Ethiopia's Christians will be confronted from the mid-fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth century by the aggressiveness of the Muslim states, the far-reaching migrations of the Oromo, and the efforts of the Portuguese—who have been summoned to aid in the fight against the forces of Islam—to convert them from Monophysite Christianity to Roman Catholicism.

The effects of the Muslim and Oromo activities and of the civil strife engendered by the Portuguese will leave the empire much weakened by the mid-seventeenth century.

One result is the emergence of regional lords essentially independent of the throne, although in principle subject to it.

Beginning in the thirteenth century, one of the chief problems confronting the Christian kingdom, ruled at this time by the Amhara, is the threat of Muslim encirclement.

By this time, a variety of peoples east and south of the highlands have embraced Islam, and some have established powerful sultanates (or shaykhdoms).

One of these is the sultanate of Ifat in the northeastern Shewan foothills, and another is centered in the Islamic city of Harar farther east.

In the lowlands along the Red Sea are two other important Muslim peoples—the Afar and the Somali.

As mentioned previously, Ifat posed a major threat to the Christian kingdom, but it is finally defeated by Amda Siyon in the mid-fourteenth century after a protracted struggle.

During this conflict, Ifat is supported by other sultanates and by Muslim pastoralists, but for the most part, the Islamicized peoples inhabit small, independent states and are divided by differences in language and culture.

Many of them speak Cushitic languages, unlike the Semitic speakers of Harar.

Some are sedentary cultivators and traders, while others are pastoralists.

As a consequence, unity beyond a single campaign or even the coordination of military activities is difficult to sustain.

Their tendency toward disunity notwithstanding, the Muslim forces continue to pose intermittent threats to the Christian kingdom.

By the late fourteenth century, descendants of the ruling family of Ifat have moved east to the area around Harar and have reinvigorated the old Muslim sultanate of Adal, which becomes the most powerful Muslim entity in the Horn of Africa.

Yekuno Amlak's grandson, Amda Siyon (reigned 1313-44), distinguishes himself by at last establishing firm control over all of the Christian districts of Ethiopia and by expanding into the neighboring regions of Shewa, Gojam, and Damot and into Agew districts in the Lake Tana area.

He also devotes much attention to campaigns against Muslim states to the east and southeast of Amhara, such as Ifat, which still poses a powerful threat to the kingdom, and against Hadiya, a Sidama state southwest of Shewa.

These victories give him control of the central highlands and enhance his influence over trade routes to the Red Sea.

His conquests also help facilitate the spread of Christianity in the southern highlands.

Yekuno Amlak overthrows the Ethiopian Zagwe dynasty, claims the throne and establishes the Solomonic dynasty in 1270.

John of Montecorvino was born at Montecorvino Rovella, in what is now Campania.

As a member of a Roman Catholic religious order which at this time is chiefly concerned with the conversion of unbelievers, he had been commissioned in 1272 by the East Roman emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to Pope Gregory X, to negotiate for the reunion of the 'Greek' (Orthodox) and Latin churches.

Commissioned by Pope Nicholas IV to preach Christianity in the Nearer and Middle East, especially to the Asiatic hordes then threatening the West, he had devoted himself incessantly from 1275 to 1289 to the Eastern missions, first that of Persia.

In 1286 Arghun, the Ilkhan who rules this kingdom, had sent a request to the pope through the Nestorian monk, Rabban Bar Sauma, to send Catholic missionaries to the Court of the Great Khan (Mongol emperor) of China, Kúblaí Khan (1260–94), who is well disposed towards Christianity.

About that time John of Montecorvino had come to Rome with similar promising news, and Pope Nicholas had entrusted him with the important mission to Farther China, where about this time Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian lay traveler, still lingers.

John had revisited the Papal Court in 1289 and had been sent out as Roman legate to the Great Khan, the Ilkhan of Persia, and other leading personages of the Mongol Empire, as well as to the Emperor of Ethiopia.

He started on his journey in 1289, provided with letters to the Khan Argun, to the great Emperor Kublai Khan, to Kaidu, Prince of the Tatars, to the King of Armenia and to the Patriarch of the Jacobites.

His companions are the Dominican Nicholas of Pistoia and the merchant Peter of Lucalongo.

He reaches Tabriz (in Iranian Azerbeijan), at this time the chief city of Mongol Persia, if not of all Western Asia.

John of Montecorvino and his companions had moved from Persia down by sea to India, in 1291, to the Madras region or "Country of St. Thomas" where he has preached for thirteen months and baptized about one hundred persons; his companion Nicholas dies.

From here Montecorvino writes home, in December 1291 (or 1292), the earliest noteworthy account of the Coromandel coast furnished by any Western European.

Kublai, a recluse since the death of his favorite wife and the son he had chosen as heir, dies at seventy-nine in February 1294, his control over the other khanates greatly diminished.

By this time, the separation of the four khanates of the Mongol Empire (the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Golden Horde in Russia, the Ilkhanate in Persia, and the Yuan Dynasty in China) have deepened.

Temür was born the third son of Zhenjin of the Borjigin and Kökejin (Bairam-Egechi) of the Khunggirad on October 15, 1265.

Because Kublai's first son Dorji died early, his second son and Temür's father, Zhenjin, became the crown prince.

However, he died in 1286 when Temür was twenty-one years old.

Kublai remained close to Zhenjin's widow Kökejin, who was high in his favor.

Like his grandfather Kublai, Temür is a follower of Buddhism.

Temür had followed his grandfather Kublai to suppress the rebellion of Nayan (Naiyan) and other rival relatives in 1287, after which he and Kublai's official, Oz-Temür, came to guard the Liao River area and Liaodong in the east from Nayan's ally, Qadaan, and defeated him.

Kublai had appointed Temür the princely overseer of Karakorum and surrounding areas in July 1293.

Three Chagatai princes submitted to him while he was defending Mongolia.

After Kublai Khan diesin 1294, Kublai's old officials urge the court to summon a kurultai in Shangdu.

Because Zhenjin's second son Darmabala had already died in 1292, only his two sons, Gammala and Temür, are left to succeed.

It is proposed that they hold a competition over who has better knowledge of Genghis Khan's sayings.

Temür wins and is declared the emperor.

John of Montecorvino, traveling by sea from Nestorian Meliapur in Bengal, reaches China in 1294, appearing in the capital "Cambaliech" (now Beijing), only to find that Kúblaí Khan had just died, and Temür had succeeded to the Mongol throne.

Though the latter does apparently not embrace Christianity, he throws no obstacles in the way of the zealous missionary, who soon wins the confidence of the ruler in spite of the opposition of the Nestorians already settled here.

Portugal's lasting legacy for Nigeria, in the end, is its initiation of the transatlantic slave trade.

By 1471 Portuguese ships have reconnoitered the West African coast south as far as the Niger Delta, although they do not know that it is the delta, and in 1481 emissaries from the king of Portugal visitthe court of the oba of Benin.

For a time, Portugal and Benin maintain close relations.

Portuguese soldiers aid Benin in its wars; Portuguese even comes to be spoken at the oba's court.

Gwatto, the port of Benin, becomes the depot to handle the peppers, ivory, and increasing numbers of slaves offered by the oba in exchange for coral beads; textile imports from India; European-manufactured articles, including tools and weapons; and manillas (brass and bronze bracelets that are used as currency, also melted down for objets d'art).

Portugal also may be the first European power to import cowrie shells, which are the currency of the far interior.

A desire for glory and profit from trade, missionary zeal, and considerations of global strategy brings Portuguese navigators to the West African coast in the late fifteenth century.

Locked in a seemingly interminable crusading war with Muslim Morocco, the Portuguese conceive of a plan whereby maritime expansion might bypass the Islamic world and open new markets that will result in commercial gain.

They hope to tap the fabled Saharan gold trade, establish a sea route around Africa to India, and link up with the mysterious Christian kingdom of Prester John.

The Portuguese achieve all these goals.

They obtain access to the gold trade by trading along the Gulf of Guinea, establishing a base at Elmina ("the mine") on the Gold Coast (Ghana), and they make their way into the Indian Ocean, militarily securing a monopoly of the spice trade.

Even the Christian kingdom turns out to be real—it is Ethiopia; Portuguese adventures there, however, turn sour very quickly.

Benin profits from its close ties with the Portuguese and exploit the firearms bought from them to tighten its hold on the lower Niger area.

Two factors check the spread of Portuguese influence and the continued expansion of Benin, however.

First, Portugal stops buying pepper because of the availability of other spices in the Indian Ocean region.

Second, Benin places an embargo on the export of slaves, thereby isolating itself from the growth of what is to become the major export from the Nigerian coast for three hundred years.

Benin continues to capture slaves and to employ them in its domestic economy, but the Edo state remains unique among Nigerian polities in refusing to participate in the transatlantic trade.

In the long run, Benin remains relatively isolated from the major changes along the Nigerian coast.

Interior East Africa (1396–1539 CE): Highland Thrones, Great Lakes Kingdoms, and Riftland Corridors

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of Interior East Africa includes Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, northern Zimbabwe, northern Malawi, northwestern Mozambique, inland Tanzania, and inland Kenya. Anchors include the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands, the Rift Valley and its lakes (Tana, Turkana, Tanganyika, Kivu, Victoria), the interlacustrine plateaus of Rwanda–Burundi–Uganda, the savanna woodlands of inland Tanzania and Zambia, and salt–copper provinces (Danakil salt flats; Central African copper belts). Highlands, plateaus, and rift basins funneled people, herds, and goods between the Sahara, Nile, and the distant Indian Ocean.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age introduced cooler, sometimes wetter highland decades and greater interannual variability in the bimodal rains (long and short rains) on the equatorial plateau. Highland Ethiopia saw occasional frost events at elevation and episodic droughts that tested terraced fields. Rift lakes rose and fell with multi-year cycles, altering fisheries and floodplain soils. Farther south, miombo woodlands oscillated between fire-driven openness and denser canopies as rainfall shifted.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Highlands (Ethiopia/Eritrea): Mixed plow agriculture—teff, barley, wheat, pulses—on terraced slopes; oxen traction; beekeeping; coffee (bunna) as a stimulant and ritual good in forest zones; sheep and cattle in upland pastures.

• Interlacustrine plateau (Uganda–Rwanda–Burundi): Banana/plantain (matoke) complexes, finger millet, sorghum, beans; intensive ridged gardens; cattle and small stock shaping status and tribute.

• Inland savannas (Tanzania–Zambia–n. Malawi/n. Mozambique): Sorghum, pearl millet, later maize (incipient), groundnuts; shifting cultivation around iron-rich soils; riverine and lacustrine fisheries (Victoria, Tanganyika, Mweru).

• Pastoral–agro-pastoral belts (Turkana, Karamoja, South Sudan): Cattle, sheep, goats; seasonal transhumance keyed to pasture and water holes; grain acquired via exchange with cultivators.

Technology & Material Culture

Terracing, stone bunds, and hillside canals stabilized highland soils; wooden scratch plows with iron shares spread in core areas. Iron smelting and smithing produced hoes, knives, spears, and prestige blades; salt bars from Danakil and natron from Rift deposits moved as currency. In the Great Lakes, barkcloth, banana-fiber cordage, and refined pottery supported dense settlement; drum regalia, inlaid stools, and spears signaled courtly authority. Highland churches and rock-hewn sanctuaries (Ethiopia) housed manuscripts on parchment; illuminated texts and processional crosses embodied elite devotion.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

Ridge-top roads and river fords linked highland Solomonic courts to granary provinces; caravan paths ran from Lake Tana toward the Nile and across Afar to salt pans. Southward, interlacustrine tracks tied Bunyoro, Buganda, Rwanda, and Burundi to fisheries and iron districts, while long portage chains led east to inland markets that fed Swahili entrepôts (without being coastal). To the southwest, copper, salt, and ivory moved toward Central African savannas. Embassies and merchants shuttled between highland polities and Muslim sultanates beyond the escarpment, transmitting cloth, beads, and firearms in trace amounts by the early 16th century.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Highlands: The Solomonic monarchy cultivated a Christian sacral kingship; feast calendars, processions, and monastery networks bound rural parishes to royal capitals. Hagiographies and royal chronicles codified legitimacy.

• Great Lakes: Courts elaborated kingship through royal drums, regnal names, and origin epics; cattle and banana groves anchored ritual life and bridewealth. Spirit mediums, clan shrines, and rain rituals mediated ecology and law.

• Pastoral belts: Age grades and cattle rituals organized society; oath-taking over spears and gourds enforced pacts; song cycles tracked drought, pasture, and war.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Highlanders diversified fields (cereals–pulses), rotated terraces, and used enclosure to rest pastures; granaries and church stores buffered dearth. Plateau cultivators intercropped bananas, beans, and yams in shaded gardens that stabilized soils through mulch and perennial cover. Pastoralists staggered herds by age/sex across grazing zones, maintained dry-season wells, and exchanged milk/meat for grain. Rift fishers smoked catches for trade inland; salt and iron circulated as crisis goods when harvests failed.

Technology & Power Shifts (Conflict Dynamics)

In Ethiopia, rulers like Zara Yaqob (r. 1434–1468) strengthened monarchy and church institutions; frontier warfare with lowland polities persisted. By the early 16th century, pressure from the Adal frontier (Ahmad ibn Ibrahim “Gragn,” 1529–1530s) reached the highlands, introducing matchlocks via Red Sea links and triggering campaigns that devastated cropland and churches—an arc of conflict that crests just beyond 1539. In the Great Lakes, Bunyoro and ascending Buganda contested fisheries, iron sources, and tribute routes; smaller kingdoms (Rwanda, Burundi) consolidated hills through lineage alliances and cattle-client systems. Raiding and fort building (earthen banks, stockades) reshaped borders; long-drum signals coordinated musters and news.

Transition

By 1539 CE, Interior East Africa stood at a hinge: a fortified Solomonic highland throne facing intensifying frontier war; interlacustrine kingdoms thickening their administrative webs; pastoral corridors adapting to climate flicker; and caravan paths quietly knitting inland producers to distant Indian Ocean demand. Within a generation, gunpowder, Red Sea diplomacy, and highland–lowland wars would redraw the northern map, while south and west the Great Lakes monarchies pressed outward along lakes, gardens, and drumroads.