Medhani Alem Church, one of the twelve rock-hewn churches
in Lablibela.
Courtesy United Nations Educational, Science, and
Cultural Organization
In response to Islamic expansion in the Red Sea area and
the loss of their seaborne commercial network, the Aksumites
turned their attention to the colonizing of the northern
Ethiopian highlands. The Agew peoples, divided into a number
of groups, inhabited the central and northern highlands, and
it was these peoples who came increasingly under Aksumite
influence. In all probability, this process of acculturation
had been going on since the first migrants from Southwest
Arabia settled in the highlands, but it seems to have
received new impetus with the decline of Aksum's overseas
trade and consequent dependence upon solely African
resources. As early as the mid-seventh century, the old
capital at Aksum had been abandoned; thereafter, it served
only as a religious center and as a place of coronation for
a succession of kings who traced their lineage to Aksum. By
then, Aksumite cultural, political, and religious influence
had been established south of Tigray in such Agew districts
as Lasta, Wag, Angot, and, eventually, Amhara.
This southward expansion continued over the next several
centuries. The favored technique involved the establishment
of military colonies, which served as core populations from
which Aksumite culture, Semitic language, and Christianity
spread to the surrounding Agew population. By the tenth
century, a post-Aksumite Christian kingdom had emerged that
controlled the central northern highlands from modern
Eritrea to Shewa and the coast from old Adulis to Zeila in
present-day Somalia, territory considerably larger than the
Aksumites had governed. Military colonies were also
established farther afield among the Sidama people of the
central highlands. These settlers may have been the
forerunners of such Semitic-speaking groups as the Argobba,
Gafat (extinct), Gurage, and Hareri, although independent
settlement of Semitic speakers from Southwest Arabia is also
possible. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
Shewan region was the scene of renewed Christian expansion,
carried out, it appears, by one of the more recently
Semiticized peoples--the Amhara.
About 1137 a new dynasty came to power in the Christian
highlands. Known as the Zagwe and based in the Agew district
of Lasta, it developed naturally out of the long cultural
and political contact between Cushitic- and Semitic-speaking
peoples in the northern highlands. Staunch Christians, the
Zagwe devoted themselves to the construction of new churches
and monasteries. These were often modeled after Christian
religious edifices in the Holy Land, a locale the Zagwe and
their subjects held in special esteem. Patrons of literature
and the arts in the service of Christianity, the Zagwe kings
were responsible, among other things, for the great churches
carved into the rock in and around their capital at Adefa.
In time, Adefa became known as Lalibela, the name of the
Zagwe king to whose reign the Adefa churches' construction
has been attributed.
By the time of the Zagwe, the Ethiopian church was showing
the effects of long centuries of isolation from the larger
Christian and Orthodox worlds. After the seventh century,
when Egypt succumbed to the Arab conquest, the highlanders'
sole contact with outside Christianity was with the Coptic
Church of Egypt, which periodically supplied a patriarch, or
abun, upon royal request. During the long period from the
seventh to the twelfth century, the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church came to place strong emphasis upon the Old Testament
and on the Judaic roots of the church. Christianity in
Ethiopia became imbued with Old Testament belief and
practice in many ways, which differentiated it not only from
European Christianity but also from the faith of other
Monophysites, such as the Copts. Under the Zagwe, the
highlanders maintained regular contact with the Egyptians.
Also, by then the Ethiopian church had demonstrated that it
was not a proselytizing religion but rather one that by and
large restricted its attention to already converted areas of
the highlands. Not until the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries did the church demonstrate real interest in
proselytizing among nonbelievers, and then it did so via a
reinvigorated monastic movement.
Data as of 1991.
