Abstract

Islamic networks played a critical role in the regional integration of the Ethiopian highlands to the Red Sea basin, after the eighth-century collapse of the kingdom of Axum. However, the history of Ethiopia’s earliest Islamic settlements is still poorly known. Knowledge has increased over the last two decades, with the identification of several Islamic sites with the help of the local Muslim communities’ memory. In 2018‑2019, a cluster of several ancient Muslim cemeteries was surveyed by a French-Ethiopian team in the area of Arra (eastern Tigray). The preliminary results of the survey of Tsomar, a Muslim cemetery in use in the late 13th century, are presented here. Since no excavations have yet taken place, the study is based on surface observation, drone zenithal views and the analysis of nine Arabic inscriptions found on the Tsomar site.

Mäqabǝr Ga‘ǝwa is a recently unearthed site which is located in the Tigray Regional State, Eastern Zone, Wuqro Kilte Awla’elo district, in a village named Addi Akaweh. The team, led by the author, carried out an archaeological excavation at this site, which is locally attributed to the legendary queen named “ Ga‘ǝwa”, also known as Yodit or Gudit. Operating in the perspective of preventive archaeology, the team’s main objective was to check the potential of the site before its destruction for the construction of a new small town. The team opened twelve trenches and subsequently discovered altars bearing Pre-Aksumite inscriptions, a statue of a seated woman and other monuments.

This article presents some preliminary epigraphic results from salvage excavations carried out in 2007 at the site of Maqabər Ga‘əwa situated in the eastern zone of the Regional State of Tigrai, 7 km from the town of Wuqro. The inscriptions and the objects belonged to a temple of Almaqah, the principal god of the kingdom of Saba ʾ in Southern Arabia, who was also venerated in ancient Ethiopia. The author of one of the inscriptions is the king W ʿ rn son of Rd ʾ m whose reign is otherwise unattested. On paleographical grounds, judging from comparable inscriptions in the South Arabian alphabet, the inscribed objects can be dated to approximately the 7th or the 6th centuries BC.

The monument known as Māryām Nāzrēt in Ethiopia, near the city of Mekelle, has often been visited but has hitherto remained hermetic. A fresh investigation has identified the main monument as a massive cathedral erected atop a long-pre-existing Aksumite structure. This unique monument is surrounded by satellite hermitages, among which the one at Golegota shows remains of a small church sharing common architectural features with the cathedral. Cross-referencing these remains with information provided by a written document enables to ascribe the construction of this cathedral to the twelfth-century Metropolitan Mikāʾēl. Named by the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria among Egyptian monks, the Metropolitan was head of the Ethiopian Church. Māryām Nāzrēt was most certainly the episcopal seat in the twelfth and thirteenth century, during the reign of the Zāg w ē dynasty, and hosted an Egyptian Christian community. At the crossroad of documented history and particular architectural trends, of contemporaneous developments in Ethiopian liturgy and church building, the paper deals with ecclesiastical and regal interaction in the region of Mekelle in the twelfth century.