Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe / Book / Oku

Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe

by Verena Krebs

To ReadSave for later

ReadingMark as reading

ReadMark as finished

Description

This book explores why Ethiopian kings pursued long-distance diplomatic contacts with Latin Europe in the late Middle Ages. It traces the history of more than a dozen embassies dispatched to the Latin West by the kings of Solomonic Ethiopia, a powerful Christian kingdom in the medieval Horn of Africa. Drawing on sources from Europe, Ethiopia, and Egypt, it examines the Ethiopian kings' motivations for sending out their missions in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries - and argues that a desire to acquire religious treasures and foreign artisans drove this early intercontinental diplomacy. Moreover, the Ethiopian initiation of contacts with the distant Christian sphere of Latin Europe appears to have been intimately connected to a local political agenda of building monumental ecclesiastical architecture in the North-East African highlands, and asserted the Ethiopian rulers' claim of universal kingship and rightful descent from the biblical king Solomon. Shedding new light on the ...

Details

Pages

325

Released

March 18th 2021

ISBN

9783030649333

Rating

More ratings needed

Be one of the first to rate this book on Oku

    5/5 on Goodreads