St. George (13th century), one of the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Established on the high plateaus of the Horn of Africa, near the western coasts of the Red Sea, the kingdom of Aksum imposed itself from the I st century AD. AD as a trading partner in the great trade linking the regions of the Mediterranean with those of the Indian Ocean. At IV th century, the ruler of this Ethiopian state converted to Christianity, the religion of the merchants who frequented its shores. The Church of Ethiopia then entered the bosom of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, receiving an archbishop consecrated among the Egyptian monks. Churches rise on the territory, while the obelisks, which testified until then to the power of the sovereigns and their desire to commemorate their reign after their death, are abandoned. During VI e century, the kingdom of Aksum reached its peak, to the point that it was able to intervene in neighboring Yemen, in the kingdom of Himyar, to defend the Christian communities and impose an Ethiopian viceroy. Rise of Islam But the development of Islam and the Arab conquests lead to the loss of the trade monopoly in the Red Sea and lead the Christian kingdom to a slow decline, documented by looting of which the city of Aksum is the first victim:the giant obelisk which lies broken in three pieces collapsed because grave robbers undermined its foundations in the 7th century century. A few outbursts of the Aksumite armies, towards the ports of Shuaiba and Jeddah, in the 7th th century and at the very beginning of the VIII th century, testify to the kingdom's efforts to loosen the noose in the Red Sea, but without success. Then begins a very poorly documented period in Ethiopia. Some inscriptions and traces in the accounts of Arab geographers of the 10th th century only allow to estimate that revolts led by a queen against the kingdom of Axum are at the origin of the assassination of the Christian king and the destruction of churches. From this period, Christianization and Islamization took place simultaneously in the Horn of Africa, sometimes in symbiosis, often interdependent from a political and economic point of view, but also sometimes in opposition. Muslim communities settle on the highlands to meet a reborn Christian kingdom, to trade. Funerary steles are today the only witnesses of their presence. They show a community made up of merchants from the regions bordering the Red Sea:the Dahlak Islands, as well as the gold and emerald mining region of the eastern Sudanese desert, or the regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Sultanates are organized around cities which have a justice administered by cadis and which settle along the trade routes leading to the Christian kingdom. In the orbit of Egypt At the same time, after periods of trouble, a Christian power manages to regain contact with the Patriarchate of Alexandria. The rupture of the link between Egypt and Ethiopia during the 10th century century seems to have directly threatened the survival of the Christian community. X e in the XII th century, Egypt was under Fatimid domination, and the Patriarch of Alexandria took no decision without the agreement of the vizier. Everyone is trying to defend their co-religionists in Ethiopian lands. A kind of balance is gradually set up during this period. The patriarch manages to regularly send embassies with an archbishop to the Christian king. In return, the king must send gifts and pledges to the Egyptian power regarding the safety of Muslim merchants on his lands and the construction of mosques. For his part, the Christian king threatens to attack the Muslims of his kingdom if the Copts are worried in Egypt. These threats are sometimes carried out:an Ethiopian king of the twelfth th century leads a real war of conquest against the community of Muslim merchants in the north of the kingdom, seizes their property and captures the entire population, who must now work on the lands of the church he founded. A relative peace is established, based on an economic symbiosis between the Christian power controlling access to the resources of the high plateau (gold, ivory, slaves) and the Muslim powers controlling the transport routes between these high plateaus and the ribs. This diplomatic game, however, establishes a relative peace, based on an economic symbiosis between the Christian power controlling access to the resources of the high plateau (gold, ivory, slaves) and the Muslim powers controlling the transport routes between these high plateaus and the ribs. These two worlds meet regularly in market towns. Matrimonial unions sealed the alliances between the Christian kingdom and the Muslim sultanates, sultanates which, from the 14 th century, gradually became dependent on the Christian state, with the negus even regularly intervening in successions. A few clashes remind us that these positions are under constant negotiation. But, at the beginning of the XVI th century, the situation changed. After decades of Christian tutelage, a new political class is emerging within one of the sultanates which wishes to break with this system. She finds her providential man in Ahmed ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, proclaimed imam and free of any family ties with the dynasties of sultans. He managed to form a composite army which, from 1531, first reconquered the Muslim territories that had passed under the influence of the Christian kingdom, then set out to conquer the latter. The negus and his armies were forced to flee until the balance of power shifted with the help of a Portuguese contingent, and when the imam died in 1543, Christian troops succeeded in reconquering territories lost in the jihad. Thus begins a reconstruction of the Christian kingdom, profoundly transformed by this conflict. Find out more The enigma of a holy and usurping dynasty in the 11th century Christian kingdom of Ethiopia in the XIII th century, by Marie-Laure Derat, Brepols, 2018. Other beliefs The religions practiced in the kingdom of Aksum before Christianization are still poorly known:worship of the serpent, gods of the Earth and the Stars, worship of a Lord of the sky, which evoke both a religious atmosphere close to -oriental and deeply vernacular aspects. There was undoubtedly the coexistence of several religious pantheons, and these beliefs continued with Christianization and Islamization. One thus finds on a large part of the high plateaus of immense burial mounds, dated between the XI e and the XIV th century; they testify to funerary practices that are neither Christian nor Muslim. But to what cult can we attach them? This is a question that is still impossible to answer. From the XIV th century, the documentation also mentions Jews rebelling against the Christian king of Ethiopia. Referred to pejoratively as the Falashas (the "exiles"), because they have no right to inherit the land, the Jews of Ethiopia were excluded from the best perceived professions and pushed back to the peripheral regions. . A large number of them immigrated to Israel during the XX th century.
