What do you think?
Rate this book
A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea
The fifteen essays in A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea offer an interdisciplinary overview of Ethiopia-Eritreas Christian, Islamic, and local-religious societies, in their inter-regional context, from circa the 7th to the mid-16th century.
- GenresEthiopia
606 pages, ebook
Published February 3, 2020
1 person is currently reading
31 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 22, 2025
I first began reading this collection of essays as research for a video script I was writing about the history of Islam in the Horn of Africa (which I'm uncertain will ever see the light of day; it was for someone else's YouTube channel), and decided to round out my reading of the non-Islamic essays after the fact.
This is a very valuable source for the medieval history of a part of the world that I personally am fascinated with and that deserves much more attention. Restricting itself to roughly the area of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea (i.e. not including most of Somalia), and to the period of roughly the 500s-1500s (although the lack of good sources means that in some instances chapters touch on subject matter that goes into the Gondarine period in the 17th-18th centuries), the collection surveys a wide range of topics written by a wide range of scholars. As a result, it is very uneven in terms of readability (I love dry historical works but academicese is a scourge), but the depth and nuance involved is fairly consistent. I'm personally best equipped to judge the value of the chapters on Islam (chapter 4, "The Sultanates of Medieval Ethiopia," chapter 6, "Islamic Cultural Traditions of Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea," and chapter 16, "The Muslim-Christian Wars and the Oromo Expansion: Transformations at the End of the Middle Ages (ca. 1500-ca. 1560)"), which were all some of the best writing on the topic that I've genuinely ever read. Of other chapters, especial highlights included chapter 2, "Before the Solomonids: Crisis, Renaissance and the Emergence of the Zagwe Dynasty (Seventh-Thirteenth Centuries," chapter 5, "Of Conversion and Conversation: Followers of Local Religions in Medieval Ethiopia," chapter 13, "Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia," chapter 14, "Medieval Ethiopian Economies: Subsistence, Global Trade and the Administration of Wealth," and chapter 15, "Medieval Ethiopian Diasporas." Those last three also touched on Islamicate topics that fell under the umbrella of their respective subject matter. The chapters on the Ethiopian church, monasticism, manuscript culture, and art and architecture had moments of interest and are definitely worth reading, but mostly went over my head... I can't in my right mind say they were less valuable than the other chapters I mention, but I just can't comment really.
I write about the chapters individually because in many respects, while this does present the complete whole of the state of scholarship on Medieval Ethiopia as of the 2020s, each chapter stands on its own completely independent of the others. This is a collection through and through, and I figure most readers and researchers will just want to read the chapter(s) most relevant to their needs. Which is, of course, what the purpose of the companion is! However, the chapters I specified above (which, admittedly, make up the majority of the book!) are all incredible, and I want to dive into their respective bibliographies into the future (especially the stuff on economic history, which I haven't really delved into before now).
This is a very valuable source for the medieval history of a part of the world that I personally am fascinated with and that deserves much more attention. Restricting itself to roughly the area of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea (i.e. not including most of Somalia), and to the period of roughly the 500s-1500s (although the lack of good sources means that in some instances chapters touch on subject matter that goes into the Gondarine period in the 17th-18th centuries), the collection surveys a wide range of topics written by a wide range of scholars. As a result, it is very uneven in terms of readability (I love dry historical works but academicese is a scourge), but the depth and nuance involved is fairly consistent. I'm personally best equipped to judge the value of the chapters on Islam (chapter 4, "The Sultanates of Medieval Ethiopia," chapter 6, "Islamic Cultural Traditions of Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea," and chapter 16, "The Muslim-Christian Wars and the Oromo Expansion: Transformations at the End of the Middle Ages (ca. 1500-ca. 1560)"), which were all some of the best writing on the topic that I've genuinely ever read. Of other chapters, especial highlights included chapter 2, "Before the Solomonids: Crisis, Renaissance and the Emergence of the Zagwe Dynasty (Seventh-Thirteenth Centuries," chapter 5, "Of Conversion and Conversation: Followers of Local Religions in Medieval Ethiopia," chapter 13, "Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia," chapter 14, "Medieval Ethiopian Economies: Subsistence, Global Trade and the Administration of Wealth," and chapter 15, "Medieval Ethiopian Diasporas." Those last three also touched on Islamicate topics that fell under the umbrella of their respective subject matter. The chapters on the Ethiopian church, monasticism, manuscript culture, and art and architecture had moments of interest and are definitely worth reading, but mostly went over my head... I can't in my right mind say they were less valuable than the other chapters I mention, but I just can't comment really.
I write about the chapters individually because in many respects, while this does present the complete whole of the state of scholarship on Medieval Ethiopia as of the 2020s, each chapter stands on its own completely independent of the others. This is a collection through and through, and I figure most readers and researchers will just want to read the chapter(s) most relevant to their needs. Which is, of course, what the purpose of the companion is! However, the chapters I specified above (which, admittedly, make up the majority of the book!) are all incredible, and I want to dive into their respective bibliographies into the future (especially the stuff on economic history, which I haven't really delved into before now).
Displaying 1 of 1 review