Interactions in Medieval Ethiopia: Ifât as an observatory of Muslim, Christian and non-monotheistic relations – InterMedE

The InterMedE project aims to study inter-community and inter-religious relations in the Horn of Africa in the late medieval period (13th-16th centuries), by bringing together historians and archaeologists specializing in Muslim, Christian and non-monotheistic populations. Although these populations have long been studied separately, they shared a common culture, cohabited within the same territories, converted from one religion to another, and exchanged economically, diplomatically and maritally. The aim of the project is not to highlight the specific characteristics of each population, but rather their interactions, shared cultural traits and exchanges, in order to develop a holistic, collective and multidisciplinary approach to regional history as a plural reality. This approach has been made possible over the last twenty years thanks to the renewal of knowledge about the Christian kingdom and Islamic territories, as well as the non-monotheistic societies of the Horn of Africa in the Middle Ages.
The place to observe these interactions will be the Ifat region, under non-monotheistic (before the 13th c.), then Islamic (13th-14th c.) and finally Christian (15th-16th c.) authority, which remains populated throughout the period by Muslims, Christians and non-monotheists. Its major trading cities, such as Genbadelo, were the breaking point for caravans linking the Christian kingdom in the highlands to the Red Sea coast: it was here that resources from the hinterland (gold, ivory, slaves, etc.) and goods from the Islamic world (fabrics, ornaments, etc.) were exchanged. In addition to its singular history, the diversity of textual sources (in Arabic and Guèze, endogenous and exogenous) and archaeological sources (including its major urban and funerary sites: Nora, Asbäri, Beri-Ifât and Mässal) make it the best place to analyze these interactions.
This project involves four types of investigation. The "Materiality" component is based on an archaeological approach, in order to identify religious and cultural interactions from a material point of view, with the archaeological study of the urban sites of Asbäri/Gendabelo and Beri-Ifat, that of identity markers (funerary, material culture) and an investigation of three Mamluk coin treasures, found on the hill of Rassa, in Ifat. The "Echoes in time and space" section focuses on the study of three types of exogenous sources: Arabic texts written in Cairo in the 14th and 15th centuries, Annals written in Guèze by the monk ?awlos in the mid-16th century, and Ifat oral traditions and Arabic manuscripts from the 19th and 20th centuries. The "Women, agents of integration" section will address the role of women in the community of culture that unites populations across religious divides, focusing on the study of matrimonial alliances via genealogies and an exceptional documentary dossier on the role of women in diplomatic relations after the jihad of the 1530s. Finally, the "Historical Geography" section will cross-reference the archaeological data and textual sources studied in the first three sections, to rethink the shifting boundaries between Muslim, non-monotheistic and Christian territories, places of permeability and buffer spaces. It will open on to surveys in order to widen the study area and articulate the Ifat region to the surrounding regions. It will feed an interactive cartography to offer an overview of the region in a diachronic perspective.