira, ed. de Albuquerque, Ch. 137, 168 (text); Francisco Álvarez, Prester John, trans. Beckingham and Huntingford, II:461 (trans.).

10. For example, Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. and trans. J. Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008), Chs. 53, 76, pp. 220–3, 308–11 (text and trans.).

11. J. Selden and E. Pococke, Contextio gemmarum, sive, Eutychii patriarchae Alexandrini annales, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1654–6), II:386 (text); OSCN, 110 (trans.).

12. Petrus ibn al-Rāhib, Chronicon Orientale, ed. and trans. L. Cheikho 2 vols. (Beirut, 1903), pp. I:101, 125–6, 130 (text), II:109, 134–5, 139–40 (Latin trans.); Neilos Doxapatrios, ‘Των Πατριαρχικων Φρονων’, in PG 132, col.1089.

13. Paul d’Antioche, évêque melkite de Sidon (xii^e s.), ed. and trans. P. Khoury (Beirut, 1964), pp. 84–97 (text), 188–99 (trans.).

14. Paul d’Antioche, ed. and trans. Khoury, pp. 15–16.

15. For some examples of the Genizah trade to Ethiopia and Nubia, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley, 1967–93), pp. I:135–7, 138–9, 386, 434; II:283; III:169; IV:219. The Genizah connections include merchants from as far afield as North Africa and is notable evidence for the often-common disparity between connectivity and the surviving textual knowledge corpus.

16. Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, ed. and trans. Evetts, pp. 119–27, 135–42 (text), 260–74, 284–91 (trans.).

17. For examples other than the Armenians in the employment of Egyptian armies, see S. D. Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley, 2011). Current research on Nubian–Armenian connections is limited, but for Ethiopian–Armenian connections, see H. W. McKenney, ‘Examples of Armenian Presence and Contacts in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia from 5th to 16th Century’, in Art of the Armenian Diaspora: Proceedings of the Conference, Zamość, April 28–30, 2010, ed. W. Deluga (Warsaw, 2011), pp. 11–24; Z. Pogossian, ‘Armeno-Aethiopica in the Middle Ages: Geography, Tales of Christianization, Calendars, and Anti-Dyophysite Polemics in the First Millennium’, Aethiopica, 24 (2021), pp. 104–40. Moreover, African toponyms are curiously fewer (five in total) than those of Europe (seven) or Asia (fourteen), along with Jerusalem separately, in the earliest known surviving Armenian map (c.late thirteenth-mid fourteenth century), of which the Asian toponyms show awareness of developing contemporary knowledge of distant ports such as Zaytun (Quanzhou), whereas Africa merely shows Egypt, Alexandria, the Red Sea, Ethiopia (Hapaš:Հապաշ), and a lake called Tuman, perhaps further illustrating the comparative Armenian contemporary intellectual disconnect with Africa as far as the sources are concerned: R. Galichian, ‘A Medieval Armenian T-O Map’, Imago Mundi, 60.1 (2008), 89.

18. Het̕um of Corycus, ‘La Flor des Estoires de la Terre d’Orient’, in RHC Doc. Arm. II., Ch. 23, 247.

19. Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. G. Flügel, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1871–2), I:19 (text); The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, trans. B. Dodge, 2 vols. (New York, 1970), Ch. 1, I:36 (trans.); J. van Ginkel and J. van Der Vliet, ‘A Syriac Alphabet from Qasr Ibrim’, in Nubian Voices II: New Texts and Studies on Christian Nubian Culture, eds. A. Łajtar, G. Ochała, and J. van der Vliet (Warsaw, 2015), pp. 45–52. On surviving Nubian textual languages, see Ochała, ‘Multilingualism’, pp. 26–7.

20. Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State, 89; A. Bausi and A. Desreumaux, ‘Une «ṭablītō» syriaque orthodoxe en Érythrée datée de 1295/1296: un témoin des «métropolites syriens»?’, Aethiopica, 24 (2021), pp. 233–44.

21. A. M. Butts, ‘Ethiopic Christianity, Syriac Contacts with’, in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, eds. S. P. Brock, A. M. Butts, G. A. Kiraz, and L. van Rompay (Piscataway, 2011), pp. 148–53.

22. On Thomas, see Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, pp. I:62–76; Hamilton, The Latin Church, pp. 349–51. On Mūše of Mardin and Täsfa Ṣǝyon, see J. Leroy, ‘Une copie syriaque de Missale Romanum de Paul III et so arrière-plan historique’, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph, 46 (1970/1), pp. 353–82.

23. A. Palmer, ‘The History of the Syrian Orthodox in Jerusalem [Part I]’, Oriens Christianus, 75 (1991), pp. 16–43; A. Palmer, ‘The History of the Syrian Orthodox in Jerusalem, Part II: Queen Melisende and the Jacobite Estates’, Oriens Christianus, 76 (1992), pp. 74–94.

24. B. Hamilton, ‘Three patriarchs at Antioch, 1165–1170’, in Dei gesta per francos: Études sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, eds. M. Balard, B. Kedar, and J. Riley-Smith (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 199–207; MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, pp. 167–9. On wider relations, see Hamilton, The Latin Church, pp. 188–211; B. Hamilton, ‘The Latin Church in the Crusader States’, in East and West I, eds. Ciggaar, Davids, and Teule, pp. 1–20; B. Hamilton, ‘Aimery of Limoges, Latin Patriarch of Antioch (c. 1142-c. 1196) and the Unity of the Churches’, in East and West II, eds. Ciggaar and Teule, pp. 1–12.

25. Chronique de Michel le Syrien, ed. Chabot, pp. Book VII Ch. 3, IV:131–2, Book X Ch. 18, IV:371–2, Book XII Ch. 19, IV:330–4 (text); Syriac Chronicle of Michael Rabo, trans. Moosa, pp. 160–1, 415, 567–9 (trans.).

26. J.-C. Ducene, ‘La géographie chez les auteurs syriaques: entre hellénisme et Moyen Âge arabe’, in Migrations de langues et d’idées en Asie: Actes du colloque international organisé par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, la Société asiatique et l’INALCO, eds. J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, P.-S. Filliozat, and M. Zink (Paris, 2015), pp. 21–36.

27. Though the writer confused Ptolemy for the king of Egypt: Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, trans. Greatrex et al., Book XII Ch. 7, pp. 431–46. On later uses by writers, see pp. 57–60. On Syriac sources, see W. Witakowski, ‘Syriac Historiographical Sources’, in Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204, ed. M. Whitby (Oxford, 2008), pp. 253–82.

28. Hamilton, ‘Crusades and North-East Africa’, 172. The historic contacts between Copts and Syrians are important to emphasise for supporting Michael’s ability to inform Amalric of the current affairs of the Coptic Church and its affiliates: J.-M. Fiey, ‘Coptes et Syriaques, contacts et échanges’, Studia Orientalia Christiana, Collectanea, 15 (1972–3), pp. 297–365.

29. For a detailed discussion of Michael and knowledge production, see D. Weltecke, The “Description of the Times” by Mōr Michael the Great (1126–1199: A Study on Its Historical and its Historiographical Context (Leuven, 2021).

30. See B. Z. Kedar, ‘Intellectual Activities in a Holy City: Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century’, in Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land: Proceedings of the International Conference in Memory of Joshua Prawer, eds. B. Z. Kedar and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 127–39.

31. RRH, no.500, pp. 131–2.

32. J. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchange in Acre, 1191–1291 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 139–67.

33. Seignobos, ‘L’autre Ethiopie’, pp. 53–5.

34. Raymond de Marseille, Opera Omnia, eds. D’Alverny, Burnett, and Poulle, 198.

35. H. von Mžik, Afrika nach der arabischen Bearbeitung der Гεωγραφικὴ ὑφήγησις des Claudius Ptolemaeus von Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Ḫwārizmī (Vienna, 1916), pp. 2–5.

36. Ristoro d’Arezzo, ‘La composizione del mondo’, in MCAA 4.1, pp. 1065–6 (text and trans.).

37. J. Chabás and B. R. Goldstein, A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages (Leiden, 2012), pp. 201–4.

38. Chabás and Goldstein, Survey of European Astronomical Tables, 201.

39. An edition of the text of al-Zuhrī was published in M. Hadj-Sadok, ‘Kitāb al-Dja‘rāfiyya: Mappemonde du calife al-Ma’mūn reproduite par Fazārī (IIIe/IXe s.) rééditée et commentée par Zuhrī (VIe/XIIe s.)’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales, 21 (1968), pp. 8–311; a study and Spanish translation of the Castilian text was conducted by D. Bramon, El mundo en el siglo XII: Estudio de la versión castellana y del “Original” Árabe de una geografía universal: “El Tratado de al-Zuhrī” (Barcelona, 1991).

40. J. Denbow, C. Klehm, and L. Dussubieux, ‘The Glass Beads of Kaitshàa and Early Indian Ocean Trade into the Far Interior of Southern Africa’, Antiquity, 89 (2015), pp. 361–77, esp. 362–3.

41. For example, see the accounts of Buzurg ibn Šahriyār, al-Masʿūdī, and al-Idrīsī in G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1962), pp. 9–13; 14–17; 19–20.

42. For example, both Neilos Doxapatrios and al-Idrīsī were active in Roger’s court, whilst al-Idrīsī was equally active in the following court of William I (r. 1154–66), Roger’s son, too. For the minimum information that these writers knew regarding Africa, see Neilos Doxapatrios, ‘Των Πατριαρχικων Φρονων’, in PG 132, col.1089; Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne par Edrīsī, eds. and trans. R. Dozy and M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1866).

43. D. Abulafia, ‘The End of Muslim Sicily’, in Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100–1300, ed. J. M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), 122. However, Roger was widely known to have had a keen interest in attaining knowledge and al-Idrīsī was said by his contemporaries to have enjoyed great favour with the king, which makes such limited external influence surprising: H. Houben, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West, trans. G. A. Loud and D. Milburn (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 102–6.

44. T. Lewicki, ‘Marino Sanudos Mappa mundi (1321) und die runde Weltkarte von Idrīsī (1154)’, Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 38 (1976), pp. 188–90.

45. Lewicki, ‘Marino Sanudos’, pp. 185–6.

46. For example, see C. Rouxpetel, ‘«Indiens, Éthiopiens et Nubiens» dans les récits de pèlerinage occidentaux: entre altérité constatée et altérité construite (XIIe-XIVe siècles)’, Annales d’Éthiopie, 27 (2012), pp. 71–90; C. Rouxpetel, L’Occident au miroir de l’Orient chrétien: Cilicie, Syrie, Palestine et Égypte (XII^e–XIV^e siècle) (Rome, 2015), pp. 104–6, 115–36. However, Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken supplied two distinct discussions of each group in her study of Latin Christian discussions of eastern groups in the Holy Land during the Crusading period: von den Brincken, Nationes, pp. 243–86.

47. Burchard’s text is recorded in Arnoldi, ‘Chronica Slavorum’, in MGH SS XXI, Book VII Ch. 8, pp. 237–8 (text); The Chronicle of Arnold of Lübeck, trans. G. A. Loud (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 275–7 (trans.); Abū al-Makārim, Tarīkh al-kanā ʾis wa-l-adyura, ed. S. al-Suryānī, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1984), I:24 (text); U. Zanetti, ‘Matarieh, la Sainte Famille et les Baumiers’, Analecta Bollandiana, 111 (1993), 36 (trans.). On dating al-Makārim’s text, see J. den Heijer, ‘Coptic Historiography in the Fāṭimid, Ayyūbid and Early Mamlūk Periods’, Medieval Encounters, 2.1 (1996), 78.

48. Chronique de Michel le Syrien, ed. Chabot, Book XVI Ch. 2, IV:608 (text). ܗܢܕܘܝܐ could mean Indians, but both Jean-Baptiste Chabot and Matti Moosa have translated this as Abyssinians/Ethiopians here: Chronique de Michel le Syrien, ed. Chabot, III:226 (trans.); Syriac Chronicle of Michael Rabo, trans. Moosa, 645 (trans.).

49. Theodoric, ‘Libellus de Locis Sanctis’, in Peregrinationes Tres. Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theodoricus, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1994), Ch. 8, 152 (text); ‘Theoderic’, in Wilkinson, Hill, and Ryan, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 282 (trans.).

50. Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, pp. I:78–9.

51. Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, I:58.

52. Johann Laurent wrongly corrected Jabeni to Jacobini in his edition of Burchard (hence Pringle’s translation), but the text should, as noted by Enrico Cerulli (Etiopi in Palestina, I:81), be read as Jabeni: Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Descriptio Terrae Sanctae’, in Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor: Burchardus de Monte Sion, Ricoldus de Monte Crucis, Odoricus de Foro Julii, Wibrandus de Oldenborg: Quorum duos nunc primum edidit, duos ad fidem librorum manuscriptorum, ed. J. C. M. Laurent (Leipzig, 1873), Book XIII Ch. 5, 89 (text); Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, trans. Pringle, 315 (trans.).

53. Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, pp. I:88–90; S. Munro-Hay, Ethiopia and Alexandria: The Metropolitan Episcopacy of Ethiopia (Warsaw, 1997), pp. 195–9.

54. Of the Ethiopian manuscripts in Jerusalem catalogued by Ephraim Isaac, only one may date to the fourteenth century but was listed as dating between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: E. Isaac, ‘Shelf List of Ethiopian Manuscripts in the Monasteries of the Ethiopian Patriarchate of Jerusalem’, RSE, 30 (1984–6), 67. There is no known other evidence, such as processional crosses, which predate the fourteenth century and attest to having a certain Jerusalem provenance.

55. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ed., Αναλεκτα ιεροσολυμιτικης σταχυολογιας, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1891–8), II:409; S. Lusignano, Chorograffia et breve historia universale dell’isola de Cipro principiando al tempo di Noè per in sino al 1572 (Bologna, 1573), pp. 34a, 46a; van Donzel, ‘Were There Ethiopians’.

56. Fratris Pauli Waltheri Guglingensis, Itinerarium in Terram Sanctam et ad Sanctam Catharinam, ed. M. Sollweck (Tübingen, 1892), 146. Hans Schiltberger, who wrote between the years 1394 and 1427, did describe witnessing participants from the ‘land of Prester John’, though without giving a specific land to directly connect these to either African group: Hans Schiltberger, Reisebuch, ed. V. Langmantel (Tübingen, 1885), Ch. 40, 73. It is difficult to say for certain, however, that either Nubians or Ethiopians would have participated in the ceremony at an earlier date in any case as certain Eastern Christians were known to show displeasure at the ceremony. For example, such as the Armenian Matthew of Edessa: Matthieu d’Édesse, ‘Extraits de la chronique II’, in RHC Doc. Arm. I, Chs. 25–6, pp. 61–8 (text); Armenia and the Crusades, trans. Dostourian, Part III Chs. 8–12, pp. 187–91 (trans.).

57. Sergew Hable Sellassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, 261.

58. Il Gadla Yemreḥanna Krestos, ed. and trans. P. Marrassini (Napoli, 1995), pp. 54–6 (text), 87–9 (trans.).

59. M.-L. Derat, ‘The Zāgwē Dynasty (11–13th Centuries) and King Yemreḥanna Krestos’, Annales d’Éthiopie, 25 (2010), pp. 174–81.

60. Derat, ‘The Zāgwē Dynasty’, pp. 176–7.

61. P. Jacob, ‘Etude analytique de l’inscription éthiopienne dans l’ermitage de Mar Assia (Mont-Liban, vallée de la Qadisha)’, Spéléorient, 1 (1996), pp. 35–8; R. J. Mouawad, ‘The Ethiopian Monks in Mount-Lebanon (XVth Century)’, Liban Souterrain, 5 (1998), pp. 186–207.

62. E. C. Dodd, The Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi: A Study in Medieval Painting in Syria (Toronto, 2001), pp. 19–22.

63. Paula and Eustochium, Letter XLVI to Marcella, in Hieronymus, Epistularum Pars I. Epistulae I-LXX, ed. I. Hilberg (Vienna, 1910), 340; St. Jerome, Letter CVII to Laeta, in Hieronymus, Epistularum Pars II. Epistulae LXXI-CXX, ed. I. Hilberg (Vienna, 1912), 292.

64. Antonini Placentini, ‘Itinerarium’, in Itinera Hierosolymitana saeculi VI-VIII, ed. P. Geyer (Vienna, 1898), 182 (text); J. Wilkinson, trans., Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), 87 (trans.).

65. Hygeburg, ‘Vita Willibaldi Episcopi Eichstetensis’, in MGH SS XV.i, pp. 100–1; ‘Hugeburc, Life of St. Willibald. Extracts’, in Wilkinson, trans., Jerusalem Pilgrims, 132.

66. For example, see R. Barkay, ‘An Axumite Coin from Jerusalem’, Israel Numismatic Journal, 5 (1981), pp. 57–9. There are also stylistic links with Jerusalem on the coins: W. Hahn, ‘Touto arese te chora – St. Cyril’s Holy Cross Cult in Jerusalem and Aksumite Coin Typology’, Israel Numismatic Journal, 13 (1999), pp. 103–17. Stuart Munro-Hay asserts that given the relatively few bronze and silver ʾAksumite coins found outside of Ethiopia, gold coins were primarily for external use: S. Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh, 1991), 184. However, the coin discussed by Barkay is bronze (also another bronze coin has been found at Caesarea), which, if Munro-Hay’s assessment is to be followed, the finding of such bronze coins would suggest that their owners were not primarily there for trade. In turn, they could be scant evidence for the presence of early pilgrims accompanied by their few goods and not traders concerned with the international markets.

67. G. Hatke, ‘Holy Land and Sacred History: A View from Early Ethiopia’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1000, eds. W. Pohl, C. Gantner, and R. Payne (Farnham, 2012), pp. 271–4.

68. C. Conti Rossini, ‘Aethiopica’, Rivista degli studi orientali, 9.3–4 (1922–3), pp. 461–2.

69. A. Obłuski, The Monasteries and Monks of Nubia, trans. D. Dzierzbicka (Warsaw, 2019), pp. 18–19, 132, 183.

70. J. Wilkinson, with J. Hill and W. F. Ryan, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 78–84.

71. A. Schall, ‘Ein äthiopischer Transkriptionstext in einer lateinischen Handschrift des 12. Jahrhunderts – Jerusalem als Mittler?’, in International Conference of Ethiopian Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference, Tel-Aviv, 14–17 April 1980, ed. G. Goldberg (Rotterdam, 1986), pp. 467–70.

72. Säyfä ʾArʿad (r.1344–72) sent an illuminated book of the Four Gospels to the community in Dayr al-Muharraq: H. Zotenberg, Manuscrits orientaux: Catalogue des manuscrits éthiopiens (gheez et amharique) de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris, 1877), 26. Yagbe’ä Sǝyon (r.1285–94) sent a gift of red silk and a hundred candles and ʿÄmdä Ṣǝyon (r.1314–44) sent a copy of the Book of Kings to the community in Jerusalem: Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, pp. I:88–90; Grébaut and Tisserant, Codices Aethiopici, pp. 782–7.

73. Zotenberg, Manuscrits orientaux, pp. 56–7.

74. On the churches, see M.-L. Derat, L’énigme d’une dynastie sainte, pp. 163–90.

75. Derat, L’énigme d’une dynastie sainte, pp. 182–90.

76. Derat, L’énigme d’une dynastie sainte pp. 185–6.

77. Temporibus meis Nubiani nondum habuerunt locum, quibus Soldanus fecit fieri capellam specialem: Ludolphi rectoris ecclesiae parochialis in Suchem, de itinere terre sanctae liber, ed. F. Deycks (Tübingen, 1851), Ch. 37, 72 (text);); Ludolph von Suchem’s Description of the Holy Land, and the Way Thither: Written in the Year A.D. 1350, trans. A. Stewart (London, 1895), 95 (trans.).

78. S. De Sandoli, The Peaceful Liberation of the Holy Places in the XIV Century (Cairo, 1990), pp. 54–5.

79. Liber Peregrinationis, ed. Monneret de Villard, Ch. 2, 32.

80. Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, I:220; Liber Peregrinationis, ed. Monneret de Villard, Ch. 3, 39; Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’oltramare, ed. A. Bacchi della Lega, 2 vols. (Bologna, 1968), Ch. 32, pp. I:94–5 (text); Niccolò da Poggibonsi, A Voyage Beyond the Seas (1346–1350), trans. T. Bellorini and E. Hoade (Jerusalem, 1945), 22 (trans.). Men from Etiopia are later explicitly stated as worshipping in the chapel on Mount Calvary: Ch. 40, pp. I:116–17; Ludolphi rectoris, ed. Deycks, Ch. 38, 78 (text); Description, trans. Stewart, 103 (trans.); The Three Kings of Cologne: An Early English Translation of the “Historia Trium Regum” by John of Hildesheim, ed. C. Horstmann (London, 1886), Ch. 36, 263.

81. Guide-Book to Palestine (circ. A.D. 1350), trans. J. H. Bernard (London, 1894), Ch. 43, 9.

82. H. Kugler, S. Glauch, and A. Willing, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, 2 vols. (Berlin, 2007), I:54.

83. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, ‘Chronica’, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS XXIII, 935; Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Descriptio Terrae Sanctae’, in Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor, ed. Laurent, pp. Prologus, 20, Book XIII Ch. 5, 89 (text); Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, trans. Pringle, pp. 242, 315 (trans.).

84. On Crusader State-Alexandrian exchange, see D. Jacoby, ‘Acre-Alexandria: A Major Commercial Axis of the Thirteenth Century’, in “Come l’orco della fiaba”: Studi per Franco Cardini, ed. M. Montesano (Florence, 2010), pp. 151–67; N. Christie, ‘Cosmopolitan Trade Centre or Bone of Contention? Alexandria and the Crusades, 487–857/1095–1454’, Al-Masāq, 26.1 (2014), pp. 49–61.

85. Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. and trans. Adler, Alexandria, קו (text), 76 (trans.); Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs: texte français du XIIIe siècle, ed. P. Paris, 2 vols. (Paris, 1879–80), pp. II:298–9; Ambrosius Zeebout, Tvoyage van Mher Joos van Ghistele, ed. R. J. G. A. A. Gaspar (Hilversum, 1998), Book III Ch. 34, 214; O. Raineri, ‘I doni della Serenissima al re Davide I d’Etiopia (ms Raineri 43 della Vaticana)’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 65 (1999), pp. 368, 390–1.

86. A. Tsakos, ‘On Place Names Used by Nubians for Places Outside Nubia (Notes on Medieval Nubian Toponymy 2)’, Dotawo, 4 (2017), pp. 232–6.

87. Bishop Martyros, ‘Multi-Cultured Monks in Wadi al-Natrun’, in Actes du huitième congrès internationale d’Études coptes: Paris, 28 juin – 3 juillet 2004, eds. N. Bosson and A. Boud’hors, 2 vols. (Leuven, 2007); pp. I:118–19; B. al-Suriany, ‘Identification of the Monastery of the Nubians in Wadi al-Natrun’, in Christianity and Monasticism in Aswan and Nubia, eds. G. Gabra and H. N. Takla (Cairo, 2013), pp. 257–64; H. G. Evelyn White, The Monasteries of the Wādi ʿl Natrūn, 3 vols. (New York, 1972), pp. II:366, 368.

88. HPEC II.III, pp. 327–8.

89. For example, a Nubian community was recorded between Cairo and Babylon in the middle of the fourteenth century: Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’oltramare, ed. Bacchi della Lega, Ch. 187, II:82 (text); Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Voyage, trans. Bellorini and Hoade, 94 (trans.).

90. Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatini’‚ ed. Hoogeweg, Ch. 59, 262 (text); Oliver of Paderborn, Capture of Damietta, trans. Gavigan, 117 (trans.).

91. G. R. Ruffini, ‘Monetization Across the Nubian Border: A Hypothetical Model’, in The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers: From the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea, ed. A. Asa Eger (Louisville, 2019), pp. 105–18, esp. 109–10.

92. London, British Museum, Or. MS 6805 (a manuscript of the Miracle of St. Menas from Edfu which may date to as late as the twelfth century, with an accompanying text of the (Pseudo-)Nicene Canons written in a different hand); DBMNT 1148 (an ostrakon from Qena containing Old Nubian words with Coptic translations, possibly dating as late as the eleventh century).

93. V. J. W. van Gerven Oei, ‘The Old Nubian Memorial for King George’, in Nubian Voices, eds. Łajtar and van der Vliet, 226.

94. See A. Simmons, ‘Red Sea Entanglement: Initial Latin European Intellectual Development Regarding Nubia and Ethiopia during the Twelfth Century’, Entangled Religions, 11.5 (2020), DOI: 10.46586/er.11.2020.8826.

95. On Mubāraka, see F. Bauden, ‘Lʼachat dʼesclaves et la rédemption des captifs a Alexandrie dʼapres deux documents arabes dʼépoque mamelouke conserves aux Archives de lʼÉtat a Venise (ASVe).’ in Regards croises sur le Moyen Age: Melanges a la memoire de Louis Pouzet S.J. (1928–2002), eds. A.-M. Eddé and E. Gannagé (Beirut, 2005), pp. 271–304. A warrant for an escaped ‘Ethiopian’ ‘Saracen’ slave named Bartholomew, for instance, was recorded in 1259 in England: Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry III: Volume 5, 1258–1266, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (London, 1910), 28.

96. Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica dos feitos notáveis que se passaram na conquista de Guiné por mandado do infante D. Henrique, ed. T. de Sousa Soares, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1978–81), Ch. 24, I:106 (text); Gomez Eannes de Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, trans. C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage, 2 vols. (London, 1896–9), I:80 (trans.).

97. Nevertheless, examples of slaves as sources of knowledge within the ancient Greek and early modern Atlantic contexts has produced increasing discussion of this phenomenon, which is likely to be replicable here. For instance, see K. S. Murphy, ‘Translating the Vernacular: Indigenous and African Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic’, Atlantic Studies, 8.1 (2011), pp. 29–48; D. Brixius, ‘From Ethnobotany to Emancipation: Slaves, Plant Knowledge, and Gardens on Eighteenth-Century Isle de France’, History of Science, 58.1 (2020), pp. 51–75; T. Harrison, ‘Classical Greek Ethnography and the Slave Trade’, Classical Antiquity, 38.1 (2019), pp. 52–3.

98. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, ‘Chronica’, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS XXIII, 886.

99. ‘Annales Colmariensis Maiores’, ed. P. Jaffé, in MGH SS XVII, 209.

100. For many examples, see Bindman and Gates, eds., Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. II.

101. H. E. Mayer and J. Richard, Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, 4 vols. (Hannover, 2010), no.652, III:1075, no.654, III:1092, no.657, III:1099. See also his appearance in a letter dated to 1243: no.697, III:1200. ‘Nubie’ also appears as ‘Nubre’, though no clearer explanation can be gained by this other name either.

102. RRH, no. 378, 99.

103. Its most common variations were Betenoble, Bet(t)enuble, Betenopolis, Bethnoble, Betinubilum, or Nobe: D. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A corpus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1993–2009), no. 34, pp. I:102–3.

104. The first of these people appears in the record simply as R. Niger as a witness in 1145 who may or may not be the same as the Robertus Niger who bore witness to two letters in 1170s. Interestingly, Robertus appears alongside a certain Nicolaus Manzur, further highlighting the pluralistic make-up of the court retinue who took Latinised names (Reinhard Röhricht did index both R. and Robertus as the same person: RRH, pp. 59–60, 132–3, 148). In addition, two different William Nigers (Guillelmus and Willelmus) appear as witnesses to letters in 1147 and 1154 and 1204, respectively (RRH, pp. 62, 72, 213–14). The most commonly recurring men are the brothers, Adam and Fulco Niger. They appear no less than nine times together between c.1151 and 1171 (RRH, pp. 69, 79, 86, 96, 97, 103–4, 128; supplementum, pp. 23–4). Fulco appears a further two times in 1159 and 1167 as a witness without his brother (RRH, pp. 88, 113). One of the letters, dated 1163, even notes the selling of land to the Hospitallers in Jerusalem by Adam, his wife Osmunda, their two sons, Bertinus and Robertus, and their daughter, Maholdis, and included Fulco amongst the witnesses (RRH, pp. 103–4). It is clear that both Adam and Fulco, in particular, held notable positions within mid-twelfth-century Crusader society.

105. The term ‘Mediterranean African Society’ was used by Giovanni Ruffini as the premise of his book Medieval Nubia. For references to these Nubian populations, see Simmons, ‘A Note’.

106. Robert of Clari, La Conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. J. Dufournet (Paris, 2004), Ch. 54, 130 (text); Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople Translated From the Old French of Robert of Clari, trans. E. H. McNeal (New York, 1969), pp. 79–80 (trans.).

107. The plausible identification of the figure as Moüses Georgios has already previously been made by Giovanni Ruffini: Ruffini, Medieval Nubia, 251. An unspecified Nubian identification had previously been made by Bożena Rostkowska and Gianfranco Fiaccadori: Rostkowska, ‘Visit of a Nubian King’; G. Fiaccadori, ‘Un re di Nubia a Constantinopoli nel 1203’, Scrinium, 1.1 (2005), pp. 43–9.

108. B. Hendrickx, ‘Un roi Africain à Constantinople en 1203’, Byzantina, 13.2 (1985), pp. 896–7. For some recent examples, all of which rely on Hendrickx, see F. van Tricht, The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium: The Empire of Constantinople (1204–1228) (Leiden, 2011), 130n111 (possibly Lalibäla); A. Kaldellis, Ethnography After Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2013), 35 (possibly Lalibäla, though identified as a Nubian prince); R. Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 2020), 174 (Lalibäla or an unknown Nubian ruler).

109. On these events, see N. N. Ambraseys and C. P. Melville, ‘An Analysis of the Eastern Mediterranean Earthquake of 20 May 1202’, in Historical Seismograms and Earthquakes of the World, eds. W. H. K. Lee, H. Meyers, and K. Shimazaki (San Diego, 1988), pp. 181–200; M. R. Sbeinati, R. Darawcheh and M. Mouty, ‘The Historical Earthquakes of Syria: An Analysis of Large and Moderate Earthquakes from 1365 B.C. to 1900 A.D.’, Annals of Geophysics 48.3 (2005), pp. 389–91; F. A. Hassan, ‘Extreme Nile Floods and Famines in Medieval Egypt (AD 930–1500) and their Climatic Implications’, Quaternary International, 173–4 (2007), pp. 103–5; Y. Lev, ‘Famines in Medieval Egypt: Natural and Man-Made’, Leidschrift: Verraderlijke rijkdom. Economische crisis als historisch fenomeen, 28 (2013), pp. 61–3.

110. Eustathii Thessalonicensis Opera Minora, ed. P. Wirth (Berlin, 2000), pp. 263–4 (text).

111. ‘Vita et miracula Eustathii’, ed. Turaiev, pp. III:f.45–6 (text); Saints fondateurs, trans. Colin with Robin and Derat, pp. 151–2 (trans.); Acta Marqorēwos, ed. and Latin trans. C. Conti Rossini, Versio and Textus (Leuven, 1904), pp. Textus: 31 (text), Versio: 43 (Latin trans.); ‘Vita et miracula Eustathii’, Monumenta Aethiopiae Hagiologica, ed. Turaiev, pp. III:f.54–58 (text); Saints fondateurs, trans. Colin with Robin and Derat, pp. 211–5 (trans.); Philippe de Mézières, The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. J. Smet (Rome, 1954), Book I Ch. 3, pp. 99–100; T. Borowski, ‘In the Midst of Enemies?: Material Evidence for the Existence of Maritime Cultural Networks Connecting Fourteenth-Century Famagusta with Overseas Regions in Europe, Africa and Asia’, in Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries, ed. M. J. K. Walsh (Leiden, 2019), pp. 103–6.

112. Francesco Maria Torrigio, Le sacre Grotte vaticane (Rome, 1635), 125. On the church, see: D. V. Proverbio, ‘Santo Stefano degli Abissini. Una breve rivisitazione’, La parola del passato: Rivista di studi antichi, 66 (2011), pp. 50–68.

113. K. Brewer, Prester John: The Legend and Its Sources (Farnham, 2015), pp. 93 (text), 96 (trans.). In relation to the 1177 letter, Bernard Hamilton has posited that the letter was in response to the ‘letter’ of Prester John circling in Latin Europe, whilst also casting doubts on Alexander’s seriousness: B. Hamilton, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, eds. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), pp. 188–90; Hamilton, ‘Lands of Prester John’, 133.

114. Ochała, ‘Multilingualism’; H. M. Attiya, ‘Knowledge of Arabic in the Crusader States in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, JMH, 25.3 (1999), pp. 203–13. Arabic inscriptions are attested in Ethiopia from at least the tenth century, though the role of Arabic in the Christian community is not overly understood. However, the use of toponyms such as Bandǝqya (Venice), a clear understanding of the Arabic Bunduqya, and the apparent similar development of the ethnonym färänğ to refer to all Latin Europeans, such as the later Portuguese, which similarly developed in Arabic from a localised ethnonym to refer to the French to a continental toponym during the previous centuries, would appear to equally attest to an intimate Ethiopian knowledge of Arabic: Raineri, ‘I doni della Serenissima’, pp. 364, 391–3; D. G. König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2015), pp. 208, 211–21.

115. See C. Aslanov, ‘Languages in Contact in the Latin East: Acre and Cyprus’, Crusades, 1 (2002), pp. 155–81. The same can also be evidenced in the reverse: C. Aslanov, Evidence of Francophony in Mediaeval Levant: Decipherment and Interpretation, MS BnF 43 (Jerusalem, 2006).

116. For example, K. A. Tuley, ‘Multilingualism and Power in the Latin East’, in Multilingualism in the Middles Ages and Early Modern Age: Communication and Miscommunication in the Premodern World, ed. A. Classen (Berlin, 2016), pp. 177–206.

117. The Qasr Ibrim Archive at the British Museum, P.QI inv. 74.1.29/7A; Ruffini, Medieval Nubia, pp. 262–3.

118. On Italians in Egypt during this time, see D. Jacoby, ‘Les Italiens en Égypte aux XII^e et XIII^e siècles: du comptoir à la colonie?’, in Coloniser au Moyen Âge, eds. M. Balard and A. Ducellier (Paris, 1995), pp. 76–89.

119. J. D. Bonvillian, V. L. Ingram, and B. M. McCleary, ‘Observations on the Use of Manual Signs and Gestures in the Communicative Interactions between Native Americans and Spanish Explorers of North America: The Accounts of Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’, Sign Language Studies, 9.2 (2009), pp. 132–65; M. Tymowski, Europeans and Africans: Mutual Discoveries and First Encounters (Leiden, 2020), pp. 63–83.

120. L. Bragg, ‘Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education’, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2.1 (1997), pp. 1–25.

121. N. Jorga, ‘Cenni sulle relazioni tra l’Abissinia e l’Europa cattolica nel secoli XIV–XV, con un iterario inedito del Secolo XV’, in Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari, vol. 1 (Palermo, 1910), pp. 139–50 (text); O. G. S. Crawford, ed., The Ethiopian Itineraries Circa 1400–1524 Including Those Collected by Alessandro Zorzi at Venice in the Years 1519–1524 (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 28–39 (trans.). For context, see F.-C. Muth, ‘Eine arabisch-äthiopische Wort- und Satzliste aus Jerusalem vom 15. Jahrhundert’, Afriques, 1 (2010), https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/535

122. Itinerarium, ed. and trans. Esposito, Ch. 79, pp. 96–9.

123. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’oltramare, ed. Bacchi della Lega, Ch. 36, pp. I:107–8 (text); Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Voyage, trans. Bellorini and Hoade, 25 (trans.).

124. Acta capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. B. M. Reichert, vol. 1 (Rome, 1898), 9. The systematic study of Gəʿəz largely began with Johannes Potken and Thomas Wäldä Samu’el’s Psalterium Aethiopicum (Rome, 1513).

125. Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in terram sanctam: Eine Pilgerrreise ins Heilige Land. Frühneuhochdeutscher Text und Übersetzung, ed. and trans. I. Mozer (Berlin, 2010), fig. 20; Die Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff von Cöln durch Italien, Syrien, Aegypten, Arabien, Aethiopien, Nubien, Palästina, due Türkei, Frankreich und Spanien, wie er sie in den Jahren 1496 bis 1499, ed. E. von Groote (Cologne, 1860), 152.

126. Robert of Clari, La Conquête, ed. and trans. Dufournet, Ch. 54, 130 (text); Robert of Clari, Conquest, trans. McNeal, pp. 79–80 (trans.).

127. Such as the case of Apa Dioscorus noted above. See examples in Obłuski, Monasteries and Monks.

128. RRH, pp. 103–4.

129. Kelly, ‘Medieval Ethiopian Diasporas’, in A Companion, ed. Kelly, pp. 432–3.

130. Ludolph von Sudheim, ‘De itinere Terre Sancte’, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, Pars I Ch. 7, ed. G. A. Neumann, in AOrLat, II: pp. 352–3.

131. Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre with Part of the Eracles or Acre Text, trans. J. Shirley (Aldershot, 1999), 64n2.

132. For the use of literary texts as Crusade propaganda and, by extension, continual memory more generally, see S. Vander Elst, The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100–1400 (Philadelphia, 2017). Equally, Crusade lyric was manufactured for a variety of reasons, which, for our purposes, all served to propagate sustained interest in Godfrey and Baldwin, even if only as a by-product of their inclusion in such works; for just one set of examples for the relationship between song and Crusade, see M. Galvez, The Subject of Crusade: Lyric, Romance, and Materials, 1150 to 1500 (Chicago, 2020).

133. Matthew 3:11: ‘I baptise you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire’. On Nubian scarification, see Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. and trans. Donnadieu, Ch. 76, pp. 308–9 (text and trans.); Robert of Clari, La Conquête, ed. and trans. Dufournet, Ch. 54, 130 (text); Robert of Clari, Conquest, trans. McNeal, pp. 79–80 (trans.); Oliver of Paderborn, ‘Historia Damiatini’, ed. Hoogeweg, Ch. 62, 264 (text); Oliver of Paderborn, Capture of Damietta, trans. Gavigan, 119 (trans.); Benoit d’Alignan, ‘Tractatus super erroribus quos citra et ultra mare invenimus’, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 4224, f.399v; Itinerarium, ed. and trans. Esposito, Chs. 71–2, pp. 90–3. On Ethiopian scarification, see Koppitz, ‘Magistri Thietmari Peregrenatioʼ, Ch. 49, 170 (text); Thietmar, ‘Pilgrimage (1217–18)’, in Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, trans. Pringle, 130 (trans.); Marco Polo, Description, eds. and trans. Moule and Pelliot, Ch. 193, 435; ‘Letter from Niccolò di Gagliano to Corrado Bojani, dated 5th August 1404’, in V. Lazzarini, ‘Un’ambasciata etiopica in Italia nel 1404’, Atti del Reale Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 83, 1923–4 (1924), 842. Similarly, Leonardo Frescobaldi lists the varying scarification practices of Eastern Christians in the latter half of the fourteenth century, including Nubians and Ethiopians, though he does not specifically identify which practice belongs to which group: Leonardo Frescobaldi, ‘Viaggio in Terrasanta’, in Pellegrini Scrittori, eds. Lanza and Troncarelli, Ch. 77, pp. 182–3.

134. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’oltramare, ed. Bacchi della Lega, Ch. 35, pp. I:103–4 (text); Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Voyage, trans. Bellorini and Hoade, 24 (trans.).

135. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’oltramare, ed. Bacchi della Lega, Ch. 187, II:82 (text); Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Voyage, trans. Bellorini and Hoade, 94 (trans.).