European Ancestry (23andMe)

Although our interests in genealogy and DNA testing are primarily centered on African ancestry, we did find it interesting how our 23andMe results indicate a smaller French ancestry than Ancestry. Given our roots in the Spanish Caribbean, we expected most of our European ancestry to be from the Iberian Peninsula. Yet French was only 0.3% here despite our Ancestry results showing 2%. We're also assuming the Swedish and Swiss, Southwestern German and Western Austrian estimates are catching some of the Germanic or western European ancestry similar to that foud in France? The other surprise, although not really shocking for the Iberian Peninsula, was seeing our Y Chromosome Haplogroup: J-L26. 

Jesuits in the Kingdom of Prester John

Des jésuites au royaume du prêtre Jean (Ethiopie): stratégies, rencontres et tentatives d'implantation, 1495-1633 by Hervé Pennec is another study of the Jesuits and the mission in Ethiopia. Since the scholarly literature and written sources on the topic is vast, Pennec proposes new interpretations and questions about the subject. While revisiting the sources and challenging readers to reconsider the strategies and tactics employed by both the Jesuits and ruler Susenyos, one can see that the topic of the Jesuits in Ethiopia and this transformation of Prester John of myth into the "real" Ethiopia which the Latin West engaged in the Early Modern Period still raises many questions.

The first third of the book begins with Portugal's early relations with the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, and how Ignatius of Loyola (and others) mistakenly assumed the Abyssinian ruler was ready to submit to Christ. Relying on outdated information from Alvares, plus the issue of Bermudes and his claim to be Roman Catholic patriarch, confusion abounded. Despite being well-informed on some aspects of Ethiopia, the founder of the Jesuit order wrongly believed that Ethiopia was ready for submission to the papacy. Of course, Galadewos had no interest in doing such a thing, and the early wave of Jesuits in Ethiopia found themselves largely on the periphery. Still, despite their small numbers in the second half of the 16th century, Ethiopian religious literature engaged in a Christological written (and oral) debate with the Jesuit missionaries, particularly once Susenyos converted to Catholicism in 1622. Despite their complete lack of success in converting Ethiopian rulers, the early Jesuits did proselytize and preach to Luso-Ethiopians, maintaining Roman Catholicism among descendants of Portuguese in Abyssinia. Moreover, Goa, as the capital of Portuguese India and center of the Jesuit missions in the Orient, was also an early example of a periphery being arguably more important or essential for the survival of the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia than Rome, Portugal and Spain. Goa, much closer to the Jesuit missions and capable of receiving and sending information more quickly, shaped the decisions on personnel who were ultimately sent to Ethiopia. This was no simple matter, since Ottoman control of the Red Sea made the matter more difficult.

Pennec likewise focuses on how the Jesuits, once able to establish a foothold again in 1603, particularly with the arrival of Pero Paes. Whilst it would take several more years before an Ethiopian ruler converted to Catholicism, one can begin to see here the Jesuits establishing stone churches and residences (with Ethiopian workers and at least one Indian). By erecting churches in stone, some beautifully designed, the Jesuits were implanting themselves in the kingdom on a more permanent basis. By doing so, they were also increasingly drawn into what Pennec sees as royally-sponsored churches. Gifts of land (gult), money, supplies, and the involvement of Susenyos in the ceremony culminating the completion of churches was partly a way for Susenyos to assert his power. This meat that Susenyos, and his brother who converted to Catholicism before him, were incorporating the Jesuits into a familiar patter of royal sponsorship and assertions of power, particularly in Gojjam and around Lake Tana. While the Jesuits undoubtedly benefitted from receiving lands, supplies, funds, and elite backers, they were also part of a strategy of Ethiopian rulers to express their power, which even included enlisting the Jesuits (or the masons among them) to construct stone palaces and monumental architecture for him. This complex process was followed by the Jesuit experience in Ethiopia after the conversion of Susenyos. Part of this complex relationship was also due to Susenyos's desire for Spanish troops to be sent to Ethiopia to help him as a prerequisite for converting, while the Jesuits told him he would have to submit to the papacy before any European troops would come to his aid.

With the 1620s, Pero Paes died but Susenyos's conversion gave the Jesuits their legitimacy and renewed the mission by the arrival of more missionaries. Although a failure within ten years, as Susenyos abdicated and his son, Fasiladas, later exiled the Jesuits, one can see this experience as the zenith of the mission. More missionaries on the ground, conversions of more Ethiopians (although the numbers given by the Jesuits are problematic, it seems that Gojjam had more converts), and Susenyos sidelining his Catholic brother as a supporter of the Catholics. Nonetheless, the mission's short-lived success came to an end with Susenyos's abdication. Pennec's study is less focused on this period, highlighting how Paes and d'Almeida's histories of Ethiopia must be analyzed carefully for the ways in which the authors engaged with Ethiopian written sources, especially the royal chronicle on the reign of Susenyos. Paes especially, despite his nearly 20 years spent in Ethiopia and his familiarity with ge'ez and Amharic, must be interpreted for the ways they cite, paraphrase, and refute Ethiopian sources. For instance, the question of the metropolitan accused of fathering children, drinking, and abusing his ecclesiastical authority in Paes's redaction of the chronicle of Susenyos, and being involved in a revolt in 1617 against the king, may not necessarily be an insertion by Paes. It is possible that later versions of the chronicle after Susenyos's reign censored that segment of the chronicle, but Paes, who was of course biased against the metropolitan sent from Egypt, may have been closer to the truth.

Luso-Ethiopian Relations and Church Unification

Because it was co-written by Merid Wolde Aregay and frequently cited in Cohen's study of the Jesuit mission, The Question of the Union of the Churches in Luso-Ethiopian Relations, 1500-1632 was the next read on Solomonic Ethiopia. Although a short study of Luso-Ethiopian Relations and the failed unification of the respective churches under Roman authority, Aregay and Girma Beshah has written a cogent introduction to the complex topic of Portuguese-Ethiopian interactions beginning with the legend of Prester John and early contacts between the Latin West and the Horn in the late medieval period. While the authors do not seek to blame the Jesuits for the mission's failure or see in it a colonial relationship, they do acknowledge that expecting to uproot centuries-old customs and beliefs quickly was perhaps misguided. 

Ultimately, Susenyos, our Catholic negus, like Za Dengel before him, also lacked the means to effectively impose Catholicism. The dreamed for or expected Portuguese troops never arrived and resistance from the local clergy, nobility, and peasantry became too consistent and dangerous for Susenyos's rule to survive without freedom of religion. The role of peasant resistance in this process cannot be overlooked, and this essay suggests there was an aspect of class conflict expressed in the numerous revolts and rebellions. Indeed, if Za Dengel, as Crummey suggested, had hoped to win peasant support by attacking gult and building a new military base of peasant conscripts (presumably less destructive to the peasants than the older imperial military units), Susenyos alienated the peasantry with his imposition of Catholicism and the insecurity caused by frequent rebellions, Oromo raids, and banditry. 

As stated by later scholars on the Jesuits in Ethiopia, the Society of Jesus relied on the patronage of local rulers and elites. Once circumstances changed and those groups could not or would not back them, the Jesuit mission declined and often a mass support to rally it. Ethiopian Catholicism may have had that if Susenyos's brother, Sela Christos, had been able to rally forces around him and the defeated patriarch against Fasiladas. However, due to the forced conversions and general resistance to Roman Catholicism from above and below, one doubts local Catholics would have been able to stage an effective military resistance. Aregay and Beshah cite Jesuit sources suggesting over 100,000 local Catholics by 1630, but how many of these were the result of forced or coerced conversions or, perhaps like some of the conversions to Islam under Ahmad Gran, merely acts of opportunism or self-preservation in the face of a new boss or bully? One wishes Susenyos had found a way to consolidate his government and centralize the state without imposing Catholicism, perhaps a method that could have carried out some of Za Dengel's reforms with freedom of religion for Orthodox, Catholic, Muslims, Falasha, and "pagans." Ironically, his son would go on to establish a reinvigorated Solomonic dynasty that resisted the resurgence of the provincial nobility until the mid-18th century.

The Christian Century

Due to a friend discussing the history of the Jesuits with us multiple times, we have endeavored to read about the order in various locales around the world. Although our original interest in the Jesuits derived from their history in Louisiana, Saint-Domingue and Ethiopia, our friend has sparked our interest in the Jesuit mission to Japan. Indeed, he actually proposed the idea of a comparative study of the Jesuit missions to Ethiopia and Japan, which prompted our reading of Boxer's The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650. Both offer an interesting cases of non-Western civilizations in which the Jesuits enjoyed some success before a brutal crackdown and expulsion. The two also raised tantalizing possibilities of early "westernization" of Japan and Ethiopia through religion and intellectual exchange at a moment of political turmoil or conflict. Furthermore, the two also closed off most contacts with Roman Catholic European powers while investing in ties with Protestant Europeans like the Dutch, albeit more successfully in the case of Japan than Ethiopia. Both cases culminated in the exile for those of Portuguese origins as well as prohibitions of Roman Catholicism although Catholic missionaries continued to secretly enter the two states. Last but certainly not least, the two missions included some rather remarkable Jesuits: Valignano, João Rodrigues Tçuzu and Pedro Páez who produced invaluable writings on the two regions.

The two obviously differ in some key ways, however. The Ethiopians were already Christians, albeit of an Orthodox persuasion. Moreover, the Portuguese enjoyed a very lucrative trade as an intermediary of Japan and China via Macao. The Red Sea, on the other hand, was not as economically vital to Portuguese interests and Jesuits often relied on Muslim and banyan traders and ships to reach Massawa. The Japanese were also, for a time, actively engaged in shipping and external trade through Red-Seal ships traveling across Southeast Asia (and even beyond). The Christian kingdom or empire of Ethiopia relied on Muslims for much of its international trade across the Red Sea or Indian Ocean. Another vast distinction can be seen in the success of the Jesuits in converting the most powerful personage of the Ethiopian government, Susenyos. The Jesuits in Japan enjoyed some success with Kyushu daimyo and were amicably received or tolerated by Oda Nobunaga and Hideyoshi but obviously never converted the heads of the central government. 

The two also differed in that the mendicant orders appear to have been a far more important factor in the intra-Christian squabbling in Japan than in Ethiopia. The missionaries in Japan also appear to have converted more natives, although the high estimate of around 300,000 cited by Boxer may be incorrect. Additionally, the Jesuits seem to have been more effective with seminaries in Japan, although relatively few Japanese were ordained as priests or became members of the Society. Perhaps the greater esteem the Jesuits had for the Japanese explained part of the difference, as they were contrasted favorably with the "blacks" of India by Valignano. One suspects the Jesuits may have also let their racial bias shape their perception of Ethiopians in a way that was not necessarily the case for the Japanese. 

Ultimately, as argued by Andreu Martínez d'Alòs-Moner, the Jesuit missions in Ethiopia, Japan and even Mughal India failed when local political conditions shifted and elites were no longer willing to support or tolerate them. According to Boxer, the Japanese were less dependent on the Portuguese for the trade in Chinese silks by the time of Ieyasu, while in Ethiopia local resistance to the Catholics and Susenyos led to his abdication and the restoration of the Orthodox Church by the next king. A shift in socio-political conditions or economic matters meant the flimsy foundations the Jesuits built could be eradicated or at least neutralized and gradually destroyed. From reading Boxer, one cannot help but think that a skillful combination of the proselytizing tactics of the mendicant orders and the Jesuits would have been necessary to ensure the survival of Catholicism. After all, the peasants and lower classes of the Japanese were the ones who persisted in their faith the longest after the strategy of converting daimyo and samurai failed. Perhaps had the Jesuits attempted more outreach among the peasantry and poor, they could have had lasted a little longer in Japan. As for their tactics in Ethiopia, they also appear to have mainly sought to work their way down from the elites but faced too mch resistance from the local clergy and monastic figures. The main pillar of support for the Jesuits there was the mixed-race Portuguese community, who after a few generations likely adhered to more Ethiopian traditions than those of Portugal. 

Boxer's account of the crypto-Christians, priests who entered as merchants after 1614, and the Shimabara Rebellion suggest that Christianity survived and even spread further across Japan after the 1614 edict. Nonetheless, without enough new Catholic clergy to guide them and the government's economic and political persecution of local Christians driving many to apostatize, the faith could not prosper or grow. In Ethiopia, the Ethio-Portuguese were eventually exiled without much of a legacy in Ethiopia besides the Indian and Indo-Portuguese influences in Gondarine architecture. It seeems to us that the "Christian Century" in Japan and the Jesuits in the land of Prester John represent a key moment in Portuguese/Iberian expansion of the 16th and 17th centuries as well as frustrated paths that could have drastically changed the trajectory of two regions in the early modern era. 

Envoys of a Human God

Several months ago, we were invited to participate in a reading group formed to devour several books on Ethiopian history, with an emphasis on the Jesuits. It took us quite some time to get to it, but we have been periodically reading whatever we can find on Ethiopian history, particularly the medieval and early modern eras of the Solomonic kingdom. Since there are so many studies and translated sources on the Jesuits in Ethiopia, we decided Envoys of a Human God: The Jesuit Mission to Christian Ethiopia, 1557-1632 to be a good introduction to a complex topic with such an ample documentary trail. Andreu Martínez d'Alòs-Moner's study contextualizes the Mission in the larger East of Jesuit missionary activity during the 16th and 17th centuries, an approach we appreciate due to our readings of Jesuit relations in the Americas and China. 

This is not to ignore the specificity and distinct place of Ethiopia in the Jesuit and Western Christian imagination. After all, Ethiopia's ruler has been associated with the Prester John and even the founder of the Society of Jesus conceived of Ethiopia's "restoration" into the Roman Catholic fold as one of the special projects of the order. And, of course, the Solomonic state's already Christian population was not the same as non-Christian Japanese or Chinese or Muslims and Hindus in India. But Jesuit perceptions of Ethiopian Christianity as wayward or aberrant because of the observance of the Sabbath, the widespread practice of circumcision, belief in the uniquely divine nature of Christ, excessive fasting and the negative influence of the Coptic Church of Alexandria made Ethiopians in need of a restitution of their original Roman tutelage. Several chapters explore these theological, political, and social differences between Ethiopian Christianity and the Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation and Jesuits. Some of these aforementioned differences in practice and interpretation led to problems for the missionaries that they could never resolve, particularly over their more pronounced use of icons and certain rites in public, which were perceived by Ethiopians as profaning the sacred mysteries. 

Unlike the previous historical works we have read which have touched upon the Jesuit interlude in Ethiopian history, Envoys of a Human God challenges previous scholarship's unproven assumptions. For example, the idea that the Jesuit missionaries were attractive to Susenyos because the order supported political absolutism is completely absent from the voluminous sources left behind by the Jesuits. Instead, Susenyos probably saw in the Jesuits and the Portuguese a cosmopolitan group whose support for rationalization of the royal court would have appealed to a ruler in a politically decentralized kingdom or empire with recent upheaval for much of the 16h and early 17th centuries. Of course, the impressive architectural and technological knowledge of Europe and India also appealed to Susenyos and their foreign textiles, exotic wares, and trade connections could not have hurt. Likewise, one cannot blame Mendes or Paez for the successes and failures of the overall Mission since their personalities and perceived policy differences were not significant enough to have caused the failure of the mission. Both Paez and Mendes pursued a policy of "Latinization" of Ethiopian Christianity through a top-down strategy of winning over Susenyos and key nobles. Both believed Ethiopian Christianity needed to be aligned with Catholic dogma and practice and were largely opposed to compromise. 

This lack of compromise and a few other practices of the Jesuits, unsurprisingly, sparked unrest, conflict, debate, and, eventually, outright rebellions that led to the fall of Susenyos and the restoration of the local Church. The Jesuit reliance on royal and local elite donors contributed to the precarious nature of the Mission, too. Perceived as attacking local traditions and beliefs, they further antagonized the population as recipients of land grants and donations which worried traditionalists fearful of losing land and influence. When one thinks about it in the larger picture, it is not surprising that the Jesuits failed so quickly after several decades because, as Envoys of a Human God argues, their moment of greatest success was in a period of socio-political transition with a sympathetic ruler whose patronage was necessary to maintain and expand. Once those conditions changed and the ruler was unable to fund or publicly support the Jesuits, they were exiled, persecuted, forced underground, or killed. Outside of a legacy in architecture, painting, and, perhaps, new theological discourse within Ethiopian Orthodoxy, the Jesuit legacy disappeared with the expulsion of the last Ethio-Portuguese or their complete assimilation by the late 17th century. As for what else happened to the converts to Catholicism is not entirely clear, probably due to a paucity of sources. We know several local Catholics faced persecution and execution but it would be fascinating to find out more about crypto-Catholic communities during the reign of Fasiladas and Yohannes. We have encountered the figure of 100,000 for local converts to Catholicism in other studies, which seems small, but the eventual suppression and disappearance of this population and those of mixed-race Ethio-Portuguese descent as a recognized group might suggest something about the nature of the state and nation-building in Gondarine Ethiopia. 

Last but certainly not least, one cannot understand the Ethiopia Mission without mentioning India, particularly Goa and Diu. Without the strong Portuguese base in Goa and relationships with banyan and Muslim traders passing between Diu and the Red Sea, the Portuguese would have struggled to send missionaries to the Ethiopian highlands. Furthermore, Indian craftsmen, masons, and building techniques (Indo-Portuguese and Mughal) seem to have clearly influenced Jesuit constructions in Ethiopia, an example of what the author calls architectonics that shaped Gondarine architecture long after the suppression of Catholicism in the 1630s and beyond. Undoubtedly, the Church infrastructure organized in Goa, and Indian artisans and masons were central to the project until the decline of Portuguese India and the Mission's greater reliance on Susenyos and local, elite backers. Indian textiles, artisans, architectural styles, and the cosmopolitan world of the Indian Ocean were a necessary background for the Jesuits to pass through Red Sea ports and enter Ethiopia. Despite never establishing a foothold in Massawa or the coast of today's Eritrea, which would have facilitated the Jesuits tremendously, Portuguese India served as an essential base for communication, supplies, educated missionary personnel, and skilled workmen 

Mutapa (Monomotapa)

I believe it was Charlevoix who mentioned the presence of "Monomotapa" Africans in Saint Domingue. He seemed to think it was best that they were no longer brought to Saint Domingue after the early period of the slave trade to the colony. Either way, they, and numerous other peoples of southeastern Africa, contributed to the making of the Haitian people. This brief video does a nice job introducing the "Monomotapa" state and its social and economic structure.

Cantigas de Santa Maria

Some of this music from the "Cantigas de Santa Maria" is quite fascinating, blending Islamic, Gregorian, and other styles of ritual and older musical traditions together in 13th century Iberia. Also important for establishing poetry and the written form of Galician-Portuguese, the beautifully illuminated text is an important source for studying medieval music, culture, Romance languages, and cultural exchange. Check out this catchy number, too. Not sure how accurately it reproduces the sounds of 13th century Iberia, but it certainly is interesting. 

Nkangi Kiditu

Crucifix from the early 17th century Kingdom of Kongo, in what is now the Congo and Angola. I believe this is from the Brooklyn Museum. The kingdom's ruler converted to Catholicism in the early 1490s, and Christianization permeated in other social classes beyond the elite of the centralized polity in West Central Africa. John Thornton and others have written extensively on Christianity and the general history of this kingdom, which would in a few centuries splinter due to the chaos wrought by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Portuguese meddling, many of the BaKongo ending up enslaved in places such as Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil. From an amazing book, Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, edited by Linda Heywood, I learned that forms of popular Catholicism practiced in this region of Central Africa likely shaped Haitian popular Catholicism in the 19th century, which can be seen in specific forms of Marian devotion and syncretistic practices. In addition, these crucifix objects show local styles fusing with Portuguese and European Catholic ritual art, with a Kongolese Christ. This reminds me of an earlier post I did on Beatriz Kimpa Vita, a self-proclaimed prophet who claimed to be possessed by Saint Anthony, who was of great importance to local Catholics, and proclaimed Jesus Christ was indeed black and from the Kongo, another example of Christianity's importance and following among the populace of the Kingdom of Kongo.

16th Century Portuguese Gunman in Benin Bronze

 

 Portuguese rifleman from 16th century Kingdom of Benin, made of a copper alloy despite the misleading titles of such pieces, "Benin bronzes." It shows a fascinating example of how a West African society's artists depicted Portuguese peoples in their local style and indicates the importance of Portuguese-Benin relations in what is now southern Nigeria, not too far from the modern city of Lagos, which began as a trading town under domination of the Edo peoples of Benin. The Kingdom of Benin, ruled by powerful obas who centralized the polity by the second half of the 15th century, impressed the Portuguese and other European travelers in the centuries to come. For instance, Dutch visitors were impressed by the palatial mini-city of the oba, comparing it in size to Haarlem in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the exquisite sculptural tradition of Benin impressed European observers and colonialists, particularly during the British conquest and sacking of Benin City in the end of the 19th century, ensuring plunder of priceless art pieces that would find its way into European museums and the hands of private collectors. Walls constructed of earth, well-designed and layed out city streets, and established, beautiful aesthetic values in sculpture indicate this was a powerful, relatively prosperous kingdom which had inherited aspects of ancient Yoruba "lost wax" method sculptural traditions (look up Yoruba city-states in earlier centuries in southwestern Nigeria, which some argue may follow an even earlier sculptural tradition of the Nok culture, dating back as far as a few centuries before the present era). Moreover, the Yoruba influence on the Edo peoples is likely evident in some of their religious practices, as well as founding myths which link them to Yoruba antecedents, though, of course, ethnic identities such as Yoruba were not firmly written in stone in ancient precolonial West Africa. Note the features of this Portuguese male, with a European-styled helm and a gun, yet barefoot. Perhaps as soon as the Portuguese traders reached this part of West Africa, they shed all their excessively warm clothing for the comforts of tropical West Africa and Central Africa.

Benin was, after the Wolof and Mali empires in the northwestern West Africa, the most centralized coastal polity the Portuguese encountered in the 15th and 16th centuries. Moreover, as an expanding, centralizing state, the oba did not initially participate in the slave trade, wanting to retain young male captives and slaves for labor within the confines of the kingdom. In fact, if I remember correctly, Benin initially imported slaves while exporting Malaguetta peppers, ivory, and other tropical exports. Soon enough, the kingdom would engage in slave trading from the export side of things and Lagos, the beautiful trading town along the fort with a centuries-long history of local and regional trade of salted fish and other products would become a center of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and, by the second-half of the 19th century, British imperialism. Here are some other beautiful pieces of Benin art that deserve universal acknowledgement, which also show a West African visualization of white Europeans rather than the more typical European representation of Africans in art, as well as providing an illustrative history of the kingdom, European visitors, and its kings. Afro-Portuguese ivories also show cultural mixing through a combination of European and local styles as well as Portuguese Christian iconography appearing with Benin motifs and symbolism, a form of cultural creolization that could be found further south in the Kingdom of Kongo, whose king converted to Christianity before the end of the 15th century. The nkangi kidatu, or Kongo crucifix show a fusion of locally-derived forms of Christianity as well as Iberian Catholicism.

Afro-Iberia: Blacks in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia

These pictures in no way imply that the majority of "Moors" in medieval Iberia were "Black," but merely serves as a powerful reminder of the racial diversity of Muslim-dominated Iberia, as well as the conspicuous presence of "Blacks" in Christian Iberian art. The above image depicts the judgment of Moorish captives by a Christian Iberian king in the 1200s or 1300s, while the image below, from the early 16th century, depicts a black slave in Portugal serving as a domestic in the home of a wealthy Portuguese man. The latter image depicts the presence of enslaved Africans, often non-Muslims, from West Africa or even further south in Central Africa, who were popular domestic servants, indicators of status for wealthy elites, and, by the end of the 15th century, a common site in Lisbon and other southern Portuguese cities and parts of Andalusia.

I do not know if this is from the 16th century, but it's supposedly a depiction of Juan Latino, an African-descended professor and writer of Spain, educated and capable of writing poetry in Latin and lecturing in the university. He, according to research by Henry Louis Gates and other specialists on Black Spain in the 1500s, responded to anti-black prejudice by linking his African roots with Biblical Ethiopia. 

The above image represents European imagination on carnal knowledge of Arabs and Blacks, suggesting that it's immoral for a white, Christian woman to sleep with a dark-skinned, presumably Muslim, servant or slave. It's from the late 1200s, after the Reconquista was building in momentum and, though the black servant is seen burning, the white woman is saved by the Virgin Mary. Supposedly the image above depicts a dream, but an obvious anti-Muslim, anti-black prejudice can be detected in the seeming moral that interracial, interreligious and interclass love is frowned upon.

From the 1300s, this Jewish cartographer from Spain depicts the legendary Mansa Musa, of the Mali kingdom, whose fame and wealth was renowned throughout the world after his Hajj. His gold seems to be luring a light-skinned Arab or Berber trader and there is nothing to suggest anti-black attitudes or prejudice in the image, only the notion of fabulous wealth and unlimited gold to be found in this region of West Africa, which was linked to the notion of a "River of Gold" Europeans hoped to reach in West Africa. Muslim cartographers from North Africa also had a similarly fantastic idea, believing there was a Palolus, or island of Gold somewhere in West Africa south of the Mali empire, which was really the Wangara goldfields in non-Muslim lands.

 

This image depicts a black slave in the bottom right.

A retrato of Juan de Pareja, a black Spanish painter and acquaintance of Velazquez. He was a ladino, that is, an acculturated Afro-Iberian, fluent in Spanish and had this portrait done in 1650. Black ladinos would also play a significant role in the Spanish conquest of the Americas as well as a cultural presence in some cases, where slave and slave-descended communities assembled in parts of cities, such as Seville. Other well-known ladinos include Eleno/a de Cespedes, an Afro-Iberian transgendered person who was socially accepted as male despite being officially seen as a woman, even marrying a woman until Inquisition authorities intervened in their life.

From the 13th century, it depicts a dark-skinned, "Negroid" Moor playing chess with a light-skinned male. Likely from Alfonso el Sabio's Book of Games, it shows the influence of Muslim and Moorish games such as chess on Christian Iberian kingdoms. This black man does not seem a slvae, based on his dress, though he is barefoot. Images like these could be representative of reality in that some dark-skinned Berbers and West Africans likely entered Iberia as elites and military leaders following Almoravid and Almohad conquests. Furthermore, blackening Moors and equating Saracens with blacks was another way of denigrating them. 

 

From an early 15th century Iberian map, we see a depiction of a dark-skinned Berber or "Moor" in the West African Sahara or Sahel, about to engage in trade with the still-legendary Mansa Musa of Mali.

Likely from the 13th century, it depicts Moorish invaders, most of whom depicted as looking almost European, with one prominent black rower.

Another image of dark Moors playing chess, although other images depict light-skinned Moors playing chess.

Afro-Portugal in the 16th Century

The above two images, one a street scene in Lisbon, Portugal's bustling capital dating back to the early 16th century, and the second a focus on the lower left of the former image, depict the racial diversity of Portugal's capital. I have read that by the end of the 15th century, about 10% of Lisbon's population were enslaved and formerly enslaved African-descended people. Moreover, as this article indicates, Jews were still a sizable minority in the city at the time, with two Jewish men carrying off a drunken or incapacitated black male. Nearby stands a black women, carrying a pot of water or something else on her head, her arms stretched as if in protest. The artist who portrayed this scene near the docks of Lisbon, likely Flemish, clearly was struck by the bustling streets and, most likely, the ethnic and racial diversity of the area. Non-Muslim African slaves in Iberia during this period were mocked for their language but their dances and musical ability impacted Spanish and Portuguese music as well as literature. This period of Afro-Europe's history, under-acknowledged despite its tremendous impact on later relations between black and white in the Americas, reveals a lot of early Iberian racial prejudice and negative views of the small, but visible African minorities already living in the peninsula. Also of interest is the possible dancing couple, a black man and a white woman, as well as the black man on horseback, indicating that not all black slaves and freedman were not socially integrated or lower-class.

Black Musicians in Lisbon, 1522

Slave cooking