Acknowledgments
The credit for this volume’s genesis goes to Kate Hammond of Brill Academic Publishers, who first approached me about a collected volume on medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2016, and to my Ethiopianist colleagues, who convinced me that the project was not only feasible but could answer a felt need to bring together recent findings across multiple disciplines. To facilitate conversations across specialties and about the parameters of the volume as a whole, thirteen colleagues convened for a week-long seminar, “Ethiopia and Ethiopians in the Middle Ages: Towards an Interdisciplinary and Multiconfessional Synthesis,” at the Fondation des Treilles in southern France in March 2018. The lively and substantial dialogue held around the conference table continued on walks through the Fondation’s scenic grounds, over delicious meals prepared by its kitchen, and by a roaring fire in the evenings. A more congenial atmosphere is hard to imagine, and I am grateful to François-Xavier Fauvelle for co-organizing the seminar; to Emmanuelle Morel-Darleux for beautifully arranging the logistics of our stay; to the Fondation’s director, Anne Bourjade, and all the staff for welcoming us so warmly; and to the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University for contributing funding for participants’ travel. In addition to the authors of the following essays, a number of colleagues shared their ideas about particular topics as the volume was being formulated, to whom I am grateful: Getatchew Haile, Steven Kaplan, Robin Seignobos, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, and Benjamin Weber. Initial templates for the maps were provided by Alessandro Bausi from those of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and Marie-Laure Derat, François-Xavier Fauvelle, and Emmanuel Fritsch offered me advice on their adaptation for this volume; Michael Siegel of the Rutgers-New Brunswick Geography Department translated this mass of data into the present images. Antonella Brita’s aid with the bibliography was indispensable. Two anonymous reviewers for the press provided valuable feedback on the draft volume, and Marcella Mulder at Brill oversaw its passage into print. My thanks to them all.
While each essay represents a particular area of research and the perspective of its own author(s), the idea from the beginning was that the essays would also work together to provide something in the way of an introduction to the period generally, and would be cognizant of (though not, of course, necessarily in complete agreement with) the contents and conclusions of fellow contributions. A high degree of collaboration and cooperation was therefore demanded of the contributors. It included coordination on different essays’ scope and on their treatment of shared topics, the sharing of findings across subfields, and a certain agreement on issues of nomenclature, orthography, and citation, even when these were not a contributor’s first preference. The discussions held at Les Treilles thus continued long afterward, and my editorial work, in particular, could never have been accomplished without constant recourse to the contributors on questions large and small, philosophical and mundane. My deepest debt is therefore to my fellow contributors, whose inexhaustible patience, generosity, and collegiality is deeply touching to me, and from whom I have learned so much.