ARAM, 18-19 (2006-2007) 723-738.A. doi: O'MAHONY 10.2143/ARAM.19.0.2020750 723 ‘MAKING SAFE THE HOLY WAY’ ETHIOPIAN PILGRIM AND MONASTIC PRESENCE IN 14TH-16TH CENTURY EGYPT AND JERUSALEM ANTHONY O’MAHONY (Heythrop College, University of London) ETHIOPIAN PILGRIM AND MONASTIC PRESENCE IN JERUSALEM AND EGYPT The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem, from the 14th to the 16th century, was linked to other monastic and pilgrim communities formed along the pil- grimage route from their homeland to the Holy City.1 Enrico Cerulli in his monumental Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Geru- saleme2 established documentary evidence for a ‘rule’ that governed the life of the monastics and pilgrims for the following Ethiopian communities in Egypt.3 (i) Qusqam, near Dayr al Muharaq, the Ethiopian church of the apostles until the 16th century. (ii) Harah Zuwaylah, at Cairo, where the Ethiopian church, near the Coptic Church of the Virgin, was dedicated to St George by the 15th century. Later, in a document of the 16th century, the chapels of Mary Queen of Heaven and St Maria are mentioned. (iii) The Ethiopian presence in the desert of Scete, which was centred on by the 15th century, the monastery of Bahat, near the Coptic monastery of John Colobus, dedicated to the Prophet Elijah and afterwards, from the start of the 16th century, a new convent dedicated to St Mena (Dayr Abü Minä). 1 See also my other studies on the history of Ethiopian presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land: ‘Between Islam and Christendom: The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem before 1517', Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue, Vol. 2 (1996), pp 140-154; ‘The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem: Pilgrims, Politics, Diplomacy and Holy Places until 1840’, Chronos, no. 2, 1999, pp. 29-53; ‘Pilgrims, Politics and Holy Places: the Ethiopian Community in Jerusalem until ca.1650’, Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Cen- trality to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Edited by Lee I. Levine, New York, Continuum, 1999, pp. 467-481. 2 Enrico Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Rome, Collezione scientifica e documentaria a cura del Ministero dell’Africa italiana, Vol. I 1943; Vol. II, 1947. 3 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Parte II: ‘Statuti degli Etiopi in Palestina ed Egitto (dal secolo XIV ai nostri giornie), Capitolo I: Gli ordinamenti delle communitá etiopice dei Pellegrini dal secolo XIV al secolo XVI’, Vol. II, pp. 353-432. 06-8819_Aram 18-19_38_Mahony 723 06-26-2007, 18:53 724 ‘MAKING SAFE THE HOLY WAY' (iv) A small Ethiopian community presence within the famous Coptic mon- astery of St Antony of the Desert. The two communities of Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah had relations with that of Jerusalem. The community of Scete was a little outside the usual pil- grim route from Ethiopia in Jerusalem; but anyway the result was that within documents cited by Cerulli its members were counted as part of the Qeddusan and therefore part of the Jerusalem community and had statutes the same as these of the two larger communities mentioned above. Cerulli only mentions one document making reference to Ethiopian pres- ence at St. Antony of the Desert which comes from the 16th century. We know nothing precise about the patterns, which eventually linked the community of Jerusalem with these Ethiopian communities, than we do of Jerusalem with the Ethiopians Mt. Lebanon or on the island of Cyprus.4 However these communi- ties were affiliated to that of Jerusalem and besides, it should be noted that in one document there is reference to the participation of pilgrims of the commu- nity of Säm (Arabic Sham), which might mean here Syria, at a meeting in Qusquam. This might indicate a well used route for pilgrims and Qeddusan who journeyed between the different Ethiopian communities along the route to and from Ethiopia and Jerusalem; and who brought news and traditions from one community to another.5 THE JURIDICAL LINKS BETWEEN THE ETHIOPIAN COMMUNITY IN JERUSALEM AND THE PILGRIMS How were the links between the Jerusalem community and the Ethiopian communities of Egypt given concrete form? All the members of those com- munities, Egypt and Jerusalem, had the name of pilgrims or Naggadyan. The Pilgrims enjoyed rights assured by statutes and by custom. In communities; first amongst these, as we shall see, was the right to participate in the assembly of each of the individual communities. On their return to Ethiopia, they re-en- tered their respective monastic communities of origin; but, if sent to undertake ‘missions’ on account of Jerusalem or the Egyptian communities, they were treated with particular honour and enjoyed equal consideration as foreign mis- sions. The documents give the title Naggadyan or pilgrims to the Ethiopians of Jerusalem and those of Harah Zuwaylah, Qusquam and of Scete indiscrimi- nately. 4 Renato Lefevere,‘Roma e la communita etiopica di cipro hei secoli XV & XVI’, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, Vol. I, 1941, pp. 71-86. 5 For a general account of the Ethiopian monastic presence in Egypt see, Otto Meinardus, ‘Ethiopian Monks in Egypt’, Publications de l'Institut d' Études Orientalés de la Bibliotheque Patriarcale d' Alexandrie, Vol. XI, 1962 pp 61-70; ‘Ecclesiastica Aethiopica in Aegypto’, Jour- nal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. III, 1974, pp. 23-35. 06-8819_Aram 18-19_38_Mahony 724 06-26-2007, 18:53 A. O'MAHONY 725 The pilgrims were also called Qeddusan, or saints. What was the difference between these two categories? Pilgrims were those who participated in the community for the period of their pilgrimage in the Holy Land, they were seen as temporary members to the community in Egypt or Palestine. The Qeddusan, or saints, on the other hand, were those who were settled with a vow to stay in Jerusalem, or in the linked Egyptian community, for life. The link between Jerusalem and the Egyptian communities of Naggadyan or pilgrims, or Qeddusan, or saints, is also confirmed in penal terms in the sense that expulsion from one of the communities meant expulsion from all. And it is a particularly serious, because the guilty person was cut from the re- turn route to his home in Ethiopia. This general expulsion was therefore ex- plicitly announced in the documents for the most serious cases “on pain of ex- communication because none of the Ethiopians would receive him; neither those of Härah Zawaylah, nor those of Qusquam nor those of Jerusalem” or with the even more serious words “whoever of the Pilgrims, whether in Jeru- salem or Harah Zuwaylah or Qusquam, takes communion with Za-Selläsë del Danot [the expelled man]…should be excommunicated”.6 The Naggadyan or Qeddusan, participated as of right in the assembly of each. Thus, the participation of the pilgrims of other communities is men- tioned emphatically in the documents to give greater value to the deliberations. A document of the 16th century fixed the rule that the cross which the head of the community carried in his hand as a sign of his post, in the case of the death of the leader himself, prior or rector, of the communities in Jerusalem, Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah, would be inherited by the community of Jeru- salem. The community of the Holy City thus had recognition of its symbolic importance over the other Ethiopian communities. The goods of one community could be transferred to another. We have the record of an assignment of the goods of the community of Jerusalem to the female community in the holy city. In this record the prior of Jerusalem as- signed to the abbess goods from Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah. The colophon of a codex of the 16th century contained the deed of gift of the book of the prior of Jerusalem to the community of Qusquam and Harah Zuwaylah, al- though the wording is less explicit, another codex of 16th century records a gift from Jerusalem to Harah Zuwaylah. Another important link had been established, all the communities by their general obligation celebrated the consecration of dead pilgrims on a fixed day, (Ethiopian Calendar, 29 teqemt). It must be noted that the value of the tazkar in the religious and civil life of Ethiopia; and therefore the communal feast (29 teqemt,) is the object of the gravest admonitions in the documents. 6 Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina: Storia della Communita Etiopica di Gerusaleme, Vol. II, p. 356. 06-8819_Aram 18-19_38_Mahony 725 06-26-2007, 18:53 726 ‘MAKING SAFE THE HOLY WAY' THE INTERNAL ORDINANCE OF THE COMMUNITY: POWERS OF THE PRIOR The powers of the community were divided amongst: (a) The Prior and the Rector (b) The Administrator (c) The Saints or Qeddusan (d) The Assembly The leader of the community has various titles. In Jerusalem he had the Ara- bic title of rayis, a possible transcription of the Ethiopian rayyïs according to Cerulli. The head of Qusquam community had the same title; while that of the community of Hara Zuwaylah was called equally in Arabic qä-im, transcribed qäym in Ethiopian. In a related document to the head of the Scete was desig- nated abbot, aba-menet, that was analogously carried by the prior of Jerusalem in an ancient statute The head of the community had a cross as his insignia, which he bore in his hand and over which the Jerusalem community had particular rights. Here arises the question that the representation of the sovereign of Ethiopia who ‘held in his hand a cross as if it were a sceptre’ in the medieval accounts de- rived, in the final analysis, from this custom of the Jerusalem community of which the western pilgrims had spoken.7 The head of the community, that we will from now on call the prior, was present at the assembly and his presence at this is explicitly mentioned in the documents.