Annales d'Ethiopie

What do Christians (Not) Eat: Food Taboos and the Ethiopian

Christian Communities (13th-18th c.)
Thomas Guindeuil

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Guindeuil Thomas. What do Christians (Not) Eat: Food Taboos and the Ethiopian Christian Communities (13th-18th c.).
In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 29, année 2014. pp. 59-82;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/ethio.2014.1558;

https://www.persee.fr/doc/ethio_0066-2127_2014_num_29_1_1558;

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Résumé

Ce que mangent (ou ne mangent pas) les chrétiens. La communauté chrétienne d’Éthiopie face aux interdits alimentaires
Peu de sources permettent d’aborder frontalement la question des relations entre le christianisme éthiopien et les interdits
alimentaires. Cet article propose une relecture de cet étroit corpus, et met en relief les différents moments d’une histoire où
s’imbriquent pratiques alimentaires et identité religieuse. Le respect des interdits alimentaires bibliques est aujourd’hui considéré
comme un marqueur identitaire pour les chrétiens d’Éthiopie. Les chrétiens d’Éthiopie ont derrière eux une longue histoire d’identi -
fication au peuple élu, mais les interdits alimentaires du Pentateuque ne semblent pas, jus -qu’à une période récente, avoir eu une
quelconque résonnance pratique. Jusqu’au XVI e siècle, les textes mettent à jour des pratiques de non-consommation alimentaires
portant sur des chairs animales, communes à la majorité des populations de la région, chrétiennes ou non. Au XV e siècle, le roi Zar’a
Yā‘ eqob condamne la non-consommation du poisson en s’appuyant sur les écrits apostoliques. L’altérité alimentaire entre

communautés religieuses – chrétiens, musulmans, «païens » – se fonde alors sur des aliments qui symbolisent l’altérité

des modes de vie. Lorsqu’ils se confrontent, au XVI e siècle, au regard des catholiques européens, les chrétiens d’Éthiopie

élaborent un discours de justification de la non-consommation de certaines chairs animales, pratique dont le caractère

rituel est alors nié. Ce n’est qu’une fois les missionnaires catholiques expulsés, au XVII e siècle, que le respect des

interdits alimentaires bibliques semble être intégré à l’identité chrétienne éthiopienne, et supplante définitivement les

pratiques de non-consommation pan-éthiopiennes.

Abstract

Only a few sources exist that allow us to tackle directly the question of the relation between Ethiopian Christianity and dietary
prohibitions. This article proposes a new reading of this limited corpus. In so doing, it highlights various moments of a history in which
dietary practices and religious identity have overlapped and interpenetrated in different ways. Today, respect for the Biblical dietary
prohibitions is considered a hallmark of Ethiopian Christianity. Indeed, Ethiopian Christians have behind them a long history of
identification with the chosen people. But until recently, the dietary prohibitions of the Pentateuch do not seem to have had any
practical effect whatsoever. Until the 16th century, the texts reveal patterns of nonconsumption of meat that were common to most
populations of the region, Christian or not. In the 15th century, King Zär‘ ä Ya‘ ǝqob condemned the non-consumption of fish,

drawing for support upon texts of the apostles. Dietary “ otherness” across religious communities ― Christian, Muslim,

“ pagan” ― was founded upon foods which symbolized “ otherness” of life style. When the Christians of Ethiopia

confronted European Catholicism in the 16th century, they elaborated an apologetic discourse for their non-

consumption of certain kinds of animal flesh, a practice whose ritual significance was rejected. It was only when the

Catholic missionaries were expelled in the 17th century that respect for the Biblical dietary prohibitions seems to have

become an integral part of Ethiopian Christian identity, and to have definitively supplanted the older, pan-Ethiopian

practices of non-consumption.
 What do Christians (Not) Eat:
Food Taboos and the Ethiopian Christian Community
(13th-18th Centuries)

∗
Thomas Guindeuil

Ethiopian Christians differ from the majority of Christian communities by an

ensemble of ritual practices whose most obvious justifcation rests, at least
in part, on Mosaic law. These practices include Saturday observation of the
Sabbath, circumcision, and a prohibition against the consumption of the
fesh of animals considered ritually impure (Amharic ərkus). The
controversy, beginning in the 16th century, which was triggered in Europe
by the discovery of this “Judaizing” Christianity fueled a scholarly debate
that came to a head most recently in the 1950s and ’60s in the pages of
the prestigious Journal of Semitic Studies. It pitted against each other two
Orientalists, both specialists in Ethiopian languages and texts: Edward
Ullendorff and Maxime Rodinson. For Ullendorff, the Old Testament
practices observed among Ethiopian Christians represented the survival of
a pre-Christian Jewish past, or at least a past that refected the infuence of
Jewish communities in Ethiopia or Yemen, going back to the very
beginnings of Ethiopian Christianity. This thesis, however, was demolished
by Rodinson, who rightly stressed that the spread of Christianity pre-dated
all Jewish communities in the region, both Ethiopian and Yemenite 1. For
Rodinson, the Old Testament practices seen in Ethiopia are to be seen as
stemming from a late “return” to the Old Testament, carried out by a
Christian people who wished to substitute themselves for God’s original
“chosen people2”.
In the Middle Ages the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia in fact produced its
own discourse to attach itself to the history of Israel: the Christian kings of
Ethiopia laid claim to a line of descent from the throne of Solomon. This

*
Historian, project ofcer at the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies and associate researcher
at the Institute of African Worlds (IMAF, UMR 8171, Paris/Ivry-sur-Seine/Aix-en-Provence)
1
Ullendorff, 1956: 216-256.
2
Rodinson, 1964: 11-19.

Annales d’Éthiopie, 2014, 29, 59-82 59

Thomas Guindeuil

discourse fnds powerful expression in one of the best-known Ge‘ez texts

among historians of Ethiopia, the Kəbrä Nägäśt (“Glory of the Kings”). It
presents a foundational narrative which traces the origins of the Ethiopian
kingdom back to the Biblical story of the meeting between King Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba, a familiar theme in Ethiopian folklore. From this
union was born the mythical frst king of Christian Ethiopia, the founder of
a dynasty descending from the line of David and known to historians as the
“Solomonic dynasty”. The return to his mother’s country of this king,
dubbed Menilek in Ethiopian tradition, is coupled with another foundational
episode, the transfer to Ethiopia of the tablets of the Law of Israel.
Plausibly a 13th-century (re-)composition, the Kəbrä Nägäśt draws upon a
variety of textual traditions widespread in the ancient Orient, and above all
the cycle of the Queen of Sheba or her various avatars 3. It also gives
explicitly a list of the food animals which are forbidden by Mosaic law. This
takes the form of a lengthy insertion of texts from the Pentateuch
(Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14), which interrupt the narration of the
transfer of the Tablets of the Law:
What you shall eat which is pure (nəṣuḥ), and what is impure. You
may eat the ox, sheep, goat, he-goat, deer and gazelle, the
hartebeest, ibex, antelope, oryx, giraffe, and all quadrupeds which
split the hoof and chew the cud. And what you may not eat among
the animals that chew the cud and/or split the hoof: the camel, hare,
and porcupine, for they chew the cud but do not split the hoof; and
the hyena and the pig, for the split the hoof but do not chew the cud.
They are impure (rəkus), you shall not eat them4.
As in the Bible text, the list goes on to encompass the entire animal
kingdom. In it the notion of impurity is associated schematically with a
certain conception of hybridity or aberration. For example, only those
aquatic animals that have scales and fns may be eaten, while all others
are deemed impure5. This appeal to the normative text of the Pentateuch,
however, is an isolated case in the Ethiopian historical record6. Plausibly,
the authors of the text wished to underscore that the
(re-)conceptualization of Ethiopia as the “true Israel”, effected through the
transfer of the tablets, was to be linked to the observance of Mosaic law.
But should we put so much faith in Ethiopian mythology as to imagine that
the signifcance of the dietary restrictions among the Christians of Ethiopia
is truly to be linked to kinship with the people of Israel? Several indicators
cast serious doubt on this.
In a brief communication delivered in Addis Ababa in 1966, Maxime
Rodinson called attention to the pan-Ethiopian nature of the main dietary
3
See Beylot’s introduction to the text (Beylot, 2008: 23-133). On the dating and composition
of the Kəbrä Nägäśt see also Munro-Hay (2001: 43-58 and 2004: 23-28).
4
Beylot, 2008: 308-309.
5
Douglas, 1992: 70; Soler, 2004: 27.
6
See Ullendorff 1968: 100-102 for a review of such texts.

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 What do Christians (Not) Eat

restrictions and avoidances 7. For example, none of the peoples of the

region consume the fesh of horses or other equines. And this cultural
feature is also found very commonly outside of the Horn of Africa.
Similarly, the consumption of pork (pigs and related species) is found only
in a few Nilo-Saharan groups in western Ethiopia ― the Gumuz and Koma
― a practice which dwindled progressively over the course of the 20 th
century along with the spread of Islam into these areas 8. The importance
attached to similar avoidance practices on both sides of the religious
boundaries that divide Ethiopia contradicts the idea that this was
something peculiarly Christian. In fact, the aggregate of tacit and “ofcial”
taboos in force among the majority of contemporary Ethiopian peoples all
point to the same food taboos excluding the same animals, with only a few
exceptions.
The history of Christian Ethiopia is marked by an important religious
reform which had a decisive impact on the form assumed by Ethiopian
Christianity. In the 15th century King Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob (r. 1434-1468) resolved
the long-standing theological controversy over whether or not a
Christianized form of the Sabbath was to be observed on Saturday 9.
Deciding in favor of this practice, he propagated his reform throughout the
kingdom by means of a series of homilies to be read aloud in the
churches10. These are brought together in a collection entitled Mäsḥäfä
Bərhan (“Book of Light”)11. The ritual practice of the “double Sabbath”, one
of the characteristic features which gives Ethiopian Christianity its
“Judaizing” stamp, was thus actually linked to a political and theological
decision of a 15th-century king, supported by a certain interpretation of
Scripture. But if the Old Testament could serve as justifcation for the
incorporation into Ethiopian Christianity of certain Jewish-linked practices,
the Church also allowed the incorporation of “pagan” practices. This has
been brought out strongly by Marie-Laure Derat in her historical inquiry
into the practice of circumcision and genital excision among Ethiopian
Christians, and in particular into the justifcatory discourse which underlies
them. The practice of excision has no connection to Mosaic law, which
rather demands circumcision. In one of the homilies of the Mäsḥäfä
Bərhan, Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob condemns excision as it was practiced in certain
parts of his realm. To legitimize it in the eyes of Christianity, the theologian
king put forward the view that excision should be assimilated to
circumcision; the latter, of course, posed no problem for him and he did not
seek to justify it12. In the 15th century, neither of these apparently

7
Rodinson, 1970: 48-50.
8
Braukämper, 1984: 429-445.
9
In the Ethiopian Church the Saturday Sabbath is a liturgical celebration in its own right that
is superadded to the others, and in particular to the observance of the Sunday Sabbath, which
remains the more important of the two.
10
Derat, 2005: 45-57.
11
Conti Rossini, 1964-1965.
12
Derat, 2010: §9-13.

61
Thomas Guindeuil

widespread practices had any particular association with Christianity, as is

suggested by the absence of any mention of circumcision in the Ethiopian
saints’ lives. But at the beginning of the 17th century, Manoel de Almeida, a
Portuguese Jesuit writer to whom we will have occasion to return, records
that circumcision was carried out 8 days after birth 13. This was also the
case for female excision. This codifcation of the practice was modeled on
the stipulations of the Pentateuch. It served to validate the Christian ritual
status of an originally non-Christian practice which was also unconnected
to Mosaic law. The singular use made here of the Old Testament is also to
be taken into account in regard to the ambiguous attitude of Ethiopian
Christians to their food and to the restrictions they have associated with it.
The objective of this article is to look into the relation between the
Ethiopian Christian community and their food prohibitions. In particular I
wish to examine how this community constructed, over the course of its
history, a discourse associating Christian identity with a certain line of
conduct regarding food, and how this line was ultimately assimilated to the
Biblical prohibitions.
Dietary “Otherness” without Reference to the Pentateuch
The principal effect of the Mosaic food prohibitions was to limit the
consumption of meat to a few animal species, mostly domesticated, but
also including a certain number of wild animal species which were similar
in bodily form to domestic animals. We have here a cultural trait which is
widespread among pastoralist peoples, and indeed, to explain the profound
signifcance of the dietary prohibitions in ancient Hebrew society, it has
often been suggested that the Hebrews themselves had a long pastoralist
prehistory behind them14. That these dietary practices took the form of
strict prohibitions can be explained as refecting a desire to safeguard the
cohesion of the community. Indeed, the redaction of the Pentateuch seems
to have happened at the time of the Babylonian exile in the 6 th century BC,
a moment of profound existential crisis for this group of displaced people 15.
The Old Testament prohibitions served as an effective vector for the
cohesion and delimitation of this minority community vis-à-vis other
majority religions which themselves were grounded in a calling into
question of these ritual prohibitions, in whole or in part. This was the case
of Christianity and, to a certain extent, of Islam as well.

In contrast to the ancient and medieval Jewish communities, the

Ethiopian Christians are no longer a religious minority and have not been
so for a long time. Ever since the conversion to Christianity of one of the
early kings of Ethiopia in the 4 th century16, the Christian community of
13
Almeida, 1954: 68.
14
Simoons, 1961: 41; Douglas, 1992: 73-74.
15
Finkelstein & Silberman, 2002: 22-25.
16
Anfray, 1990: 73.

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 What do Christians (Not) Eat

Ethiopia took shape within a state where political power was interwoven
and indeed often confused with religious power. Islam, the main religious
competitor of Christianity in the Horn of Africa, never represented a real
threat to Christian Ethiopia except for the brief and traumatic war with
Imam Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim (Graň) in the 16 th century. Except for this
moment, the Christian kingdom was the principal political power in the
region, and it was around this Christian Ethiopia that the vast modern state
of Ethiopia took form at the end of the 19 th century, in large measure
through military conquest. The Old Testament dietary prohibitions,
accordingly, do not have the same signifcance for Ethiopian Christians as
they do for Jewish communities ― which however in no way implies that
Ethiopian Christians, ever since the Middle Ages, have not perceived and
constructed their “otherness” vis-à-vis the neighboring communities on the
basis of dietary practices.
Until the 16th century, the “other” was any non-Christian. He might be a
“pagan” from the center or periphery of the kingdom, but equally well a
Muslim from the central or eastern parts of the Ethiopian highlands. Islam
has only a single strict dietary prohibition, against the meat of pigs and
similar animals. As the non-consumption of this meat is a characteristic
which Muslims in fact share with Ethiopian Christians, this does not in itself
create a dietary boundary like that found in Egypt between Copts and
Muslims17. It must be stressed, however, that it is not appropriate for
members of the two religious communities to eat together (commensality)
despite their cultural closeness and economic interdependence. Today,
Christians and Muslims may not partake of the same meat, because in
each case the animals must be slaughtered according to a different
religious ritual18. On the Christian side, the existence of a ritual slaughter is
attested in the 16th century19. The Christian special mode of ritual slaughter
is strongly emphasized in historical records starting from the middle of the
19th century ― a time when the issue of interreligious commensality came
to the fore in the context of the formation of the modern multiconfessional
Ethiopian state20.
Prior to the 16th century, accordingly, it was not the dietary prohibitions
of the Pentateuch which served to delimit the Christian community but
rather a set of foods or dietary practices associated with other
communities. One can thus legitimately pose the question as to the real
importance of Mosaic law in the construction of Christian dietary practices.
To the commensality demarcation line between religious communities
17
Simoons, 1961: 25.
18
Ficquet, 2006: §15-23. The Christian and Muslim rituals for slaughtering are not distinct as
regards the actual process of butchery. Whereas the Muslims orient the animal’s head facing
Mecca, the Christians orient it facing eastward; while the Muslims pronounce the basmala, the
Christians invoke the Trinity. See §20.
19
Álvares, 1961, vol. 2: 357. This reference is discussed below.
20
Ficquet, 2006: §25-36.

63
Thomas Guindeuil

can be added two dietary lines: the consumption of stimulants and of

camel fesh. These are emblematic of the dietary practices of the Ethiopian
Christians vis-à-vis Ethiopian Muslims 21. The History of the Wars of Amdä
Ṣəyon, an epic account of the victorious military campaign of Christian
King Amdä Ṣəyon (r. 1314-1344) against the Sultan of Ifat, Sabr ad-Din,
attests to the perception among Ethiopian Christians of a dietary boundary
between Christians and Muslims. This work, long considered the earliest
Ethiopian historical text, is today attributed to an author of the 15 th-early
16th century, long after the events it narrates 22. In it, the dietary identity of
the Christian community is never based on prohibitions specifc to the
Christians. In a brief monologue which the author attributes to the sultan,
several cultural stereotypes are invoked in depicting the Muslims:
I will transform the Christian churches into mosques for the
Muslims, and I will convert to my religion the king of the Christians
and his people, and I will appoint him governor of a [province], and if
he refuses to convert to my religion, I will send him to the
pastoralists who are called Warǧəh, to make of him a herder of
camels. Similarly for the king’s wife, Queen Jan Mangǝśa, whom I will
put to work in a mill. And I will make his capital Mär’ade [Arabic
name of Tägwəlät, a region in Shawa] into my capital. And I will plant
č̣at there, as Muslims like this plant […]23.
Thus the Muslims, in contrast to the Christians, are raisers of camels and
chewers of č̣at (Catha edulis), a mildly intoxicating plant commonly
cultivated and consumed in the Horn of Africa
Camel raising, and also the consumption of camel fesh and milk, are
intimately linked to the lifestyle of part of the Muslims of Ethiopia. The
large majority of the pastoral or agro-pastoral peoples of the eastern
lowlands of Ethiopia, who raise camels, are Muslims. Except in commercial
contact zones, the highland Christians and the camel raisers do not often
meet. The camel is considered an unclean animal in the Pentateuch (Lev
11:4, Deut 14:7). Two Christian saint’s lives, composed at the beginning of
the 16th century, associate the eating of camel fesh with Islam. In the Life
of Abba Yonas, camel fesh is the food that Muslims offer to their Christian
captives24. The Acts of Märḥä Krəstos, the abbot of the monastery of Däbrä
Libanos, also from the 16th century, make an explicit link between the
consumption of camel fesh and apostasy 25. In this case, however, it is
difcult to know whether the apostasy inheres in the consumption of an
animal ritually slaughtered by a Muslim, or in the consumption of an
animal that is proscribed by Mosaic law. No reference is made here to the
21
On the religious boundary between Christians and Muslims in present-day Ethiopia, and the
role played therein by stimulants, see Chapter 9 of the thesis of Éloi Ficquet.
22
Kropp, 1983-1984: 58; Derat, 2013a: 122.
23
Perruchon, 1890: 119-120.
24
Conti Rossini, 1903: 145 (text). See Derat, 2013b: 128-129.
25
Derat, 2013b: 127-128.

64
 What do Christians (Not) Eat

ritual impurity of the camel as stipulated in the Pentateuch; plausibly, the

reason the camel fgures in the prisoners’ menu is because it best
embodies the Christian perception of the food of their Muslim neighbors. It
should be stressed that in actual practice the consumption of camel fesh
does not delineate a boundary between Ethiopian Christians and Muslims.
Rather, the boundary is actually one that distinguishes the highlanders, of
whatever faith, from the lowlanders. For example, the Wällo Argobba, a
Muslim population of agriculturalists of the north-central Ethiopian
highlands, do not admit this animal to their culinary repertoire, not even as
part of communal celebrations, and this despite the relative geographical
proximity of the camel raisers26.
The use of č̣at as a stimulant constitutes an integral part of the social
life of Muslims all over the Horn of Africa. Its use by Ethiopian Christians is
a recent urban phenomenon. As a Muslim vice, the consumption of č̣at
occupies an analogous position, in the Christian representation of Ethiopian
Muslims, to the position of alcohol in the Muslim representation of
Christians.
The existence of other dietary boundaries separating Christians and
Muslims is suggested by a text stemming from an Ethiopian Muslim milieu.
This is the Futūḥ al-Ḥabaša (“Conquest of Abyssinia”), an Arabic-language
text by ‘Arab Faqīh dating to the 16th century. It gives an account of the
jihad launched by Imam Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim (Graň) against the Christian
kingdom starting in 1527. In one of the episodes of this military campaign,
the author tells how a Christian prisoner was urged to offer presents to the
Muslims to make peace between the two camps. The prisoner, in order to
oblige his captors, offers them “sugar, qāt and coffee27”. Coffee, indeed,
seems long to have been associated with Islam by the Ethiopian Christians.
At the end of the 17th century, the French traveler Charles Poncet even
suggests the existence of a prohibition among Ethiopian Christians against
its consumption28. Originating in the southern Ethiopian plateau and widely
cultivated in Muslim areas, coffee seems not to have been used by
Christians before the 19th century, among whom it, like č̣at, was considered
a Muslim drug29. Here again, it is hard to ascribe this tacit proscription to
an interpretation of Biblical texts.
In the middle of the 16 th century, a people from southern Ethiopia burst
into regions which until then had been a battleground between Christians
and Muslims. This group, the Oromo, was originally neither Christian nor
Muslim, although over time they converted to the one or the other religion
of the Book, depending on where they settled. As a military danger to the
Christian kingdom, the Oromo raised serious questions which the monk
26
Ficquet, 2006: §17. On the consumption of meat among the highland Muslims, see Abbebe
Kifeyesus, 2002: 261-263.
27
‘Arab Fakih (Basset, trad.), 1897-1909: 210-211.
28
Poncet, 2010: 80.
29
Mercier, 1980-1982; Pankhurst, 1997: 516-539.

65
Thomas Guindeuil

Baḥrəy, at the end of the 16th century, attempted to answer in his text,
“The History of the Galla”. Baḥrəy was not particularly interested in the
religion of the Oromo, but delineated with precision their social
organization as well as certain of their customs and how these evolved
through contact with Ethiopian Christianity. Thus an Oromo chieftain was
introducing an innovation vis-à-vis his ancestors when he “began to drink
koso30”, a beverage prepared from the fruit of the tree Hagenia abyssinica,
which is taken as an anthelmintic to combat intestinal parasites. In fact,
tapeworms are a common and undesirable result of eating raw meat, a
cultural trait of Ethiopian Christians attested several times in the 15 th and
16th centuries31. With a few exceptions, the eating of raw meat is
characteristic only of a minority of Ethiopian groups, including the Christian
populations of north and central Ethiopia. Its condemnation is attested
among several southern groups as late as the 20th century32.
Thus the Christian community of Ethiopia in the 15 th-16th centuries
understood clearly the limits of its own dietary practices and of those
practices with which it was habitually confronted. The association of
certain foods with the dietary practices of Muslims even led to tacit
condemnations ― of the consumption of camel fesh, of č̣at, or of coffee.
The consumption or non-consumption of these products marked a
boundary between neighboring religious communities. Until the 16 th
century, the Christian community does not seem to have rallied behind the
dietary prohibitions of the Pentateuch. If, then, the Christians did not
appeal to the Bible to defne their dietary identity, a serious question arises
as to the real weight of Mosaic law in the construction of their dietary
practices.
The Non-Consumption of Certain Kinds of Animal Flesh: Dietary
Behavior across Religious Boundaries (14th-15th Centuries)
We must go back to the 14 th century to fnd a frst mention of a prohibition
on animal fesh in Ethiopia. This is due to al-‘Umarī, a Mamluk ofcial at the
court of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (r. 1285-1341) at Cairo from 1320-
1340. Al-‘Umarī is the author of a rich description of the economy and way
of life of the highland Ethiopians. This compendium of information, reliable
despite its limitations and especially so in the feld of geography, owes its
high quality to the inquiries the author made with an Ethiopian Muslim
emissary, “the learned jurist ‘Abd Allāh al-Zaylā’i, [who], at the moment
when an ambassador arrived from the [Christian] king of Amhara,
intervened actively with the sultan’s Porte in Cairo to induce the patriarch
[Benjamin (r. 1327-1339)] to write a letter forbidding the king to make
exactions in the land of the Muslims” in Ethiopia33.

30
Bāḥrəy, 1907: 198-199.
31
Al-Maqrīzī, 1955: 3; Álvares, 1961: 233-234.
32
Braukämper, 1984: 434.
33
Al-‘Umarī, 1927: 3. Al-‘Umarī gathered his information in the 1330s, at the time of the

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 What do Christians (Not) Eat

For al-‘Umarī, ‘Abd Allāh al-Zaylā’i was a valuable informant, familiar with
the region and perhaps native to it. His name includes the nisba Zaylā’i
indicating some connection to the town of Zayla, at the time the principal
port on the African coast of the Gulf of Aden and the privileged port of
entry for long-distance and middle-distance commerce with the Ethiopian
highlands. The nisba may perhaps seem odd, for al-‘Umarī’s description
(drawing upon al-Zaylā’i) is of the highlands, not the coast. Al-‘Umarī
carefully describes the animal and plant resources both of the Muslim
states of the Ethiopian highlands and of the Christian kingdom, which he
combines into a single description after dwelling on each of the Muslim
states individually. It should also be noted that, working as he was in the
Cairo chancellery, al-‘Umarī had access to documents emanating from the
Coptic patriarchate, which was closely linked to Ethiopian Christianity.
It is within this general description that the following remark appears:
They have domestic chickens which they have no great desire to
eat, for they consider them dirty because they eat manure and
excrement34.
This sentence, which must have piqued the curiosity of al-‘Umarī’s
Egyptian readers, is arguably the earliest mention of an ambiguous
attitude to chicken meat in Ethiopia. This medieval observation fnds an
echo in contemporary ethnographic literature on southern Ethiopia as well
as current observations on the attitude toward poultry among the highland
Christians. The non-consumption of chicken has indeed been observed
among numerous non-Christian groups of southern Ethiopia, such as the
Konso35. The penetration of Ethiopian Christianity into these areas, at the
end of the 19th century, has often been held responsible for a new
acceptance of this meat, formerly considered impure by the peoples of
southern Ethiopia but which constitutes, for Ethiopian Christians, the basic
ingredient in the culinary centerpiece of religious festivals, the chicken
stew called doro wäṭ. It should also be noted that the consumption of
chicken at the royal court is explicitly attested by two sources, Ethiopian
and Portuguese, from the 15th and 16th centuries36. In contemporary
Ethiopia, among the Christians of the north and center, the preparation of
chicken fesh always involves a carefully codifed process of washing ― the
meat must be washed seven times ― and the use of agents which are
supposed to clean the meat and remove its strong odor, such as lemon,
salt, or four37. Suspect of corruption, vectors of disease, and ill-smelling,
chickens and chicken meat have always been viewed with mistrust, even if
its consumption, in the form of doro wäṭ, became at some indeterminate

Christian King Amda Ṣəyon’s military campaign against Ifat.

34
Al-‘Umarī, 1927: 13.
35
Braukämper, 1984: 433. See as well Hallpike, 1972, and more recently Lesur-Gebremariam,
2008: 99-116.
36
Kropp, 1988: 73 ; Álvares, 1961: 363-364.
37
Perret, Jezequel, Jezequel, 1995: 262.

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Thomas Guindeuil

period a centerpiece of Christian Ethiopian cooking. Here the fear of

pollution, common to Ethiopian Christians and Muslims alike and already
referred to by al-‘Umarī in the 14th century, has nothing to do with the
prohibitions of the Pentateuch. It seems, rather, to have been connected to
an ancient prohibition against eating chicken. Chicken meat would
gradually (and not without distrust) have become part of the dietary
practices of the highland Christians, ultimately becoming a symbol of
Christian identity precisely in virtue of its exceptional character in the
larger Ethiopian context.
The second text that sheds light on a similar phenomenon is an
Ethiopian one: the Mäṣḥäfä Bərhan, a 15th-century collection of homilies by
Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob, which we have already referred to above. The context for
the composition of the Mäṣḥäfä Bərhan is explained by the chronicle of the
king’s reign. The reign of Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob was marked by a propaganda
campaign against non-Christian practices, and notably against the spirit
possession cult of the Zar38. It also corresponds to a moment of intense
religious reform orchestrated by the king. He propounded a form of
discourse aimed at justifying certain Christian practices of non-Christian
origin, notably through a selective reading of Biblical texts. This was the
case with the Saturday Sabbath and with female excision. The dietary
prohibitions of the Pentateuch are not appealed to in the Mäṣḥäfä Bərhan.
But in a passage to be read on Good Friday, there is included a defense of
the consumption of fsh, a practice which thus seems not to have been self-
evident at the time:
As to prohibition on fsh (’aśa), nowhere have we found that is
says not to eat them, neither on fasting days nor on other days.
Nowhere do the Apostles say, “Do not eat fsh on fasting days39”.
In justifying the year-round consumption of fsh by appeal to the “Apostles”
― a rather vague reference to the writings of St. Paul ― Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob
shows that he is very aware of the incompatibility between the universalist
discourse of Christianity and the existence of local dietary prohibitions or
other forms of dietary avoidance. Exploiting this for his own purposes, he
uses it to combat a practice he considers non-Christian: the non-
consumption of fsh, an issue that goes beyond the simple question of fast
days. A symbol of the primitive Church 40, fsh spread all over the Christian
world as food for meatless days. Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob, in his campaign to
eradicate non-Christian beliefs and practices, thus came up against a
dietary exclusion which has little to do with the Pentateuch41. Fish, like
chicken, is a food with which most peoples of Ethiopia have a complex
relationship, compounded of rejection and of need. Like chicken, fsh is
38
Perruchon, 1893: 6.
39
Conti Rossini, 1964-1965: 164 (text), 91 (trans.).
40
Daniélou, 1996: 49-63.
41
The Ge‘ez word ’aśa, like its modern Amharic pendant, refers to fsh of any kind, with no
distinction between different types ― with or without scales, with or without fns, etc.

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banned as a food in several regions of southern Ethiopia, and for a long

time its consumption was restricted to marginalized groups of hunters-
fshermen living along lakeshores and riverbanks 42. This economic
specialization, coupled with an extreme form of social marginalization ―
several authors speak of “castes” ― also existed in Christian Ethiopia,
notably along the shores of Lake Ṭana, as we shall see43.
Because the non-consumption of chicken or fsh has no connection
either with Christianity or with Mosaic law, we have little choice but to
regard it as belonging, in whole or in part, to an older cultural substratum,
predating the spread of the religions of the Book in the Ethiopian
highlands. This system of representations or beliefs, excluding numerous
food animals and restricting the consumption of meat to certain species
only, is pan-Ethiopian. Among groups which had converted to Christianity,
the continued adherence to these prohibitions presents an evident
contradiction, as Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob was well aware. The fact that he appeals to
the apostles for justifcation specifcally in this regard, and not elsewhere,
may seem oddly selective, for in fact an appeal to the writings of the
apostles would also have sufced to exclude other non-Christian ritual
practices, like the Saturday Sabbath, circumcision, or genital excision. It
should be stressed that there is no reference here to Mosaic law, indeed we
fnd the inverse theological choice, a reference to the New Testament; but
it must also be noted that Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob is concerned here only with fsh,
which represented a particular problem for the royal Christian reformer,
and that he did not encourage his people to consume other forms of taboo
fesh.
Food Prohibitions as “Customs” (16th-17th Centuries)
In 1661, the scholar Hiob Ludolf edited and published a Ge‘ez text, part of
an Ethiopian manuscript found in Hamburg a few years earlier. The
manuscript, known under the name of Confessio Claudii, includes a text
attributed to the Ethiopian King Gälawdewos (r. 1540-1559). This text is
constructed as an apology for Ethiopian Christianity vis-à-vis accusations of
heresy on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. It includes the earliest
known discussion of the relation between Old Testament prohibitions and
the food practices current among the Christians of Ethiopia:
What we do is not for the observance of the laws of the
Pentateuch but rather in accord with the custom of the people. And
concerning the eating of pork, it is not that it is forbidden to us by
virtue of observing the laws of the Pentateuch like the Jews. Whoever
eats of it, we do not detest him nor do we consider him unclean; and
whoever does not eat of it, we do not compel him to eat of it. As our
father Paul wrote to the Romans, saying: Let not him who eats [of it]

42
Braukämper 1984: 345; Rodinson, 1970.
43
Tecle Haimanot Gebre Selassie, 1984; Gamst, 1984: 853.

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Thomas Guindeuil

reject him who does not eat [of it]; God accepts all of them
[Rom 14:3]44.
The origin and chronology of the Confessio Claudii are something of a
mystery, and its attribution to Gälawdewos is not solidly supported. In all
events, it was certainly created by an Ethiopian, a man of letters and
religious culture, and was intended for a readership of Catholic theologians
in a context to which we will return. The arguments are precise and well-
considered. The fact that it was the non-consumption of pork that was at
issue, and not of fsh as with Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob in the 15 th century, clearly
suggests that consideration was being given to a European viewpoint. The
non-consumption of pork was not mentioned, for example, by the Muslim
writer al-‘Umarī, probably because it was self-evident. In fact the Confessio
Claudii represents a response to a traumatic anti-heresy campaign which
occurred over the course of the 16 th century through contact with European
missionaries. Before offering an interpretation of the form taken by this
response, we must consider how it evolved.
In 1520, a Portuguese mission representing King Manoel I (r. 1495-1521)
landed on the Bay of Massawa, in present-day Eritrea. The mission, led by
Dom Rodrigo de Lima, was reported in detail by a priest named Francisco
Álvares. In sending this mission to Ethiopia, Portugal was responding to a
request by the former regent of the Christian kingdom, Ǝleni. She was no
longer ruling the country, however, having ceded power to King Lǝbnä
Dǝngǝl (r. 1508-1540) upon his coming of age. Lisbon cherished high
hopes of forging a military alliance with a regional Christian power in the
Red Sea region, where Portugal was seeking to undermine the commercial
and strategic interests of the Ottoman Empire. The mission returned to
Portugal in 1527, bearing letters from Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl and accompanied by
an Ethiopian emissary, Ṣägga Zä’ab. But the new Portuguese King João III
(r. 1521-1557) did not have the same interest in Christian Ethiopia as his
predecessor, and the Portuguese mission brought back information which
served to confrm the suspicions of certain theologians: the Christians of
Ethiopia were heretics. Thus Ethiopia was transformed from a potential ally
to a target for missionary activity, carried out in the second half of the 16 th
century by a handful of Jesuits who were charged with bringing about the
conversion of the king of Ethiopia to Roman Catholicism 45. This enterprise
achieved its hoped-for success with the conversion of King Susǝnyos (r.
1606-1632). But this in turn set off a major political crisis, which led
Susǝnyos to abdicate in favor of his son Fasilädäs (r. 1632-1667). Fasilädäs
expelled the missionaries and gave guarantees to the local clergy. Thus
ended the Catholic episode in Ethiopia.
Francisco Álvares’s narration of the voyage, published in Lisbon in 1540,
became part of the dossier compiled by advocates of the “reduction” of
44
Ullendorff, 1987: 174.
45
Aubin, 1996: 186-189.

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 What do Christians (Not) Eat

Ethiopia to the Roman Church. And indeed, the Portuguese priest does
mention a number of practices which corroborate the idea of deviancy,
such as circumcision 46 and the Saturday Sabbath 47. In a revealing
anecdote, Álvares also notes the non-consumption of pork and the
existence of ritual slaughter; it seems to be the frst mention of non-
consumption of pork in Ethiopia (and possibly the only such mention for
the next century and a half). As a Catholic priest, Álvares naturally
assimilated his observations to Old Testament ritual practice. It dramatizes
the ongoing confict stemming from the reforming zeal of two recently
arrived abuna, metropolitans of the Ethiopian church but appointed by the
Coptic patriarch and thus Egyptians.
Soon after [the two abuna] had come, the Prester John48 by his
command had ordered that Saturday should not be kept, and that
they should not enact other erroneous ceremonies which [the
Ethiopians] used to do, and that they should eat pig’s fesh and all
other meat, although it had not had its throat cut for all these things
belonged to the old law. When this had begun to be done at the
Court and in its neighbourhood, not very long ago, there came to
this country two Franks who were still living in it, that is to say, one
Marcoreo, a Venetian, and after him one Pero de Covilham, a
Portuguese; these, when they arrived […] began to keep the usages
of the country […] that is, to keep Saturdays, and to eat like the
people of the country. Some priests and monks, who pretended to
know something of the Bible seeing this, came to the Prester and
complained about the Abimas [abuna], principally of the one who
acted as substitute, saying, ‘What thing is this? These Franks who
have now come from Frankland, each one from his own Kingdom,
and they keep our ancient customs, how is it that this Abima, who
came from Alexandria, orders things to be done which are not
written in the books?’ And on this account the Prester had given
orders to return to the former usages49.
During the reign of Ǝskǝndǝr (r. 1478-1494), the Ethiopian church had had,

46
Álvares, 1961, vol. 1: 109.
47
Álvares, 1961, vol. 1: 175-176.
48
The Christian kings of Ethiopia were gradually assimilated to the mythical “Prester John” in
late medieval Europe. See Richard, 1957 and Hirsch, 1997: 162-165.
49
Álvares, 1961, vol. 2: 357-358. The two Europeans (“Franks”) mentioned here are known to
us. Marqorewos is plausibly the name of the Venetian painter Nicoló Brancaleone, who was
resident at the Ethiopian court from the end of the 15 th century up to the reign of Lǝbnä
Dǝngǝl (Chojnacki, 1983: 378-380). Pêro da Covilhã was one of two emissaries sent to the
Indian Ocean region in 1487 by the Portuguese King João II (r. 1481-1495) to gather
information in Asia and East Africa about the spice trade and the possibilities of alliance with
Ethiopia as a regional Christian power. In the reign of Ǝskǝndǝr (r. 1478-1494), Covilhã
succeeded in reaching Ethiopia, where he was forced to remain. Still present at the court of
Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl when the Portuguese mission arrived in 1520, he was one of the main
informants of Francisco Álvares (see « Covilhão, Pero da », 1994).

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Thomas Guindeuil

atypically, two abuna at its head, named Yəsḥaq and Marqos 50. Yəsḥaq
died during Álvares’s stay in Ethiopia, and was “succeeded” de facto by
Marqos. The coming of these two abuna followed upon the great religious
reform which marked the reign of Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob, with the establishment of
Saturday as well as Sunday as a day of rest (the “double Sabbath”).
The metropolitans of the Ethiopian Church were Copts, and Copts do not
observe the Mosaic prohibitions on meat. This recurrent confict predates
the confict between the Ethiopian clergy and Roman Catholicism; and the
intellectual porosity of the boundary between the Coptic and Ethiopian
worlds had already confronted the Ethiopians with contradictions in their
approach to dietary prohibitions. The Fətḥa Nägäśt (“Law of the Kings”),
considered the foundational text of Ethiopian law, corresponds to a
compilation of canon law and Roman law composed in the 13 th century by
an Egyptian Copt, Abū l-Faḍā’il ibn al-‘Assāl al-Ṣāf. The work was
translated into Ge‘ez probably in the 16th century51. In keeping with the
praxis of the Egyptian Church, the Fətḥa Nägäśt stresses that “there are no
[food] prohibitions in Christian law52”, a principle that was well understood
by the Ethiopian theologians: Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob and the author of the
Confessio Claudii say the same.
We return to Álvares. It was all the more natural for the priest to call
attention to the non-consumption of pork inasmuch as he mentions,
several times, the presence of wild swine (warthogs) among the fauna of
the Ethiopian highlands53. In his account, the non-consumption of the meat
of pigs and closely related species is interpreted as part of those practices
attributed to the “old law” and seen as having always been in force among
Ethiopian Christians. Nonetheless, this interpretation is not founded on any
Ethiopian-based argument ― none is cited ― but on the parallel
juxtaposition of this dietary behavior with other ritual practices, such as
the ritual slaughter, the Sabbath and circumcision, which are likewise
associated with the Old Testament. Here, the argument turns upon the
singling out of one particular animal, the pig, whose consumption is
emblematic not only of Christian universalism, but also of the dietary
practices of European cultures in general (here, specifcally Iberian). But
what should then be said about the non-consumption ― also mentioned by
Álvares ― of other animals which are permitted by the Old Testament?
Thus Álvares notes that “nobody hunts or fshes, nor have [the Ethiopians]
the wit nor a way, nor the will to do it 54”. An excellent observer, Álvares
was well aware of the strict limits constraining the consumption of animal
fesh in Christian Ethiopia. He simply observes what these limits are,
adding his own interpretive biases.

50
Munro-Hay, 2005: 41-49.
51
Paulos Tzadua, 2005: 534.
52
Guidi, 1897-1899: 147.
53
Àlvares, 1961, vol. 1: 67, 113.
54
Àlvares, 1961, vol. 1: 113. On this issue see Guindeuil & Lesur, 2014: §34-41.

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In Lisbon, the theologians’ examination of the Ethiopian envoy Ṣägga

Zä’ab led them to discover a whole series of “abuses” of the Ethiopian
Church, all of them justifable in terms of the laws of the Old Testament.
The ensuing Jesuit mission to Ethiopia was intended to bring the Ethiopians
back to the correct path55. And yet, within this context, the Jesuit
missionaries who from 1555-1632 sought to convert the Ethiopian
Christian kingdom to Roman Catholicism seem to have paid little attention
to dietary prohibitions. In his Historia da Ethiopia a alta ou Abassia, the
Jesuit Manoel de Almeida, who lived for several years in Ethiopia,
erroneously includes pigs among the domesticated animals 56. This blatant
error ― domestic pigs were only introduced to Ethiopia quite recently and
in a very limited way ― contrasts strikingly with the attention the Jesuit
devotes to circumcision, which was performed on the eighth day and which
he thus naturally associates with a ritual of Jewish origin. The Confessio
Claudii, however, shows that this point of disagreement between Jesuits
and Ethiopians was important enough to require a precise response to the
question of non-consumption of pork. Continuing the same line of
argument begun by Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob, but in a more precise way, its author
draws upon a pronouncement of St. Paul taken from Romans (Rom 14:3),
already mentioned above (“Let not him who eats regard with contempt him
who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats”).
If he justifes the legitimacy of eating pork by reference to the New
Testament, at the same time he recontextualizes the non-consumption of
pork (and potentially other kinds of meat) within an ensemble of local
Ethiopian “customs”. Freed from its ritual context, the ban becomes simply
a matter of avoidance and no longer belongs to the realm of theological
debate. The consumption of pork by an Ethiopian Christian was thus no
longer an issue of religious transgression, but simply a question of taste.
This argument, however, did not convince the Jesuits, who very plausibly
perceived the weight of the impurity attached to certain kinds of meat.
Indeed, as we have seen, the existence of such a concept had been an
indisputable fact since the Middle Ages. It did not have its origin simply in
the listed prohibitions of the Pentateuch; the assimilation of the food
prohibitions of the Ethiopian Christians to Mosaic law is a post facto
justifcation. But the precise role played here by the confrontation with the
Roman Catholic Church is still unclear. If, in the eyes of the Europeans, the
dietary prohibitions of the Ethiopian Christians were associated with a kind
of “Judaizing” inertia or drift, in Ethiopia this anti-heresy campaign
reinforced a secularizing discourse regarding food taboos. In any event,
one can surmise that the scope of such a discourse would have been very
limited.

55
Pennec, 2003: 68-69; Pennec, 1999: 208-211.
56
Almeida, 1954: 49, 52.

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Thomas Guindeuil

The Hippopotamus of Lake Ṭana (17 th-18th Centuries)

During his visit to the Lake Ṭana region in northwestern Ethiopia from
1769-1771, the Scottish traveler James Bruce described in detail a group of
people, the Wayṭo, to whom was attached a form of impurity so strong that
it could be transmitted by touch alone, thus preventing any direct contact
with the neighboring populations. “Part of this aversion,” he notes, “is
certainly owing to their manner of feeding; for their only profession is
killing the crocodile and hippopotamus, which they make their daily
sustenance57”. From the moment of their earliest appearance in historical
sources in the early 17th century, Wayṭo society appears to have revolved
around exploitation of the resources offered by their lake environment.
Among these resources, the most emblematic was the hippopotamus,
which was hunted for reasons both ritual and economic 58. In addition to
representing an important source of meat, the hippopotamus yielded a
thick leather which was highly prized and was worked as a specialized
craft59. Surrounded by Christian farmers, the Wayţo formed a minority
characterized by their own differentiated way of life, not oriented
exclusively to tilling the land. The consumption of hippopotamus meat
marks a symbolic boundary between the two communities. With respect to
the texts of the Pentateuch, the hippopotamus has all the features of an
impure animal, but (as in the case of the camel, mentioned above) there is
nowhere an explicit grounding of the impurity of its fesh in an appeal to
the Bible. As with the camel among the Muslim pastoralists, the
hippopotamus thus marks an anthropological boundary that is congruent
to a religious boundary. The Wayṭo were indeed not part of Christian
Ethiopia in the second half of the 18 th century60, nor at the beginning of the
19th century61, when they were described as “pagans” by the European
travellers. At the close of the 19th century, most of the community adopted
a highly syncretistic form of Islam. At the same time, the Wayṭo share
certain feasts of the Christian calendar, and also have their own rituals62.
The hippopotamus, the game animal par excellence of the Wayṭo,
appears regularly in descriptions of the 17th-century Christian kingdom.
Since the end of the 16th century, the political center of the Christian
kingdom had effectively shifted to the northern and eastern shores of Lake
Ṭana, the largest lake of the Ethiopian highlands, where several monastic
communities had earlier found refuge. It was also in this region that King
Susǝnyos had briefy embraced the cause of the Jesuit missionaries, from
1610 until their expulsion in 1633. One of the principal agents of
57
Bruce, 1790, vol. 4: 50-51.
58
Tecle Haimanot Gebre Selassie, 1984: 60-65. The consumption of crocodile meat seems to
be ethnographically unattested; James Bruce is the only one to mention it.
59
This is mentioned by the Jesuit Manoel de Almeida in the early 17 th century (Almeida, 1954:
35-36).
60
Bruce, 1790, vol. 4: 50.
61
See Ferret & Galinier, 1847-1848, vol. 2: 257.
62
Tecle Haimanot Gebre Selassie, 1984: 21 ; Gamst, 1984: 855.

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 What do Christians (Not) Eat

Susǝnyos’s conversion, the Castilian Jesuit Pero Páez, spent much time on
the shores of Lake Tana, especially at the palace of Gorgora. Although Páez
does not mention the existence of the Wayṭo, he does describe the
hippopotamus and its meat, writing that “its fat resembles lard, and its
meat is like beef63”. Thus hippopotamus meat, seen as impure in the eyes
of the Christians in the 18 th century, seemed to be already so considered at
the beginning of the 17th century.
The Wayṭo seem to appear for the frst time in Ethiopian historiography
at the beginning of the 17th century, in the chronicle of the “Catholic King”
Susǝnyos. This complex text, which exists only in a single Ge‘ez
manuscript, actually had three authors. The text includes elements that
show the infuence of the Jesuits on the king and, plausibly, on the
composition of the chronicle itself64. Susǝnyos’s reign was marked by
military campaigns against the non-Christians who lived in the mountains
surrounded the new royal domain ― Jewish communities (Betä Ǝsra’el) of
the Sǝmēn mountains, and Agaw groups. The Wayṭo (called Weṭo in the
chronicle65) are one of these groups; but here the chronicle tells of a
peaceful conversion. Like the other “pagans”, the Wayṭo were required to
believe and to be “baptized with Christian baptism 66”. The chronicle
describes the Wayṭo as hunters, who “do not till [the land] and […] do not
engage in commerce”, and who “eat the fesh of the hippopotamus and
other wild animals 67”. The issue of the diet of the Wayṭo is thus seen to
play a crucial role in understanding the dynamic of their conversion to
Christianity, which unfolds here in the context of the victory of Roman
Catholicism over Ethiopian Christianity:
“How can we be Christians, since we eat what the Christians do
not eat?” [said the Wayṭo]. And the apostle of the faith, King Səlṭan
Sägäd [regnal name of Susǝnyos], said to them: “Nothing in God’s
creation is to be despised (mənun) or rejected (gəduf), for
everything is sanctifed (yətqedas) by the prayer68”.
This dialogue takes the link between Ethiopian Christianity and food
prohibitions (which here exclude the hippopotamus and other aquatic
game animals) and embeds it within the context of Jesuit infuence on the
king and his conversion to Catholicism. Like Álvares’s text and the
Confessio Claudii, it confrms that the assimilation of food taboos to a ritual
practice had now become an integral part of Catholic rhetoric. The
application of Catholic dogma entailed a principled change in the process
of conversion in Ethiopia, by opening up the Church to people of all dietary
persuasions. The account given in the chronicle of Susǝnyos provides the
63
Páez, 2008: 245.
64
Toubkis, 2004: 107-113.
65
Pereira, 1862-1900, vol. 1: 215 (text), vol. 2: 166 (trans.).
66
Pereira, 1862-1900, vol. 1: 215 (text), vol. 2: 166 (trans.).
67
Pereira, 1862-1900, vol. 1: 215 (text), vol. 2: 166 (trans.).
68
Pereira, 1862-1900, vol. 1: 215-216 (text), vol. 2: 166 (trans.).

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Thomas Guindeuil

only indication of a conversion of the Wayṭo to Roman Catholicism, and its

credibility is accordingly weakened. But it clashes dramatically with the
testimony of Bruce and later travellers. Having made their frst appearance
in a 17th-century Ethiopian source as “pagan” hunters who converted to
Catholicism, and who were hardly noticed by contemporary foreigners ―
Manoel de Almeida, a contemporary of Susǝnyos, mentions the existence
of such a group but with no hint of stigmatization 69 ― the Wayṭo
subsequently appear in European accounts of the 18 th and 19th centuries
only as a “caste” tainted by the consumption of impure fesh. Thus it was
the period following the abdication of Susǝnyos and the expulsion of the
Jesuit missionaries that marks the moment when the dietary prohibitions of
the Pentateuch became even more fundamentally a part of the identity of
the Christians of Ethiopia, defned vis-à-vis “pagans” like the Wayṭo – and
the Roman Catholicism. After the reign of Susǝnyos, there seems to have
been no further attempt to convert the Wayṭo to Christianity, which in any
event would have meant the abandonment of their way of life.
Conclusion
The dossier we have compiled here invites the hypothesis that the dietary
worldview of Ethiopian Christianity underwent a slow pendulum swing,
starting from an ensemble of “pan-Ethiopian” food avoidance practices
dealing with meat, and leading to a restructuration in terms of the (partly
overlapping) Biblical prohibitions. Until the 16 th century, the dietary “other”
was never characterized by the taint that disrespect for Mosaic law would
have brought, but rather by a certain number of emblematic features of
local dietary culture. The Kəbrä Nägäśt does include an explicit reference
to Mosaic law as early as the 13th century, earlier than (for example) the
reforms of Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob. We have shown, however, that the dietary
prohibitions of the Pentateuch actually defned only a (relatively) narrow
framework of exclusions, which was less restrictive than the old limits of
Ethiopian dietary practices ― avoidance of poultry and fsh ― which
continued, at least in part, to have currency until the 15 th century.
Between the 15th and 17th centuries, the confrontation with Catholic
dogma led the Ethiopians to more closely defne their dietary practices. In
the 15th century Zär‘ä Ya‘əqob opposed the “pagan” prohibition of fsh in
the name of Christian universalism. The Confessio Claudii, which attests to
the verbal violence of the anti-heresy campaign conducted by the Spanish
Jesuits against Ethiopian Christianity, relegates dietary prohibitions ― here,
against pork ― to the realm of “custom”, thereby clashing with the
European conception of a set of ritual prohibitions inherited from Judaism.
On this last point the author of the Confessio Claudii is surely right: the
non-consumption of pork is on a par with the non-consumption of poultry
and fsh in the 14th and 15th centuries, and testifes to a “pan-Ethiopian”
cultural phenomenon quite unconnected with Christianity. On the other
69
Almeida, 1954: 35-36.

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 What do Christians (Not) Eat

hand, it is undeniable that the observance of food prohibitions, whatever

their origin, was gradually assimilated to a Christian identity. It served, for
example, to justify the exclusion of the marginal Wayṭo from the Christian
world, but also to reinforce the differences in dietary practice between the
Christians and their neighbors, i.e. between the social elite and the
majority of the people. In 1752 the Franciscan missionary Remedius Prutky
described the existence of a night-time fsh market in Gondar where fsh, in
all likelihood from Lake Ṭana, were sold for a very high price 70. Dietary
behavior was changing, and fsh, a once-despised food, became the
prerogative of the tables of the aristocracy. In fact, eating fsh made it
possible to consume animal fesh (of a certain kind) even during the long
fasting periods. Such a turnabout makes sense only if the old prohibitions
were giving way to the less restrictive framework of the prohibitions of the
Pentateuch. It is this last stage of the process that ultimately led to popular
acceptance of the meat of chickens. From the viewpoint of the southern
peoples who were incorporated into the Ethiopian empire towards the end
of the 19th century, the chicken became an ambiguous symbol of Christian
cuisine: stamped with the taint of pollution on the one hand, a marker of
cultural “otherness” on the other. In contrast to the Christian regions of the
northern and central highlands, where “pan-Ethiopian” non-consumption
practices progressively gave way to observance of Mosaic law which
sanctioned the consumption of chicken, these non-Christian and often non-
Muslim peoples of the south have always considered the chicken as an
impure animal71.
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Résumé / Abstract
Guindeuil T., 2014, What do Christians (Not) Eat. Food Taboos and the Ethiopian Christian
Community (13th-18th Centuries), Annales d’Éthiopie 29, 59-82.
Only a few sources exist that allow us to tackle directly the question of the relation between
Ethiopian Christianity and dietary prohibitions. This article proposes a new reading of this
limited corpus. In so doing, it highlights various moments of a history in which dietary
practices and religious identity have overlapped and interpenetrated in different ways. Today,
respect for the Biblical dietary prohibitions is considered a hallmark of Ethiopian Christianity.
Indeed, Ethiopian Christians have behind them a long history of identification with the chosen
people. But until recently, the dietary prohibitions of the Pentateuch do not seem to have had
any practical effect whatsoever. Until the 16th century, the texts reveal patterns of non-
consumption of meat that were common to most populations of the region, Christian or not. In
the 15th century, King Zär‘ä Ya‘ǝqob condemned the non-consumption of fish, drawing for
support upon texts of the apostles. Dietary “otherness” across religious communities ―
Christian, Muslim, “pagan” ― was founded upon foods which symbolized “otherness” of life
style. When the Christians of Ethiopia confronted European Catholicism in the 16 th century,
they elaborated an apologetic discourse for their non-consumption of certain kinds of animal
flesh, a practice whose ritual significance was rejected. It was only when the Catholic
missionaries were expelled in the 17th century that respect for the Biblical dietary prohibitions
seems to have become an integral part of Ethiopian Christian identity, and to have definitively
supplanted the older, pan-Ethiopian practices of non-consumption.
Keywords: Ethiopia, food, dietary prohibitions, religious identity, ritual practices, meat
Ce que mangent (ou ne mangent pas) les chrétiens. La communauté chrétienne
d’Éthiopie face aux interdits alimentaires – Peu de sources permettent d’aborder frontale-
ment la question des relations entre le christianisme éthiopien et les interdits alimentaires. Cet
article propose une relecture de cet étroit corpus, et met en relief les différents moments
d’une histoire où s’imbriquent pratiques alimentaires et identité religieuse. Le respect des in-
terdits alimentaires bibliques est aujourd’hui considéré comme un marqueur identitaire pour
les chrétiens d’Éthiopie. Les chrétiens d’Éthiopie ont derrière eux une longue histoire d’identi -
fication au peuple élu, mais les interdits alimentaires du Pentateuque ne semblent pas, jus -
qu’à une période récente, avoir eu une quelconque résonnance pratique. Jusqu’au XVIe siècle,
les textes mettent à jour des pratiques de non-consommation alimentaires portant sur des
chairs animales, communes à la majorité des populations de la région, chrétiennes ou non.
Au XVe siècle, le roi Zar’a Yā‘eqob condamne la non-consommation du poisson en s’appuyant
sur les écrits apostoliques. L’altérité alimentaire entre communautés religieuses – chrétiens,
musulmans, « païens » – se fonde alors sur des aliments qui symbolisent l’altérité des modes
de vie. Lorsqu’ils se confrontent, au XVIe siècle, au regard des catholiques européens, les
chrétiens d’Éthiopie élaborent un discours de justification de la non-consommation de cer-
taines chairs animales, pratique dont le caractère rituel est alors nié. Ce n’est qu’une fois les
missionnaires catholiques expulsés, au XVIIe siècle, que le respect des interdits alimentaires
bibliques semble être intégré à l’identité chrétienne éthiopienne, et supplante définitivement
les pratiques de non-consommation pan-éthiopiennes.
Mots-clefs : Éthiopie, alimentation, interdits alimentaires, identité religieuse, pratiques ri-
tuelles, viande

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