Verena Krebs - Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe

Ethiopian presence and diplomatic travel routes in Europe (14021535)

I first encountered the sources that form the bedrock of this book as a masters student at the University of Konstanz, Germany, well over a decade ago. Reflections on these materials have taken many forms over the intervening years: a MA thesis, a PhD dissertation, an early and massive book draft that looked at both Solomonic diplomacy and court collecting practices. Each iteration, though ultimately discarded, re-shaped my views on these texts, and their place in, and meaning for, the cultural history of Ethiopia.

The long genesis process of this book has led me to accrue many debts. My sincere thanks are owed to those institutions whose funding and support enabled me to conduct my writing and fieldwork research in the first place: the Exzellenzcluster Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration at the University of Konstanz, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University and, finally, the Department of History and Heritage Management at Mekelle University. The Martin Buber Society of Fellows in Jerusalem and the Historical Institute at Ruhr University Bochum graciously tolerated my continued research on a project I was supposed to have long concluded.

The hypotheses laid out in this book have evolved through conversation with friends and colleagues in Europe, North America, Jerusalem and Ethiopia. In particular, I wish to thank Dorothea Weltecke, Wolbert Smidt, Alexandra Cuffel, Adam Knobler, Sahar Amer, Erin MacLeod, Manfred Kropp, Rainer Voigt, Christof Rolker, Felix Girke, Margit Mersch, Bar Kribus, Zara Pogossian, Yonatan Moss, Carlo Taviani, Kate Lowe, Samantha Kelly, Wendy Belcher, Kristen Windmuller-Luna, Meseret Oldjira, Michael Gervers (who also kindly gave his permission for the cover image of this book), Dorothea McEwan, Adam Simmons, Solomon Gebreyes, Felege-Selam Yirga, Julien Loiseau, Martina Ambu, Mitiku Gabrehiwot, Hagos Abrha, Semira Seid, Bahru Zewde, Shiferaw Bekele and Lev Kapitaikin, who asked a very important question at a talk I gave in Jerusalem in 2019. At the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies in Hamburg, I especially wish to thank Alessandro Bausi, Denis Nosnitsin and Sophia Dege-Mller for their expertise and advice, and for reading parts of the manuscript.