Margaux Herman

Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia

The late Sylvia Pankhurst, as editor of the Ethiopia Observer, promoted awareness of Ethiopian women's history in the 1950s and it gained ground as an academic subject, alongside social history, starting in the 1970s. 1 Though much work has focused on the modern period, two recent full-length contributions concern the seventeenth century, with considerably more relevance for the medieval period. 2 It is nonetheless the case that scholarship on women in the Middle Ages proper remains scarce. Until very recently, the principal points of reference were the few pages devoted to the medieval era in surveys of women's history found in the general social history written by Richard Pankhurst. 3 In the last decade or so, however, a few scholars (including this author) have devoted studies exclusively to medieval Ethiopian women and/or undertaken gendered analyses of aspects of medieval Ethiopian society. 4 Medieval women's and gender history may therefore be said to have "launched," and to be a field with great potential for future growth. The aim of this essay is to introduce the available source materials and existing scholarship that have been or can be deployed to illuminate medieval Ethiopian women's lives, and to suggest some of the categories of analysis through which they can be approached. In keeping with my own expertise and existing studies, the emphasis is on medieval Christian 1 Sylvia Pankhurst, for instance, penned "Three Notable Ethiopian Women," Ethiopia Observer 1,

Ethiopia, but where possible evidence on Muslim women and female followers of local religions is also included.

While individual sources will be discussed in what follows, a brief overview here can give a sense of their scope. For non-elite women, and on matters that affected all (or virtually all) women regardless of social status, medieval legal and religious-legal precepts and hagiographical texts provide valuable information. So do the accounts of foreign travelers, which mention aspects of daily life too common to merit extensive description in Ethiopian sources. Most important among these foreign accounts is that of Francisco Alvares, a chaplain attached to a Portuguese embassy to Ethiopia who spent six years in Ethiopia (1520-1526). 5 Also useful are the reports by Casthanoso and Correa of the Portuguese military expedition that aided Christian forces against the attacks of Imam Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm in 1541-53, and, in a more limited, retrospective manner, the seventeenth-century Jesuit reports from Ethiopia. 6 Elite women appear more frequently in Ethiopian sources themselves, and have therefore garnered more attention from historians. They are mentioned in royal chronicles, Christian and Muslim war accounts, and hagiographical textsseveral were saints themselves. As founders of churches, they may appear in the land grant documentation and in local oral traditions about the church's origins and history; archeological surveys of the church structures can yield useful data as well. 7 All these may be supplemented, again, by foreigners' accounts, which indeed may signal a particular role for elite women as intermediaries with outsiders.

As the scholarship and even much of the source material offer fuller information on elite and famous than on "common" women, this first foray into a survey of the subjectan account of the "state of the field," albeit a field in its preliminary stages-necessarily does the same. Where possible, however, the life conditions and experiences of non-elite women, and the sources and perspectives through which they can be approached, are discussed; they represent a very promising area of future development.

Gendered rules and customs

As in many medieval societies, certain forms of household labor were traditionally undertaken by women. These included, in both Christian and Muslim Ethiopia, grinding grain, preparing food and beverages, and collecting and carrying the firewood necessary for cooking. 8 5 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 2 vols; see also Charles Fraser Beckingham, "Notes on an Unpublished Manuscript of Francisco Alvares: Verdadera informaçam das terras do Preste Joam das Indias," Annales d 'Éthiopie 4, 1 (1961): 139-154. 6 R. S. Whiteway, trans., The Portuguese expedition to Abyssinia in 1541-1543, as narrated by Casthanoso, with some contemporary letters, the short account of Bermudez and certain extracts from Correa (London, 1902); Charles Fraser Beckingham and George Winn Brereton Huntingford, eds., Some Records of Ethiopia 1593-1646 (London, 1954); Pedro Páez, Pedro Páez's History of Ethiopia, 1622, ed. Isabel Boavida, Hervé Pennec and Manuel João Ramos, trans. Christopher J. Tribe, 2 vols. (London, 2011). 7 For some examples of the use of land grant documents, local oral histories and genealogies of church founders and families, see Herman, "(Re)writing," 122-136; Wion, Paradis pour une reine; Marilyn Heldman and Getatchew Haile, "Who is Who in Ethiopia's Past, Part III: Founders of Ethiopia's Solomonic Dynasty," Northeast African Studies 9, 1 (1987): 1-11. 8 For Muslim communities, see Jules Perruchon, trans., Histoire des guerres d 'ʿAmda Ṣyôn, roi d'Éthiopie (Paris, 1890), 122. 272 According to Alvares, in southern Tǝgray (and doubtless elsewhere in the Christian highlands), women also spent a lot of time carrying water and washing clothes. 9 The role of nurses for infants, a theme in hagiographies, has been pointed out by Steven Kaplan. 10 A specific kind of cultural labor performed by women in medieval Christian Ethiopia was scarification of infants, both boys and girls. As Alvares again relates, There are here women who are very skilful at making these marks. They make them in this way: they take a clove of garlic, large and moist, and place it on the corner of the eye (or wherever else they want to make the mark); with a sharp knife they cut round the garlic, and then with the fingers widen the cut, and put upon it a little paste of wax, and over the wax another paste of dough, and bandage it for one night with a cloth, and there remains for ever a mark. 11 These gendered forms of labor were, of course, not performed by all women: female elites did not perform manual labor at all, and scarification was doubtless a specialized skill reserved for a few.

Other customs that differentiated by gender, however, particularly regarding religion, did apply to (virtually) all women. Boys received the sacrament of baptism on the fortieth day after birth, while girls were baptized after eighty days. 12 Laymen and women were to occupy separate areas of the church during liturgical services, as was the case in all eastern Christian churches. King Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob (1434-1468) emphasized the point in the Book of the Light (Mäṣḥafä Bǝrhan), a series of homilies written on his order to be read aloud in church every Saturday and Sunday, specifying that "you [clerics] congregate on Saturday and Sunday in the church with the men and women (you who live near the church), and the men should stand on one side and the women on the other, where they should not see nor hear each other." 13 Alvares observed on several occasions that laity did not enter the church at all, but rather received communion at the church door or in the "circuit" (courtyard) before it. 14 He considered this a general rule, with emphasis on women's inability to enter churches, but it was probably simply a matter of some churches' small size. 15 There were, however, some religious spaces off-limits to women specifically. It is again Alvares who mentioned a church built by the baḥǝr nägaś (the governor of the coastal Eritrean 273 region) that was reserved for men, with the exception of his own wife and her accompanying maid, though women had a neighboring church for their exclusive use. 16 Alvares too noted that no woman could reside next to the Church of Mary in the royal camp; the 'aqqabe sä'at being at that time (he reported) a married priest instead of the traditional monk, he could not live beside the church on account of his wife. 17 Regarding education, the training supplied by the church for future priests was of course reserved for boys, usually sons of clerical families. 18 Basic Christian instruction, however, was offered to laymen and laywomen, as the Book of the Light again prescribes:

The clerics are to instruct them [the laity (men and women separately)] in the worship of the Lord, His precepts and the observance of His Sabbaths. If their houses are far from the church, the cleric should go to them on Friday, and teach the men apart, in one shelter, while another cleric teaches the women in another shelter, so that they do not see or hear each other. During the rainy season, let it be done in a house. 19 In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Páez gave more details on education stating that "[…] each one as he wishes gives his child (boys) to some monk to be taught and pays him very well, and the monk […] keeps them in his home. […] (he) teaches them to read and sometimes to write." 20 He also added that great lords chose a monk to teach both their sons and girls and lived at their houses. This monk accompanied them till he died or till they got married. 21 Finally, circumcision was performed on both male and female children. Female circumcision was apparently common in medieval Ethiopia, for Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob addressed this issue at length in the Book of the Light. He began by noting that neighboring Muslim and "pagan" communities practiced it, and claimed that the Christian people of Tǝgray may have borrowed the practice from them. 22 Rather than proscribe the custom itself as incompatible with Christianity, he condemned the "unlawful" way in which it was performed. Having effectively "Christianized" the ritual, he then offered a series of arguments based on the Bible to demonstrate the application of divine laws, including circumcision, to men and women both, and in general the equality of men and women before God. Linguistically, he argued that when Abraham is said to have circumcised all the "men" of his household (Gen. 17), the term "men" (säbʾ ) meant "men and women," and offered a number of other biblical cases in which the terms "men" or "household" must be understood to include 16 Ibid., 1: 118-119. 17 Ibid., 2: 444-445. 18 Ibid., 1: 120: "The sons of the priests are mostly priests, because in this country there are no schools, nor lecturehalls, nor masters to teach, and the clergy teach that little that they know to their sons." See also Pankhurst, Social History, 3; Kaplan, "Seen but not Heard," 548-549. 19 Conti Rossini-Ricci, Il libro della luce, II: 89; Marie-Laure Derat, "Les homélies du roi Zarʾa Yaʿeqob: La communication d'un souverain éthiopien au XV e siècle," in L'écriture publique du pouvoir, ed. A. Bresson, A.-M. Cocula, and C. Pebarthe (Bordeaux, 2005), 51-52. 20 Páez, History of Ethiopia, 1: 221. 21 Ibid., 1: 222. 22 274 both sexes. He also argued for the essential equality of the sexes before God: "will not the soul of the sinful woman, if she has been baptized, stand before God and be recompensed in accordance with its deeds?" Thus not only circumcision but "every law and every rule that has been given to men has been given to women" as well. 23 Whether or not female circumcision was indeed limited, among Christians, to those of Tǝgray in the mid-fifteenth century, it appears to have been widely practiced in the early sixteenth. Alvares observed that "circumcision is done by anybody without any ceremony, only they say that so they find it written in the books, that God commanded circumcision. And let not be the reader of this be amazedthey also circumcise the females as well as the males, which was not in the Old Law." 24 Half a century later, in 1555, King Gälawdewos reversed Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob's Christianizing interpretation of male and female circumcision in the face of Catholic critiques, justifying it rather as a custom that had no link with religion. 25 Scrutinizing Ethiopian hagiographies, Steven Kaplan has noticed that medieval women faced gendered health issues related to pregnancy, miscarriage and death while delivering and emphasized the importance attached to the problem of women's barrenness. 26 Though barred from the priesthood 27 , women could participate to the religious sphere as nuns. Research on medieval nuns (mäbällät(at), lit. "widows," or dänagǝl, "virgins") is quite limited, but what evidence may be gathered in a preliminary way suggests that, as for women generally, there existed a general principle of gender equality that coexisted with some practices of gender differentiation. Marina Fluche and Joachim Persoon depict, in a timeless way, monasteries as "a mimesis of the Garden of Eden before the Fall," where "monks and nuns together constitute a 'holy gender' in which biological sex is ultimately of little importance." 28 The Life of Saint Täklä Haymanot claim that monks and nuns lived together without sin, and only after his death (c. 1313) began to live in separate spaces. 29 The testimony of Alvares in the sixteenth century is more nuanced. Speaking of the region of the Baḥǝr nägaš , he wrote that "nuns are not cloistered, nor do they live together in convents, but in villages, and in the monasteries of the monks, as they belong to those houses and to that order. […] With regards to entering churches and monasteries, the nuns do not enter except as women do." 30 His later, more precise description of a monastery in

275

Angot suggests what he had in mind. "The monks have their dwelling above the cavern [where the monastery is located], entirely enclosed, and they go down to the monastery by a single path. The nuns have their dwelling below the cavern, they are not enclosed, they live upon the slope of the mountain." 31 Monks and nuns worked the land together and presumably shared the monastery space located between their dwellings, but their dwellings were separate. Such may have been the arrangement at the major Ewosṭatean monasteries, which in the fifteenth century hosted or oversaw female communities totaling over a thousand nuns. 32 Däbrä Libanos of Šäwa also had an associated female community from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. 33 Concerning the region of the Baḥǝr nägaš above, Alvares mentioned that nuns might also live in villages, like the laywomen, and gives a fuller description of the town of Defarfo. 34 Alvares tended to emphasize the absence of female claustration, perhaps because it was surprising to a European, but in fact neither monks nor nuns were strictly cloistered in medieval Ethiopia 35 and more research is certainly required on this subject to reach a detailed conclusion. Either sex could follow the q w ǝrit form of monasticism, living in individual dwellings, either in the "wilderness" or in towns. Both sexes could travel freely: nuns, like monks, participated in pilgrimage, and are recorded in the Ethiopian diasporic communities in Cairo and Jerusalem. 36 Male and female monastic lifestyles were also very similar. Monks and nuns wore the same habits, "which are full, and reach to the ground [either] yellow habits of coarse cotton stuff [or] habits of tanned goatskins like wide breeches, also yellow," though monks also wore a cape. 37 Monks and nuns worked the land identically, and apparently together, digging and sowing; in towns, both sold merchandise at the market fairs. 38 They also observed the same prayers and strict fasts. 39 Though the ritual for taking the monastic vow, preserved in a manuscript dated to the late fourteenth to mid-fifteenth century, was different for women (including, for instance, the shaving of the female initiate's head), it is not clear whether any difference in status was implied by the distinction in rite. 40 It should also be noted that our knowledge of the social background of nuns is 31 Ibid., 1: 201. 32 Däbrä Bizän administered three nunneries, with a total of 1146 nuns: Fluche and Persoon, "Nunneries," 1207. 33 Denis Nosnitsin, "Krǝstos Śämra," in EAe 3 (2007): 443-445, at 443-444. 34 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 1: 188-189. 35 Páez,History of Ethiopia, See the essay by Samantha Kelly in this volume. 37 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 1: 126. 38 Ibid., 1: 201 (farming), 1:126 (as merchants). 39 Alvares described Queen Ǝleni (whose life will be detailed below) as keeping the fasts prescribed for monks and nuns. Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 2: 394-5. Contemporary studies on Ethiopian monasticism showed that there is less emphasis on sexual segregation and gender differentiation than in Western monastic traditions. Monks had to "fulfill some women's roles and cultivate non-masculine traits and behavior" as well as the "spiritual struggles [that exhibit] all the masculine virtues of a military general." They still find that "women reject their femininity and must metaphorically become male, in order to approach the holy gender." See Marta Camilla Wright, "At the limits of sexuality: the femininity of Ethiopian Orthodox nuns," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 35, 1 (June 2002): 27-42; Joachim Persoon, "The Ethiopian monk: a changing concept of masculinity," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 35, 1 (June 2002): 43-65, at 45, 51, 52. 40 Denis Nosnitsin, "Śǝrʿatä mǝnk w ǝsǝnna," in EAe 4 (2010), 634-636, at 634-635. Though the female rite seems to lack mention of the bestowal of the tunic and girdle, these may have been understood as implicit from the preceding male rite: Zena Maryam's female disciple received both from the abbot when she took her vow (Verena Böll, "Zena Maryam," in EAe 5 (2014): 179-180, at 179). The prayers spoken for funeral rites (for all persons) differed by 276 almost nil: only a very few, by definition exceptional, are known to us, such as the abbess Zir Ganela (fourteenth or early fifteenth century), ("the mother of many nuns"). Her community was associated with a well-established monastic community and she provided food and shelter to strangers and travellers. 41 As Heldman and Kaplan noticed, she was an abbess from the ruling class, as was the common pattern of male monastic leadership. Her identification with the daughter of King Säyfä Arʿad (1363-1371 ) , who took the monastic vow under the name of Barbara in the monastery of Däbrä Daret in Bägemdǝr, is doubtful. Heldman enhances instead her relations with Dǝl Mängǝśa, the daughter of King Dawit II. 42 When it came to achieving the status of sainthood, however, very few women were so honored. Kinefe-Rigb Zelleke's survey of 202 extant Ethiopian Christian hagiographies from all periods includes only nine dedicated to women saints. 43 Selamawit Mecca, considering this corpus as a whole, has called attention to the gendered features of female saints' experience and representation. 44 While male saints usually came from poor backgrounds, female saints generally came from elite or wealthy families and had received some education. Secondly, where male saints usually fled from marriage, women saints had generally been married and borne children before becoming nuns (as did the known abbesses). This highlights that virginity was less valued as a feature of female holiness than achieving God's will of "multiplication," 45 and may relate to the particular attention to female saints' bodies, especially regarding fertility and menstruation.

It is difficult to assess these general characteristics as they apply specifically to the Middle Ages, for our statistical sample is small and quite heterogeneous. There are only three women saints who lived before 1550: Zena Maryam and Krǝstos Śämra 46 and the Zag w e queen Mäsqäl Kǝbra, 47 wife of King Lalibala (late 12 th century -after 1225). In terms of social gender as well as age and religious status, and were therefore also slightly different for nuns compared to monks: see Tedros Abraha, "Gǝnzät: Mäṣḥafä Gǝnzät," in EAe 2 (2005), 748-749. 41 Most information is found in the colophon of an illuminated manuscript of the Four Gospels (New York, The Morgan Library [formerly Pierpont Morgan Library], M.828), commissioned for an unnamed monastery where she was abbess. She is also mentioned in the Gädlä Aron mankrāwi: Marilyn E. Heldman, "Zir Ganela," in EAe 5 (2014), 192-194. 42 Sylvain Grébaut, "Note sur la princesse Zir-Gānēlā," Journal asiatique 213 (1928): 141-145; Heldman, "Zir Ganela," 192. 43 Kinefe-Rigb Zelleke, "Bibliography of the Ethiopic Hagiographical Traditions," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 13, 2 (1975): 57-102. Selemawit Mecca added "Ema Wolete, Ema Shenkor and Mekbite Dǝngǝl": see "Women in Ethiopic Hagiographies," in Proceedings of the 16 th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, ed. Svein Ege et al. (Trondheim, 2009(Trondheim, ), 1365(Trondheim, -1374(Trondheim, , at 1367. 44 . 44 Selamawit Mecca, "Hagiographies," 161-166. Mersha Alehegne, looking for regularity and uniformity in the hagiographical traditions concerning the childhood of saints, finds that references to infertility, prophecy/vision and old child patterns applied to both male and female saints. See Alehegne, "Regularity and Uniformity,"145-162. 45 Ibid., 161-162. 46 Nosnitsin, "Krǝstos Śämra," 443-445;Enrico Cerulli, ed. and trans., Atti di Krestos Samrā (Louvain, 1956); EMML ms. 5350, 8517, 8752 not catalogued. Böll, "Zena Maryam," 179-180. 47 For her Life see Stanisław Kur, ed., "Édition d'un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque vaticane: Cerulli 178 (Actes de la reine Masqal Kebra)," Memorie della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 8th ser., 16, 7 (1972): 383-426. Two other unpublished and unstudied manuscripts of her life are preserved, at Gännätä Maryam church near Lalibäla and at ʿAqäbä Särabt at Aksum: see Zelleke, "Bibliography," 84. See also her commemoration in the Synaxary: Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, ed. and trans., The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1928; repr. Hildesheim, 1976), at vol: 1075, 1167. 277 background, Mäsqäl Kǝbra was of the highest rank, by birth and marriage, and Krǝstos Śämra's family was wealthy, but Zena Maryam's social origins are unknown. Krǝstos Śämra fits the template of a wife and mother (of eight) who left her family to become a nun, but Zena Maryam either fled a planned marriage or fled her husband shortly after they were wed, according to two different versions of her Life. [START_REF] Ms Gädlä | Q w äraṣ́ a Wälättä Ṗeṭros, Lake Ṭana; MS BnF d'Abbadie 14[END_REF] Mäsqäl Kǝbra is the very rare case of a "lay" saint who never renounced her family to become a nun. She, however, must be understood in the context of the sanctification of the Zag w e dynasty as a whole. [START_REF]On this see especially the works of Marie-Laure Derat: L'énigme d'une dynastie sainte et usurpatrice dans le royaume chrétien d'Éthiopie, XI e -XIII e siècle (Turnhout, 2018); her essay in this volume; and with Stanisław Kur, "Mäsqäl Kǝbra[END_REF] She is therefore depicted in her own and her husband's Life as a model wife to her equally saintly husband. [START_REF]Vie de Lalibala, roi d'Éthiopie[END_REF] Mäsqäl Kǝbra's foundation of and/or patronage to churches was an activity shared by later women saints, but also, as we shall see, by women of elite status , generally: one is tempted to surmise that, were she not a Zag w e queen, it would not have stood out as a mark of sainthood. [START_REF]She is remembered at Lalibäla as the founder of the church of Abba Libanos, which is corroborated by medieval textual evidence. See the essay of Marie-Laure Derat in this volume. 52 Mecca[END_REF] What distinguished the other two medieval women as saints was the extreme asceticism with which they aspired to match the most venerated male saints. Krǝstos Śämra, in a clear emulation of Saint Täklä Haymanot, spent three years standing in a pit surrounded by iron "thorns," and another three years standing in Lake Ṭana being eaten by fishes. Zena Maryam lived for decades in a cave eating only herbs and uncooked grain, and, in an explicit effort to transcend her gender, asked God to stop her menstrual flow. Both had female disciples and followers, though male monks were evidently involved in their training. The miracles performed in their lifetimes, as Selamawit Mecca has noted of female saints generally, were accomplished through their prayers but by male agents, human or angelic. 52 After death, however, female saints performed miracles (usually the curing of illness) at their burial sites just as male saints did. [START_REF] Nosnitsin | Krǝstos Śämra[END_REF]

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Women and Social Status

A second lens through which to approach medieval Ethiopian women is social status. The kätäma, the itinerant royal court or camp, having been described in both Ethiopian and foreign sources, provides a convenient means to survey women's places in them. As Deresse Ayenachew has shown, the study of the royal camp reveals the roles, activities, and social "place" of the people living in it, closely linked to their physical disposition in the compound with its concentric enclosures. 54 At the very center of the camp was the king, in the first or innermost enclosure. The second enclosure was assigned to members of the royal family and to high officials, with their PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014 278 families and attendants; the third was for the common people, including the "staff" of various offices, the soldiers, cooks, food provisioners, and so on.

It has been hypothesized that the population of the royal camp probably included more women than men. 55 Most women did the same sorts of household labor described above, especially in relation to food preparation. 56 Some women lived in the area of the wine sellers and bakers, and may have been such merchants themselves, or their wives. 57 Yet another group were wealthy courtesans or prostitutes 58 , called amaritas, who followed the camp. Alvares described them as living apart from the rest of the camp, near the lodging of strangers who came to "sell, buy and trade with the Prester's court;" they were very numerous and most (an "immense number") were "rich and well dressed." 59 Below the social level of these (free) women were the enslaved. Non-Christians from neighboring societies acquired by capture or purchase, they could be kept in slavery even if subsequently baptized, as could their children, and were owned at social levels ranging from the richer peasantry upward. 60 (Muslim Ethiopians, similarly, kept non-Muslims as slaves, generally followers of local religions but also Christians.) 61 Such enslaved people, including and perhaps predominantly women., were doubtless employed to aid in the laborious tasks of hauling, grinding, and washing that were women's province.

Elite women lived in the second enclosure. The most elite were of course the king's wives, whose tents were arranged according to a precise hierarchy. Until the reign of Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl (1508-1540), virtually all kings (Lalibala seems to have been an exception) practiced polygyny, having up to five official wives (bǝʾǝsitat) as well as concubines (ǝqubat). Royal wives all bore the title "ite" or "nǝgǝśt" ("queen") in medieval sources, and were thus distinguished from the concubines (ǝqubat) who received neither title nor regnal name. 62 However, the sons of both wives and concubines were eligible to the crown. Each queen also received a specific title, probably during a particular ceremony, as attested in the chronicle of Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob (1434-1468) and in a few 55 Pankhurst, Social History, 68-70; Minale Adugna, Women and warfare in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 2001), 6. 56 Beckingham and Huntingford, Some Records, 78. 57 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 2: 445. It is still yet not sure if these women were engaged in this type of activities. 58 Richard Pankhurst, "The History of Prostitution in Ethiopia," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 12, 2 (1974): 159-160. 59 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 2: 443. In the Mäṣḥafä Bǝrhanthe word ዕቅብተ ("concubine," lit. "guarded") has been translated as "prostitute," probably in an improper manner (Conti Rossini-Ricci, Libro della luce, I: 91). 279 juridical texts 63 : qäññ bäʿaltiḥat 64 ("queen of the right"), gərra bäʿaltiḥat (usually translated as "queen of the left"), bäʿaltä šǝḥna (or ḥašeḥna) (to be understood as "the favorite") 65 , (yä)gälägǝl gäzet, and wäšärbat gäzet. 66 Each queen had her own tents, whose location depended on her rank. 67 A text known as the "Order of the Banquet" (Śǝrʿatä gǝbr) confirmed this hierarchy. To the right of the king's tents were the tents of the mother of the king (aṣe ǝnnat). She took care of his children, which gave her a specific role and reverence at court. The king's mother, his children and the ʿaqqabe säʿat were the only persons allowed to settle so close to the king. Next to her, were the two ite gälägǝl gäzet and wäšärbat gäzet. The tents of the queen of the right (qäññ bäʿaltiḥat), the principal queen at court, were also on the right side of the king's tent. The quarters of the queen of the left were directly opposite, on the left side of the king's tents. Finally, the "favorite" (ite bäʿaltä šǝḥna) . lived behind the queen of the right, who "mentored" her. 68 A specific official guarded the royal women. 69 All queens participated in the organization of the royal banquets and the food provision of the royal camp. 70 The rank of each queen determined how much she contributed to the royal banquet, which conversely reflected her position at court. Finally, the two main queens were in charge of the kätäma, or of a part of it, when the king was away, alongside the gərra bəhtwäddäd as a male guarantor of royal authority. 71 In sum, women's location within the kätäma revealed their position in society and their daily activities: while women of the third enclosure did household duties, queens were given honors and responsibilities according to their rank. A deeper look in medieval hagiographies should also reveal social differences between the lower class and elites regarding their "forced" contributions and donations to churches and monasteries, whatever the gender of the benefactor. 72 63 In the Śǝrʿatä gǝbr and in a legislative text written in 1448/1449 on the food supplies of the clergy of the royal camp's church dedicated to Mary. See Manfred Kropp, "The Serʿata Gebr: A Mirror View of Daily Life at the Ethiopian Royal Court in the Middle Ages," Northeast African Studies 10 (1988): 51-87; idem, "'Antiquae restitutio legis.' Zur Alimentation des Hofklerus und einer Zeugenliste als imago imperii und notitia dignitatum in einer Urkunde des Kaisers Zärʾa Yaʿqob im Condaghe der Hs. BM Or. 481, fol. 154," Scrinium 1 (2005): 115-147, at 132. 64 It was probably already used by King Lalibala as his wife was bäʿaltä biḥat , and during the reign of ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon I for queen Bǝlen Säba : Kropp, "'Antiquae restitutio,'" 132. In the Śǝrʿatä gǝbr, it is written variously as bähaltiyat, bäʿaltiyat and bäʿaltiḥat: Kropp, "The Serʿata Gebr," 58. 65 These titles probably replaced the "aged" and "young" queen of ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon (Perruchon, Histoire des guerres, 156), perhaps showing the adaptation of titles from Gǝʿǝz to Amharic. The office of the "aged" queen was also probably doubled to make the queens "of the right" and "of the left," as happened for the bǝhtwäddäd during the reign of Zärʾä Yaʿǝqob: see Herman, "Reines," 90-95, and Manfred Kropp, "Réédition des chroniques éthiopiennes: perspectives et premiers résultats," Abbay 12 (1983-1984): 57-58. 66 Herman, "Rethinking," 166-168; eadem, "Reines," 86-92. 67 Deresse Ayenachew, "Le kätäma," part. 1, ch. 1; Herman, "Reines," 108-112; eadem, "Rethinking," 167. 68 Perruchon, Histoire des guerres, 156-158. Kropp, "The Serʿata Gebr," 61. 69 "Now he [Abba Azerata] is chief guardian of the Prester John's sisters": Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 2: 449. Other officers (like raq massäre) worked for the queens, but no studies have been undertaken: see Kropp, "The Serʿata Gebr," 81-87. 280 Dress could also distinguish women according to their age, marital status, wealth, and probably region as well. In mid-fifteenth-century Tǝgray, unmarried young women dressed in such a way that their breasts remained partially exposed, a practice Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob condemned, but that had not been abandoned some seventy years later when Alvares observed it. 73 Alvares also noted the use of strips of oxhide to cover the genitals, which Almeida, in the seventeenth century, explained as a recourse of poor women who could not afford woven clothes. 74 Foreign witnesses of the early seventeenth century identified cotton wraps as the usual clothing of common people, whereas the elites, especially women, wore silk and brocade in bright colors. 75 This was doubtless true in earlier centuries as well. Casthanoso described Queen Säblä Wängel in 1541 as "covered to ground with silk, with a large rowing cloak… and a burnoose of black satin, with flowers and fringes of very fine gold, like a cloak, her head dressed in the Portuguese manner, and so muffled in a very fine cloth that only her eyes could be seen." 76 The conspicuous display that queens could perform, and the hierarchies that placed status above gender in certain contexts, are well illustrated by Castanhoso's description of this same queen riding out with her entourage on muleback:

After the Queen had descended with her women and servants (of the women there were about thirty, and of the men fifty) she and her ladies mounted the mules which were at the foot of the hill, which the Barnaguais [baḥǝr nägaś] had sent her…. The Barnaguais, lord of that country, walked on foot naked to the waist, with a lion or tiger's skin on his shoulders as a covering, with the right arm exposed, and he led her by the bridle; for it is the custom, whenever the Preste or his Queen makes a state entry, for the lord of the land to lead them by the bridle in the manner I describe, as a sign of submission…. They [two azzaž] accompanied the Queen, one on one side and the other on the other, near her, with their hands on the mule; the Queen rode on a saddle with a low pommel... but so covered with her garments that no one could see the manner of her sitting, and her ladies all riding properly on mules muffled in their cloaks. 77 This manner of riding, with two azzaž (military officials) holding the bridle, was the custom for royal women. Both it and typical queenly dress in the fifteenth century are well represented in a miniature of the Zag w e queen Amätä Lǝʿul, the wife of King Yǝmrǝḥannä Ǝgziʾ, executed in 1453 (see pl. VI in this volume, p. XXX). 78 While the foregoing has focused principally on social-economic status, marital status was another important determinant of women's experience. It was certainly closely related to age, for marriages were contracted quite young: the unmarried, therefore, were generally girls or quite PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014 281 young women. [START_REF] Brita | Marriage: Early marriage[END_REF] It is therefore not terribly surprising that in certain court ceremonies, after the dignitaries (male and female, according to rank) had been served, the order of precedence placed lay men before married women, and (young) unmarried women last. [START_REF]The sequence for baptism at Ṭǝmqät, as reported in one manuscript of Alvares's account, was metropolitan, king, queen, priests, deacons, laymen, married women, virgins[END_REF] In Christian religious life, too, as we have seen, the value placed on procreation over virginity seems to have privileged married or formerly married women, over the unmarried. Chastity is however emphasized in hagiographies of both men and women. [START_REF] Kaplan | Hagiographies and the History of Medieval Ethiopia[END_REF] Indeed, only unmarried, women (mäʿaseb) were forbidden from entering a church while menstruating. Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob extensively cites on this point the Testament of Our Lord (Mäṣḥäfä Kidan), an ancient pseudo-apostolic work that gained great influence in Ethiopia in the later Middle Ages, emphasizing that the proscription was not because menstruation rendered the young women contaminated but rather "out of reverence for the place of sacrifice." A menstruating virgin should nonetheless fast, wash, and pray at the appropriate times, and during the Mass should stand within sight of the church; "and if she is not separated from love for the church, and [though] being far from it in body, enters it in her soul, it will be as if she entered and took the body and blood of Christ"in other words, her efforts would be equivalent to receiving communion. [START_REF] Rossini-Ricci | Social History, 45. 84 Páez[END_REF] As for marriage itself, different wedding rituals 83 were possible in (or in the vicinity of the church), in an open space or at court. The locations of the ritual changed depending on the status of the bridegroom (a deacon, a layman, a king's kin). 84 In theory, all these rituals created an indissoluble bond; divorce was impossible, so was remarriage. Alvares described at least two type ceremonies and Páez added details. 85 The latter noticed that the church ceremony, that includes a commune communion after the mass and the blessing of the clergy, was mainly performed by priests and däbtäras. A priest could only get married before his ordination to a virgin (not a widow), which implied early marriages and more respect towards marital law. As he could enter inside the church, he received his deacon's vestments, made his vow to the altars and after his communion, priests "take the communion to her (the bride) at the church door and he (the bridegroom) gives her the blood." The spouses were then carried by priests till the vicinity of the church and relayed by laymen to their house. He also stated that only a few laymen got married in church, or asked for blessing which they received at "the vicar's house" or "sometimes the vicar also goes to the couple's house." After both types of ceremony, the bride stayed within her marital home with a black veil over her face for five or six months, or less if she became pregnant. [START_REF] Beckingham-Huntingford | after ten or thirty days[END_REF] Páez put into doubt both ceremonies (outside the church and at the door of the church by the abunä) observed by Alvares. To him, they might have been "deliberately" orchestrated in such way, or changed, for he was "not able to find anyone to confirm such a custom." [START_REF] Páez | History of Ethiopia, 407 (especially the description of cutting the hair of the bride and bridegroom). 108 Kaplan, "Hagiographies and the History," 116; idem[END_REF] All told, the main PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014 282 differences seem to be that weddings performed in church implied a shared communion 88 which might explain why only few people chose it (except peasants, elders and priests), and the seal of a contract 89 indicating the terms of the union and of the separation, which might be surprising if we consider marriage as an indissoluble bound.

However, the frequent divorces of the elite were a source of scandal to European visitors, and were seen as a common practice. 90 Páez noticed that marriages could be easily dissolved before the king's judges or even by the abunä himself for any kind of complaint (greed, sadness, physical abuse, being dishonored in public…). 91 If the two parties agreed, they shared equally the common properties they had acquired (probably after wed), if they disagreed, the one who wanted to leave took nothing or if there was a contract, a penalty was to be paid by the guilty party (man or woman) according to its terms. 92 Both parties could then remarry. The bride then left the home, implying that patrilocal living arrangements were observed. 93 In cases of adultery, Páez noticed that Ethiopians, interpreting the words of Matt. 5, believed they did not need a judge and could separate and remarry as they wished. 94 Though few studies have explored women's rights over property and inheritance specifically in the Middle Ages, it seems that women, like men, kept their properties (g w elt or rǝst) that they gained or inherited and retained their right over it. 95 Therefore, undeniably, wives retained their individual social and legal identities in marriage, including their pre-marital names and land rights. 96 Personal preferences may have played a role in the frequency of elite divorce, but the major stimulus was doubtless the opportunity to play and replay one's cards in the game of marriage alliance. 97 In fact, Ethiopian elites of all religions used dynastic alliances, both within Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 1: 106. For Emmanuel Fritsch, the ritual performed by the metropolitan seen by Alvares, corresponds to the Ethiopian ritual in its present form, translated in the seventeenth century from the ceremony described by the fifteenth-century Patriarch Gabriel V of Alexandria. For Fritsch, "the rites are far older than the prayers, which go back to the late medieval period only": see his "Matrimony," in EAe 3 (2007), 869-873, at 870. 88 It is believed that a married person may not receive Holy Communion unless his or her spouse also receives: Fritsch, "Matrimony," 869. 89 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 1: 107. 90 Ibid., 1: 106; Some Records, 65-66. 91 Páez, History of Ethiopia, 1: 403-404. 92 Ibid., 1: 186, 403-404; Pankhurst, Social history, 69; Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 1: 107. Gorgoryos, the informant of Hiob Ludolf, stated that the offending party gives his or her goods to the other; if the divorce was by mutual agreement, the goods were divided equally: see Hiob Ludolf, Ad suam Historiam Aethiopicam antehac editam Commentarius (Frankfurt, 1691), 440. 93 Pankhurst, Social history, 70. 94 Páez, History of Ethiopia, 1: 403-404. 95 On the equal share of properties of the mother of Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl between the king and his two uterine sisters, see Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 2: 409. See also Donald Crummey, Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia: From the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century (Urbana, IL, 2000), 23-49; Habtamu M. Tegegne, "Land Tenure and agrarian social structure in Ethiopia, 1693-1900" (Ph.D diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011), 65-66, 74-76, 78-80; Anaïs Wion, Paradis. 96 283 and outside their own religious group. 98 (In the case of interfaith marriages, it was usually the woman who took the religion of her husband.) 99 Wealthy men were allowed to have multiple wives but then forbidden to enter in churches.

Unlike the merely wealthy, who might marry multiple wives but were then barred from the church, 100 medieval Christian kings suffered no penalty for the polygyny through which they created multiple regional alliances simultaneously. Clergy criticized some kings' matrimonial practices, like ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon (1314-1344) and his son, 101 but more for marrying within the prohibited degrees than for polygyny. Yet apart from King Lalibala, whose Life (written centuries after his death) celebrate his monogamy and performance of the religious wedding ceremony, 102 no evidence has been found to identify any religious royal marriage until King Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl. 103 He and his successors opted instead for monogamy, performing the wedding ceremony and naming only one queen. 104 This evolution had consequences for the political status of the queens at court during the sixteenth century. There was now only one queen consort, whose title was simply nǝgǝśt. But there was also, still, the king's mother, and possibly also his grandmotherthe queens consort of previous reignswho were also nǝgǝśt (pl. nǝgǝśtat). The title of ǝtege was therefore created and a new hierarchy established, to avoid intestine struggles at court. 105 The ǝtege . retained her title for life and had the ascendancy over the other queens, notably in being designated regent in case of a royal minority. Säblä Wängel (d. 1567) was the first ǝtege, a title that she received when she was the king's "grandmother" at the end of her career. 106 The rules concerning the royal camp in journeys (Śǝrʿatä mangǝśt, III-21, 22) also changed, from now on only including the ǝtege and the princesses. 107 A last mention should be made concerning a marriage custom that affected both men and in broader perspective:papers of the 13th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Kyoto, 12-17 December 1997, 3 vols., ed. K. Fukui, E. Kurimoto, and M. Shigeta (Kyoto, 1997), at 1: 206-220. 98 , 5 (Paris, 1905), repr. as CSCO 24-25, SAe 7-8 (Louvain, 1961), at vol 1 (text): 65-66.

104 Some kings still kept concubines to get an heir to the throne: see Herman,"Rethinking,[149][150][151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][170][171][172][173]eadem,"Reines, Taddesse Tamrat, "Problems of royal succession in fifteenth century Ethiopia: a presentation of the documents," in IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Etiopici (Roma, 10 -15 April 1972), 2 vols., ed. Enrico Cerulli (Rome, 1974), 1: 518-526. 106 Herman, "Rethinking," 172-174. 284 women, from the lower class to the elite: that of arranged union. As shown above for elites, medieval hagiographies regularly mention that the "future saint" decided to become a monk to avoid a marriage orchestrated by his family. This implies that young men and women both had to follow their kinfolk's wishes in terms of union. 108 In conclusion, marriage customs affected the lives of women who had to leave their homes to join their husband, whatever their social background. However, properties and goods were not put in common, except for the peasants for apparent practical reasons. Both elite men and women divorced and remarried easily, following their own interests and familial strategy. Finally, the evolution of royal matrimonial practices impacted the status of the queens at court and the choices of the royal wife. The multiple alliances of the Christian kings with regional leaders' daughters were replaced. The king now chose his wife in his traditional Christian partners' family, and princesses engaged with his former partners. 109 The transition to royal monogamy also influenced the creation of a new balance of power among the queens at court with the creation of the title of ǝtege.

Women and Power: Structuring Archetypes

The women most accessible to us for scholarly study are, of course, those that have been remembered in texts and oral traditionsbut those that are best remembered are usually surrounded by legends recounted century after century, which renders their historical analysis more difficult. Their representation in the collective memory is, however, indicative of the models or archetypes for women's roles that medieval Ethiopian society created and maintained. A brief survey of several such women, all associated with dubious authority and with destructive (but also, implicitly, creative) political/military power, illustrates the point.

The feminine as a figure of arbitrary and destructive power has ancient historical substrates. In medieval Christian Ethiopia, she was incarnated in a tenth-century queen who wrought devastation on the Christian kingdom. 110 Several more or less contemporary foreign authors mention her, offering complementary and convergent data: she was queen of the (still mysterious) people called in Arabic the Banī (or Banū) l-Ham(u)wīyā, she killed the Christian Ethiopian king and took over his kingdom, and destroyed the Christian churches. 111 For Marie-Laure Derat, the matching of sources, both Christian and Muslim, points to a "pagan" or local-religious counterassault against the Christian kingdom in an otherwise very obscure and scantily documented period. 112 Though no early-medieval Ethiopian texts are preserved that mention her, PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014 285 in oral tradition, where she acquired the name Ǝsato or Gudit, her destruction of Christian monuments was associated with the downfall of ancient Aksum, and her reign a symbol of the "dark ages" between the glories of antiquity and the advent of the Zag w e dynasty. The posterity of this negative female figureillegitimate, non-Christian, and destructiveis thus tremendous in the historiography.

Female figures analogous to Gudit/Ǝsato have been identified in two women held responsible for preventing the Solomonic dynasty's rise to power for almost three centuries, to the benefit of the Zag w e kings. The first, Tǝrdaʾ Gäbäz, appears in some of the Ethiopian kings' lists as the figure through whom kingship was transferred to the Zag w e dynasty. 113 The second, Mäsobä Wärq, would be the daughter of the last post-Aksumite King, Dǝlnaʿod. She is mentioned in the Life of Iyäsus Moʾa. 114 In different ways, Ǝsato/Gudit, Tǝrdaʾ Gäbäz, and Mäsobä Wärq, all represent disruptions of the dynastic continuity that, according to the so-called Solomonic kings, rightly belonged to their lineage alone since the time of the biblical King Solomon.

Given the recurrence of this theme of destructive female power in Solomonic-era works, one may well ask whether it played a role in the Solomonids' elaboration of their dynastic origin story itself. As is well known, the foundational text elaborating that story is the Kǝbrä Nägäśt, and the text's legitimating cornerstone is the relationship between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The Bible's brief mentions of their meeting had inspired a number of elaborations in the Jewish, Muslim, and Coptic traditions already in the earlier Middle Ages, which are drawn upon and added to (in ways still to be fully explored) in this long, complex work, completed in the 1320s. In the Gǝʿǝz text, the queen, named Makǝdda, 115 is of course Ethiopian, and upon returning to her homeland bears a son begotten by Solomon: thus is the Ethiopian monarchy inscribed into biblical history. When grown, the son (later called Mǝnilǝk) travels to Jerusalem to meet his father, who offers him rulership of Israel, but he chooses to return home, where his mother abdicates in his favor. (He takes the appropriate throne name David, or Dawit in Gǝʿǝz). Of particular interest here is the passage in which Makǝdda announces her abdication to the kingdom's officials: 'Speak ye now, and swear ye by the heavenly Zion that ye will not make women queens or set them upon the throne of the kingdom of Ethiopia, and that no one except the male seed of David, the son of Solomon the King, shall ever reign over Ethiopia, and that ye will never make women queens.' And all the nobles of the king's house swore, and the governors and the councilors, and the administrators. 116 After the composition of this work, no woman did take the throne in the Christian kingdom, even if some female regencies or de facto exercises of political power did occur. Makǝdda is thus a "good" queen, indeed a Solomonic archetype of ideal queenship, not least for surrendering power and entrusting it to her son and his male descendants, forever.

286

The Christian kingdom was not the only Ethiopian society to present women as figures of cultural disruption. In Oromo traditions, particularly within the Guğği and the Booranaa, the queen Akko Manoye is described as a despotic ruler. She forced men to do domestic tasks; she also tasked her people with impossible duties, until a wise old man helped them to find a solution. Her downfall brought an end to the mythical time in which both men and women could pretend to the throne, to the evident benefit of men only. 117 In the Sidaama communities, Queen Furra is described in the same narrative schemes. Therefore, these traditions are used in order to discourage women's aspiration to political empowerment. 118 Though I have emphasized the destructive and/or disruptive character of most of these female figures, it is also possible to see some of their most characteristic activities in a constructive light. In many cases, their disruptions resulted in either being, or serving as conduits to, a socially exogenous element. Makǝdda was the "bridge" linking the people of Ethiopia to the Israelites, thus transforming the former into the new chosen people of God. An Aksumite princess's exogenous marriage to a Zag w e lord gave rise to the Zag w e royal dynasty, which, however usurping and illegitimate in Solomonic discourse, was also revered as holy. Ǝsato/Gudit was quite immune to any positive interpretation from a Christian standpoint, but her memory was doubtless so compelling because the encounter between Christians and followers of local religions was, in fact, one of the central dramas of the Christian kingdom's whole medieval history, and the subtext of its much-glorified territorial expansion. Queen Ǝleni, to whom I shall turn below, might be seen as Gudit's mirror image: the non-Christian royal woman who does not dominate and transform the Christian polity, but rather is absorbed and transformed by it. The marriage alliances in which elite and especially royal women were brokered, and which crossed regional, ethnic, linguistic and even confessional boundaries, were the mundane iterations of what these archetypal women represented: an always potentially threatening contact with the foreign, and in a context wholly about power and who could or should wield it. Indeed, even when marriage was not involved, royal women seem to have had a particular role as intermediaries with foreign rulers and dignitaries. In the fourteenth century, ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon's queen played this part between the king and his Muslim counterpart and antagonist, Ṣabr al-Dīn. 119 In the sixteenth century, it is suggested by the contacts between Pero da Covilhao and Ǝleni 120 and between Casthanoso and Säblä Wängel. 121 Women and especially queens were probably easier to access and meet than kings. For instance, they were privileged intermediaries for the people, high officials or enemies with the king.

In fact, women's role in connecting to the outer world is found in all Ethiopian cultures. Muslim and Christian traditions recount that the imam Aḥmad had a Christian father: his Muslim mother was therefore the link to the foreign world. 122 In Muslim as in Christian Ethiopia, when the 287 woman is the outsider who adopts and is absorbed into her new society, that society praises her. 123 The best-known example is the Christian Ethiopian slave known as Umm Ayman (Barakah, raḑī Allāhu ʿanhā "May Allah be pleased with her"), who was the Prophet's nurse. 124 She converted to Islam, and Muhammad considered her his second mother. In another register, Umm Ḥabība bint Abī Sufyān and Umm Salmā bint Abī Umayya, though they were from Arabia, are remembered for being members of the first Muslim hijra to Ethiopia. They are considered to be among the first of the Prophet's disciples. After the deaths of their husbands, they married . the Prophet and returned to Arabia, where they told of the wonders of Aksum. They are viewed among Ğabarti communities as models for Ethiopian women and as their ancestors. 125 Women and Power: Some Historical Examples

The history of queens is often the first corner of medieval women's history to be investigated thanks to the relative richness of the source material, and Ethiopia is no exception. Even on this topic, however, a great deal remains to be done. Some brief references in earlier scholarship, for instance, would recommend we take a deeper look at the societies located on southwestern Šäwa. According to the testimony of some Ethiopian monks interviewed by the Venetian Alessandro Zorzi during the sixteenth century, a queen governed the kingdom of Wäğ, in southern Šäwa, in the fifteenth century. 126 In the same region, Enrico Cerulli pointed out some cases of Islamic sultanates ruled by queens from the tenth to the thirteenth century. 127 He also underlined the important role of elite women in medieval Islamic Šawah and its links with the social customs of the Sidaama people. 128 We might assume that the eleventh-century queen (malika) Badīt bint Māyā 129 ("Badīt daughter of Māyā"), mentioned in a thirteenth-century Arabic chronicle of the sultanate of the Maḫzūmī dynasty, was a part of this history. However, it is still unknown if she was a queen of the Maẖzūmī dynasty (in eastern Šäwa) or if she reigned over some other region. 130 Wagner suggests that she could be identified with Tadīt bint Māyālāmā ("daughter of Māyālāmā"), a female ruler mentioned in two chronological lists of Haräri amīrs that seem to provide her full patronymic. Wagner also suggests that Badīt/Tadīt and her mother might have been rulers of a region of Lake Haramāyā. 131 All these elements open a new field of study to be explored. 289 Zämäda were entitled bǝhtwäddäd 142 before he took these charges himself. This unique case of women holding the office of bǝhtwäddäd enhances two hypotheses. The first, that women were not supposed to receive charges with military duties, the second that in exceptional instances, the king can do whatever he wants, even nominated women to usually masculine duties. Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob's son and successor Baʾǝdä Maryam (1468-1478), motherless, considered Ǝleni as such. During the ceremony of coronation (ḥǝgä q w ǝrḥät) of his wife, in which she was named of Žan Säyfa and titled gərra bäʿaltiḥat, 143 he also confirmed Ǝleni in her position, naming her Admas Mogäsa. 144 Apparently removed for a time from the court of the next king, Ǝskǝndǝr (r. 1478-1494), she regained some influence especially during the reign of Naʿod (1494-1508). At his death, she became the most influential of the three-headed regency 145 of the twelve-year old Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl (1508-1540), a monarchic system that was at his premises. The first regency was experienced for the minority of Ǝskǝndǝr and composed of the ʿaqqabe säʿat Täsfa Giyorgis (1478-1486), his mother Romna (a concubine) and the gərra bəhtwäddäd ʿAmdä Mikaʾel, 146 with whom Ǝleni was not on good terms. 147 For a long time, historians debated on the possibility of there being two successive queens named Ǝleni. The confusion started from a mention in the Chronicle of King Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl:

During that period, the royal authority was exerted through the disposition of his mother, the queen Naʿod Mogäsa, and with the advice of another woman, Queen Ǝleni. They both knew well the administration of the court, but especially the wise Ǝleni, who had lived at the court of three glorious kings in which she had gained a wide reputation; she knew the juridical order of the administration of the kingdom. 148 Travellers from the seventeenth century onwards, as well as translators and researchers, assumed that the "three glorious kings" at whose courts she had served were the three immediately previous ones, of Naʿod,Ǝskǝndǝr and Baʾǝdä Maryam. 149 In that case there would have been two queens, both named Ǝleni: the wife of King Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob, and another, wife of Baʾǝdä Maryam, who remained active in successive reigns. 150 Ethiopia, 1270-1527(Oxford, 1972), 286-287. 147 Their relationship has to be studied for a better understanding of the period and of their biographies. 148 Kropp, Geschichte des Lebna Dengel, 3. 149 They all dismissed in the counting the reign of ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon II, a child who only reigned few month in 1494. 150 "Empress Elena was not the wife of Emperor Naôd but of his father Emperor Bedâ Mariâm, and she never had children, for Emperor Naôd was illegitimate": Páez, History of Ethiopia, 14. Both Kropp and Perruchon also assumed the same idea: Kropp, Geschichte des Lebna Dengel, 3 and quotation 9; Perruchon, Chroniques. The latter even hypothesized in the introduction of Chroniques that the Ǝleni from the reign of Bäʾǝdä Maryam could be PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014 290 involved in King Ǝskǝndǝr's court, the chronicle's statement is accurate in mentioning only those reigns in which she participated. The chronicle of Bäʾǝdä Maryam's reign supports this theory. The king considered Ǝleni as "his own mother", which is an improper relation to a wife. Moreover, on the ceremony of Žan Säyfa the scribe said that it was only performed for her, 151 but added that "behind her, (came) the Queen Ǝleni who was reigning with her on that day." 152 These two mentions attest that Ǝleni had already received such a ritual, probably during the reign of her husband, and that Baʾǝdä Maryam simply gave her the new regnal name of Admas Mogäsa 153 to confirm her position at his court.

Later on, during the regency of Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl, the aged queen acted as a ruler in her own right. She instigated, on the advice of Pero da Covilha (a Portuguese married to an Ethiopian woman), the dispatch of a diplomatic mission to the Portuguese king Manuel proposing military co-operation against the Muslims. Mateus eventually reached Portugal, and delivered the letter to the king. 154 He left Portugal in 1517 with the embassy of Rodrigo da Lima (which included Francisco Alvares), and reached the court of Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl around 1520. However, the young king, just victorious in defeating the emir Maḥfūẓ, declined the alliance.

During the regency, Ǝleni also got involved in religious affairs. She is alleged to have written two religious works in Gǝʿǝz, 155 which proves that elite women received education. 156 Ǝleni also instigated with much expenses the foundation of the church of Märṭulä Maryam in Goğğam, where she held large estates. 157 Though not the first queen to achieve such a foundation, it launched the beginning of a common usage. Only a few foundations by women are known before 1468. 158 Indeed, when Ǝgziʾ Kǝbra aspired to erect a church for her burial place, Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob, refused; he wanted to bury her in his dynastic mausoleum of Däbrä Näg w ädg w ad. 159 For his wife Žan Ḫayla, he himself had the church of Mäkanä Maryam built her burial place. 160 Before 1516, out of eleven royal foundations, three are credited to women and all were dedicated to Mary. 161 After this date, queens regularly founded churches in honor of 291 the Virgin. 162 Some recent research demonstrates that this new privilege was partly due to the success of the religious propaganda enhanced by King Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob devoted to Saint Helena. 163 Yet, the status of queens' foundations was not equal to those of a king, as is reflected in their construction in geographically peripheral areas; 164 here, in eastern Goğğām, a newly Christianized area. 165 Romna, the mother of Ǝskǝndǝr (1478-1495), probably founded Mǝʾrafä Maryam on the shores of Lake Ṭana, 166 Ǝleni established Märṭulä Maryam in Ǝnnäbǝse, possibly around 1510, 167 while Naʿod Mogäsa settled at Getesemane Maryam during the reign of her son, Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl. 168 Whereas Naʿod Mogäsa affiliated her foundation with the dominant religious movement headed by Däbrä Libanos, 169 Ǝleni, having quarreled with the monks of that monastery and ʿAmdä Mikaʾel, linked hers to the Ewosṭatean movement. 170 Political and religious internal affairs were also reflected in the queens' foundations and affiliations. During the sixteenth century, queens and princesses continued this policy of settlements and church foundations in eastern Goğğam. 171 After 1516, at the end of the regency, the queen's influence seemed to decline, though the king awaited her death to change the government officers. Present, as Alvares reported, in different religious ceremonies, she subsequently retired in Goğğam, where she was buried in Märṭulä Maryam in 1524. 172 The grief of the people was reported by Alvares: "They said that since she had died all of them had died, great and small, and that while she lived, all lived and were defended and protected; and she was the father and mother of all." 173 Even eight months later, her tent in the camp was still on site for the people who were coming to mourn. 174 She and her richly endowed church remain famous today. 175 Finally, the political career of Ǝleni and her religious involvement inspired the successive queens after her. Her stand in diplomatic affairs also helped her successors as queen and/or regent to get involved in political matters, even in war. For instance, Queen Säblä Wängel undertook a form of war leadership, after the death of her husband, to accompany and advise the Portuguese military mission from Däbrä Dammo until they succeeded in joining Gälawdewos 292 and his army in the Sǝmen region in 1543. 176 On the Muslim side, Bati Dəl Wänbära (Dalwanbarah), the first wife of Imam Aḥmad, also participated in war expeditions, despite the protestation of his soldiers. 177 Other Muslim princesses were also involved in some battles. 178 What is more, after the death of the imam in 1543, it was Säblä Wängel and Bati Dəl Wänbära who undertook the diplomatic negotiations to effect the return of their respective sons, captured at different times during the war. 179 Next to them, Queen Gaʿǝwa who ruled in a northern part of Ethiopia during the sixteenth century, sided with the imam and became famous for her military activities against the Christian kings. 180

Conclusion

The field of medieval Ethiopian women's history is on course to build upon its foundation. If some relevant information has been disclosed in this chapter, much more needs to be discovered. And though the society was definitely organized by gender division, some bridges between sex, roles, and attribution were made depending social status and context. In all communities, women had to respect the gendered rules of the liturgy or customary laws. However, social status and age impacted more on their lives, as was also the case for men. Women were involved in all spheres of society: they were farmers and regents, diplomats and war leaders, nuns and merchants. Therefore, women had a role to play in society at the level of the household and of state affairs. Even if, in most communities, women were excluded from legal forms of authority, they were actors in the social and political order, and instrumental to sovereigns' governance. In some cases, they succeeded in acquiring some power of their own. This paper finally shows that women were not invisible if one pays attention to details. It points out the necessity of a careful and systematic rereading of the available sources (especially medieval hagiographies, a potential goldmine for unveiling the daily life of non-elite women), the analysis of unstudied documentation (such as the land grants and wills), and of new archeological surveys. 176 Herman, "Reines," 290-307. 177 Pankhurst Rita, "Taytu's Foremothers, " 51-63; Sevir Chernetsov, "Bati Dǝl Wämbära," in EAe 1 (2003), 505. 178 Like Hāğirah and Fardūsah: see Chekroun,"Le Futūḥ," 35,193,366. 179 Amélie Chekroun and Margaux Herman, "Negotiations after War: the Roles of Christian and Muslim Ethiopian Queens in the 16th century," in preparation. 180 Denis Nosnitsin, "Gaʿǝwa," in EAe 2 (2005), 646-647.

  Conti Rossini-Ricci, Il libro della luce, I: 151-2 (text), II: 90 (trans); Marie Laure Derat, "La circoncision et l'excision en Éthiopie du XV e au XVIII e siècle: lectures d'un rituel," Afriques (online journal) 1 (2010), put online 15 April 2010; http://journals.openedition.org/afriques/415. PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

  Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

  60 Habtamu Tegegne, "The Edict of King Gälawdéwos Against the Illegal Slave Trade in Christians: Ethiopia, 1548 -Featured Source," The Medieval Globe 2, 2 (2016): 73-114; Marie-Laure Derat, "Chrétiens et musulmans d'Éthiopie face à la traite et à l'esclavage aux XV e et XVI e siècles," , in Traites et esclavages en Afrique orientale et dans l'océan Indien, ed. Henri Médard et al. (Paris, 2013), 121-148. 61 After battles or raids, Christian women were enslaved, sometimes married to soldiers or officers and converted to Islam: see Amélie Chekroun, "Le Futūḥ al-Ḥabaša: Écriture de l'histoire, guerre et société dans le Bar Saʿad ad-Dīn (Éthiopie, XVI e siècle)," (Ph.D diss., Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2013), 364-368. 62 Perruchon, Histoire des guerres, 61-63, 155-159; English translation in G. W. B. Huntingford, The Glorious Victories of ʿĀmda Seyôn King of Ethiopia (Oxford, 1965), here at 55, 83. PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

  70 Kropp, "The Serʿata Gebr," 51-87; Marie-Laure Derat, "Le banquet à la cour du roi d'Éthiopie au XV e siècle. Dons forcés et contreparties," Hypothèses 1 (2001): 267-274; "Le banquet royal en Ethiopie au XV e siècle: fiscalités et festivités," in Cuisine et Société en Afrique: histoires, saveurs, savoir-faire, ed. Monique Chastanet, François-Xavier Fauvelle, and Dominique Juhé-Beaulaton (Paris, 2002), 41-52; Deresse Ayenachew, "Le kätäma," 14-21, 34; Herman, "Reines," 101-114. 71 Deresse Ayenachew, "Le kätäma," ch. 5; Perruchon, Histoire des guerres, 130.72 Kaplan, "The Ethiopian Cult of the Saints," 5, 9. PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

  Pankhurst, Social History, 69. 97 Richard Pankhurst was a pioneer of the subject. See "Ethiopian dynastic marriage and the Béta Esraʾél (or Falashas)," Africa. Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente 52, 3 (September 1997): 445-454; idem, "Dynastic Inter-Marriage in Medieval and Post-Medieval Ethiopia," in Ethiopia PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

PRE-PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

  William Eliot Conzelman, ed. and trans., Chronique de Galâwdêwos (Claudius), roi d'Éthiopie (Paris, 1895), 122-123. His son Minas (r. 1559-1563) married following the religious ritual, here called ṣälotä täklil or "prayer of coronation," as it still is today: see Manfred Kropp, ed. and trans., Die Geschichte des Lebna Dengel, Claudius und Minās, 2 vols., CSCO 503-504, SAe 83-84(Louvain, 1988), at vol. 1 (text), 51. From the reign of Iyasu I till today, the mäṣḥäfä täklil or "Book of the Coronation" is read during the ceremony: see Ignazio Guidi, ed. and trans., Annales Iohannis I, Iyāsu I, Bakāffā. II, 2 vols., CSCO, 2 nd ser.

Herman, "Reines," 50-67

; on the Muslim communities, see Chekroun, "Le Futūḥ," 160-161. 99 Steven Kaplan "Marriage," in EAe 3 (2007): 793-797, at 793. 100 Beckingham-Huntingford, Prester John, 1: 105.

101

Four hagiographies mention critiques of ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon for having married his father's wife: see Huntingford, Glorious Victories, introduction, and Joanna Mantel-Niećko and Denis Nosnitsin, "ʿAmdä Ṣǝyon I," in EAe 1

(2003), 227-229, at 228. 102

Perruchon, La vie, 96. Written during the fifteenth century, this text is a saintly hagiography.

103

The ceremony was called qǝddǝst säbsab or "holy wedding" for Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl:

PRINT VERSION Herman, Margaux. "Chapter 13 Towards a History of Women in Medieval Ethiopia". In A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 365-394. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004419582_014

107

The women being now only settled on the right side. Joseph Varenbergh, "Studien zur abessinischen Reichsordnung (Śerʿata Mangeśt)," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Verwandte Gebiete 30

(1915-16): 1-45, at 22-23 (text), 41-42 (trans.)

.

PRE-

  Yet, if we consider that Ǝleni was not 142 Jules Perruchon, ed. and trans., Les chroniques de Zarʾa Yâʿeqôb et Baʾeda Mâryâm, rois d'Éthiopie de 1434 à 1478 (Paris, 1893), 10, 13. 143 Ibid., 174. 144 Ibid., 175-6: "For these qualities, the King greatly loved our Queen Ǝleni. He considered her like his own mother." 145 Kropp, Geschichte des Lebna Dengel, 3. Regencies also occurred in Muslim communities: see Basset, Histoire de la conquête, 431. 146 Jules Perruchon, "Histoire d'Eskender, d'ʿAmda Syon Il et Nâʿod, rois d'Éthiopie," Journal Asiatique, th ser., 3 (1894): 319-366, at 339; Taddesse Tamrat, Church and State in