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

Abstract

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