Author : François-Xavier Fauvelle, Bertrand hirsch, Amélie chekroun
Year : 2017
Abstract : his article recounts fifteen years of archaeological and historical research on the Islamic Sultanates of Medieval Ethiopia. After intense surveys in different areas from Eastern Ethiopia to present-day Somaliland that revealed the ruins of Islamic cities, the research focused on the Ifāt region in Central Ethiopia. Several urban sites were spotted there and one of them, Nora, was investigated, showing vestiges (houses, mosques, cemetery) dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries. Finally, a major discovery, that of a necropolis composed of epigraphic tombs of members of the Walasmaʿ dynasty, whose texts are published here, made it possible to locate the 14th century capital of the Ifāt Sultanate. The spatial organization of this site, Awfāt, closely matches the description made by the Arab writer Abū al-Fidā’ in the early 14th century