page_title: Ethiopian historiography
section_title: Conflict and interaction with foreign powers
hierarchical_section_title: Ethiopian historiography / Early Modern historiography / Conflict and interaction with foreign powers
caption_attribution_description: English: Illuminated manuscript from Aksum showing two scribes.
context_page_description: Ethiopian historiography includes the ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern disciplines of recording the history of Ethiopia, including both native and foreign sources. The roots of Ethiopian historical writing can be traced back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum. These early texts were written in either the Ethiopian Ge'ez script or the Greek alphabet, and included a variety of mediums such as manuscripts and epigraphic inscriptions on monumental stelae and obelisks documenting contemporary events. The writing of history became an established genre in Ethiopian literature during the early Solomonic dynasty. In this period, written histories were usually in the form of royal biographies and dynastic chronicles, supplemented by hagiographic literature and universal histories in the form of annals. Christian mythology became a linchpin of medieval Ethiopian historiography due to works such as the Orthodox Kebra Nagast. This reinforced the genealogical traditions of Ethiopia's Solomonic dynasty rulers, which asserted that they were descendants of Solomon, the legendary King of Israel.
context_section_description: During the 16th century the Ethiopian biographical tradition became far more complex, intertextual, and broader in its view of the world given Ethiopia's direct involvement in the conflicts between the Ottoman and Portuguese empires in the Red Sea region. The annals of Dawit II (r. 1508–1540) describe the defensive war he waged against the Adal sultan Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (r. 1527–1543), in an episodic format quite different from the earlier chronicling tradition. The chronicle of Gelawdewos, perhaps written by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church abbot Enbaqom (1470–1560), is far more detailed than any previous Ethiopian work of history. It explains the Ethiopian emperor's military alliance with Cristóvão da Gama (1516–1542), son of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, against the Adal Sultan al-Ghazi and his Ottoman allies, and later against the Ottoman governor of Yemen, Özdemir Pasha (d. 1560).
  The biography of Galawdewos' brother and successor Menas of Ethiopia (r. 1559–1563) is divided into two parts, one dedicated to his life before taking the throne and the other to his troubled reign fighting against rebels. His chronicle was completed by the biographers of his successor Sarsa Dengel (r. 1563–1597). The latter's chronicle can be considered an epic cycle for its preface describing events in previous eras mixed with biblical allusions. It also describes conflicts against rebel nobility allied with the Ottomans as well as a military campaign against Ethiopian Jews.
  By the 16th century Ethiopian works began to discuss the profound impact of foreign peoples in their own regional history. The chronicle of Gelawdewos explained the friction between the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Catholic missionaries from Spain and Portugal, after the arrival of the Jesuits in 1555. With the persuasion of Jesuits in his realm, emperor Susenyos I (r. 1607–1632) became the only Ethiopian ruler to convert from Orthodox Christianity to Catholicism, perhaps earlier than the accepted date of 1625, after which his attempts to convert his subjects and undermine the Orthodox church led to internal revolts. In 1593 the Ethiopian monk, historian, and ethnographer Bahrey published a work of ethnography that provided reasoning for the military success of the Oromo people who fought against the Ethiopian Empire. Ethiopian histories of this period also included details of foreign Muslims, Jews, Christians (including those from Western Europe), Safavid Iranians, and even figures of the fallen Byzantine Empire.
  Pedro Paez (1564–1622), a Spanish Jesuit at the court of Susenyos I, translated portions of the chronicles of Ethiopian emperors stretching back to the reign of Amda Seyon I in the 14th century AD, as well as the reign of king Kaleb of Axum in the 6th century AD. Some of these fragments were preserved in the Historia de Ethiopia by the Portuguese Jesuit Manuel de Almeida (1580–1646), but Paez's original manuscript was largely rewritten to remove polemical passages against the rival Dominican Order. Paez also translated a chapter from an Ethiopian hagiography that covered the life and works of the 13th-century ruler Gebre Mesqel Lalibela. The Historia de Ethiopia, which arrived in Goa, India, by the end of 1624, was not published in Europe until the modern era and remained in circulation only among members of the Society of Jesus in Portuguese India, although Almeida's map of Ethiopia was published by Baltasar Teles in 1660. Following the abdication of Susenyos I, his son and successor Fasilides (r. 1632–1667) had the Jesuits expelled from Ethiopia.
caption: Early 18th century manuscript illumination from Aksum showing two scribes.
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