Interview with Adam Simmons on ‘Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095-1402 (Routledge, 2022’)

By Gabby Storey and Adam D. Simmons

• How did you get into the topic of the book? 

I developed my initial interest in earlier African history during my MA at KCL. I’ve always been more interested in the topics which are often not covered, to understand why not and to see how much history we commonly don’t get told or have access too without an already engrained academic knowledge of certain literature. The encouragement I had on the MA to explore these topics was key. As my interest in early African history was developing, it became clear I would almost certainly have to have a joint focus if I was to undertake a PhD in the UK at a time when almost all pre-fifteenth-century African provision was solely in Archaeology departments. The most Medieval European history I had done was the Crusades and it had long puzzled me why so little attention is given to the Christian Kingdoms of Dotawo and Ethiopia considering their proximity to the crusades. I thought there must be a connection there and then ran with that. In the cases of Nubia and Ethiopia, for example, their geographies suggest geopolitical engagement with their wider regions, but noticing their absence in any discussion of the Crusades seemed too simplistic. I began co-editing Giovanni Vantini’s Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia (1975) for http://www.medievalnubia.info and started to see certain patterns of connectivity. As with all history, when you look into it you realise that there have been prior discussions, or at least passing notices, suggesting such connectivity but these narratives remain overwhelmingly overlooked or, even more so, rejected.

• What inspired you to write it? 

The history of erasure has been a prominent theme within my work to date, whether that be erasure of African histories within the Crusades, the erasure of the role of Nubia within Ethiopian histories, or the erasure of Ethiopian (or Nubian) connections with Europe before 1402, the first Ethiopian embassy to Venice. There also remains a temporal divide between the events of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries and those of post-1415 and Portuguese colonialism. One of the things that has become apparent is the importance of Nubia in initial Portuguese expansion as a continuation of the importance of Nubia to Latin Christian discourse in the previous centuries. It was not just about Ethiopia, which remains approached without often acknowledging the prior importance of Nubia to many narratives in Ethiopian history. Even after this book, there’s still plenty more avenues to explore. I hope that, even if its conclusions are not universally accepted, the book will at least act as a further call for more collaboration between the fields of Nubian Studies, Ethiopian Studies, and Crusades Studies, as well as adjacent fields.

• What was the most interesting piece of research (and if different, the most unexpected piece of research) you discovered during the course of writing? 

I initially approached this history as scholarship has done, that any discussion was principally to be had between the Crusades and Ethiopia. However, I quickly began to notice that this was not the case at all, and that the role of Nubia in both Ethiopian and Crusades history has been largely overlooked. For example, within the contextual history that the book has produced, possibly the most interesting piece of research pointed to a Nubian identification of the 1306 embassy to Spain and the Avignon papacy (actually dated to between 1300 and after 1314) which has always been identified as Ethiopian and viewed within the framing of being a precursor to fifteenth century Ethiopian-Latin Christian diplomacy. However, as the book argues, a Nubian identification makes much more contextual sense even if we still lack Nubian (or Ethiopian) evidence for it; the former of which also makes more sense given the comparatively little we have surviving from within Dotawo for the period of the embassy in contrast to Ethiopia. A second area centred on the role of Nubia in Solomonic Ethiopian identity building from 1270; Ethiopia became the ‘Ethiopia’ long identified as Nubia by all Christian groups, including by Ethiopians themselves (as Kush), as Ethiopia increased in power and Dotawo began to stagnate and ultimately decline. Study into the connections between Nubia and Ethiopia in general have barely scratched the surface.

• You speak in your book about the intertwining of Ethiopian, Nubian, and crusading histories – how have these previously been considered?

In general, rather dismissively. In Nubian Studies, any relationship with the Crusades has almost entirely been rejected with the exception of the suggestions made by Giovanni Vantini. In Ethiopian Studies, the period before the fourteenth century after the fall of Aksum has largely been seen as a bit of a void (though this is increasingly changing, particularly thanks to the work of Marie-Laure Derat), but any connections to the Crusades have continued to also be dismissed. Generally speaking, Crusades scholarship has discussed Nubia and Ethiopia more, but from a very Eurocentric point of view and mostly in relation to the presence of diasporas in the wider Mediterranean and with very little, if any, Nubian or Ethiopian supporting material and context.

• Your first chapter considers how to define Ethiopia – how does this area change across the period you examine?

It is commonly taken for granted that sources referring to ‘Ethiopia’ mean the area occupied by the countries known today as Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, this was not the case. While ‘Ethiopia’– and ‘Kush’ for that matter – could be employed as a regional toponym, when it was used in relation to a kingdom it almost exclusively referred to the kingdom(s) of Nubia, unless explicitly caveated. Ethiopia did not call itself ‘Ethiopia’ (ʾItyoṗya, ኢትዮጵያ) until the early fourteenth century, and certainly not before 1270, as far as the evidence suggests.

• How did information about Ethiopia and Nubia in particular reach Latin Christendom? Was this different to how information about other African nations entered Christian knowledge?

Information reached Latin Christendom both via Nubian and Ethiopian informants, as well as through others with first-hand, second-hand, and tertiary experience of the kingdoms or of news disseminated in other communities, such as by Muslims, Jews, and other Christian groups. Before Portuguese colonialism, knowledge of Africa was not necessarily reflective of actual knowledge and was shaped for specific, especially political, purposes. For example, despite numerous connections across the Sahara, knowledge of Ghāna/Mali appears minimally in the Latin Christian corpus before the fourteenth century, as attentions were primarily focused on Nubia and then Ethiopia as the hope of bringing them into crusading geopolitics focused attentions.

• How did the legend of Prester John differ in Nubian, Ethiopian, and Latin traditions?

The legend of Prester John was almost solely a Latin Christian tradition. There is no evidence that Nubians engaged with the myth and Ethiopians, on the whole, explicitly rejected any association with it. There is the isolated case of the Ethiopian ambassador Mateus who identified himself as the ‘ambassador of Prester John’ during his embassy to Lisbon (1509-1520), but that would appear to be the consequence of his isolated diplomatic strategy and not reflective of a wider discourse within Ethiopian society.

• The crusades in Europe and its source material will be familiar to many medievalists: what sources did you utilise/where did you start looking for information on Nubia and Ethiopia?

A range of sources enlighten these connections. As well as Latin and vernacular European sources, information can be gleaned from Arabic, Gəʿəz, Old Nubian, Coptic, Hebrew, Syriac, Armenian, and Greek sources, both textual and inscriptions. Additionally, archaeology, art, and material culture also have important roles to play. Analysis of toponyms and ethnonyms has been an important element of the study, particularly for separating entwined histories of Nubia and Ethiopia. This was a primarily textual study, but an art historical approach to non-textual connections, which I am not trained to do adequately, has so much potential for adding many more narratives of connections.  

• What is the key takeaway/idea you would like someone to have from your book? 

Fundamentally, Dotawo, Ethiopia, and the Crusades shared a connected history and developments, both local and trans-regional, should be viewed within this context.

• Has this set the foundations for a future project/what are you hoping to do next?

I would like to delve deeper into the Nubian ‘origins’ of aspects of Solomonic Ethiopian identity and the change in power dynamics in North-East Africa as Solomonic Ethiopian replaced Dotawo as the dominant regional power in the fourteenth century.

Adam Simmons is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. He specialises in the physical and intellectual intra-continental and inter-regional connections of African kingdoms and diasporas between the fifth and sixteenth centuries. You can follow Adam on Twitter @Adam_D_Simmons.

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Cover Image. Photograph of the Church of Holy Sepulchre. Available through Wiki Commons.

Figure 1. Book Cover of Adam Simmons’ ‘Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095-1402’. Author’s own image.

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