Red Sea Entanglement: Initial Latin European Intellectual Development Regarding Nubia and Ethiopia during the Twelfth Century

Adam Simmons

doi:10.46586/er.11.2020.8826

Abstract

 What happens to the ability to retrace networks when individual agents cannot be named and current archaeology is limited? In these circumstances, such networks cannot be traced, but, as this case study will show, they can be reconstructed and their effects can still be witnessed. This article will highlight how Latin European intellectual development regarding the Christian African kingdoms of Nubia and Ethiopia is due to multiple and far-reaching networks between Latin Europeans, Africans, and other Eastern groups, especially in the wider Red Sea region, despite scant direct evidence for the existence of such extensive intellectual networks. Instead, the absence of direct evidence for Latin European engagement with the Red Sea needs to be situated within the wider development of Latin European understandings of Nubia and Ethiopia throughout the twelfth century as a result of interaction with varied peoples, not least with Africans themselves. The developing Latin European understanding of Nubia is a result of multiple and varied exchanges.

Highlights

The establishment of the Crusader States at the turn of the twelfth century acted as a catalyst [1] for the development of Latin European knowledge of the wider Levant (e.g., Hamilton 2004)
This article will argue that Latin European knowledge—the knowledge transmitted by Christians in Western Europe and in the Crusader States, which were under the jurisdiction of the papacy in Rome—developed regarding these two African groups during the first century of the Crusades, and that its development was due to multifaceted webs of interaction with both Africans and other knowledge mediaries from various religious and ethnic groups, whilst highlighting twelfth-century interactions within the Red Sea and the wider region
This article has highlighted how the development of Latin European knowledge regarding [40] the wider Red Sea region during the twelfth century did not appear within an independent knowledge and exchange vacuum

Summary

Introduction

The establishment of the Crusader States at the turn of the twelfth century acted as a catalyst [1] for the development of Latin European knowledge of the wider Levant (e.g., Hamilton 2004) This knowledge was principally gained through direct and indirect interactions with various religious and ethnic groups, each of which acted as individual catalysts for a greater shared development of knowledge. Whilst this continual development of Latin European understandings of broad religious groups, such as Muslims, Eastern Christians, or Jews, has been widely discussed in the Crusades historiography of the recent decades, it has largely ignored the circulation of knowledge regarding the geographies and cultures of some specific ethnic groups within these broader collective groups. Does a lack of direct sources, necessarily reflect the historical reality once a much larger picture is taken into account?

The Crusader States and the Red Sea

The Red Sea Avenues of Knowledge Exchange during the Twelfth Century

The Holy Land

The Red Sea

Findings

Conclusion