This book explores why Ethiopian kings pursued long-distance diplomatic contacts with Latin
Europe in the late Middle Ages. It traces the history of more than a dozen embassies dispatched
to the Latin West by the kings of Solomonic Ethiopia a powerful Christian kingdom in the
medieval Horn of Africa. Drawing on sources from Europe Ethiopia and Egypt it examines the
Ethiopian kings' motivations for sending out their missions in the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries - and argues that a desire to acquire religious treasures and foreign
artisans drove this early intercontinental diplomacy. Moreover the Ethiopian initiation of
contacts with the distant Christian sphere of Latin Europe appears to have been intimately
connected to a local political agenda of building monumental ecclesiastical architecture in the
North-East African highlands and asserted the Ethiopian rulers' claim of universal kingship
and rightful descent from the biblical king Solomon. Shedding new light on the self-identity of
a late medieval African dynasty at the height of its power this book challenges conventional
narratives of African-European encounters on the eve of the so-called 'Age of Exploration'.
