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The relationship between Ethiopia and Prester John, the mythical ruler from the East searched for by the Latin Christians of Europe since the twelfth century, is long established in scholarship for the period between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. This relationship, however, appears one sided in the surviving source corpus with no reference to Prester John found in any Gǝʿǝz texts. Indeed, the Ethiopian monks at the Council of Florence in 1441 were recorded as actively rejecting such an association between this Prester John and their ruler to the Latin Christians. The absence of Gǝʿǝz sources aside, this article presents an edition and translation of four letters written in Arabic by the Ethiopian ambassador to Lisbon between 1509 and 1520, Mateus, to Dom Manuel, King of Portugal, which present him as the anbašadūr Brist Ǧuwān and pose further questions for this discussion. The letters provide examples of a counter narrative to the outright dismissal of the myth by the monks at Florence. With only one known clear proponent of each stance, and in different centuries, the discussion concerning Ethiopia's rejection of the Prester John myth may require more nuance.

The Eighth Crusade was launched by Saint Louis against Tunis in Summer 1270. For a few months, the French kingdom and its allies posed a serious threat to the Hafsid regime. Even though they ultimately failed to conquer the capital city, they heavily weakened the rule of al-Mustanṣir (r. 1249–77), emptying his coffers and damaging his prestige. In this paper, we first inventoried the points at stake. Then, we identified the rationale behind the expedition, evaluated the balance of the armed forces, and measured the losses and gains for each side. Second, the sources showed how the authors could depict the situation and assess its aftermath, depending on their political agenda. The Hafsid thurifers tended to minimize the sultan’s impotency, while others (e.g., the Mamluks) sometimes harshly criticized it. Third, the courtiers resorted to poetry and satirized “al-Franṣīṣ” for his setback of the Seventh Crusade (1248–1254) which he had led too. They mocked him in famous epigrams that we translated and analyzed. In conclusion, we examined why they concealed the blow. The Literati of the Restoration (ca 1370–1488) strove to portray al-Mustanṣir as a model king for the First Golden Age (until 1277) in a long series of sovereigns that stretched over more than two centuries.

Le cycle des sept voyages de Sindbad le marin comprend un grand nombre d’actes diégétiques relevant du manger. Plus profondément, nous soutenons ici que la progression même de chaque péripétie s’appuie sur une forme de repas. À bien y regarder, les intrigues, plus ou moins complexes, comportent toutes une ou plusieurs scènes dans lesquelles se nourrir détermine la suite des événements. Nous croyons que les narrèmes mobilisés servent un projet qui ressortit à l’adab : montrer jusqu’à quelles extrémités l’accumulation pousse les hommes. Le motif alimentaire au cœur de ce dispositif relève alors de la métaphore, celle du glouton. The story cycle of Sindbad the Sailor’s seven travelogues contains many diegetic acts related to eating. I will argue that on each journey, the narrative relies on the form of a meal. Furthermore, on closer inspection, the plots, whether complex or not, all contain one or more scenes in which feeding determines the sequence of events. I contend that the underlying narremes serve a purpose pertaining to the axiological adab system: to show to what extremes accumulation can drive people. From this perspective, the food motif at the heart of this literary device falls under the metaphor of a glutton.

Introduction from the guest editors.

‘Abd Allâh al-Tijânî’s Riḥla contains a strong ideological charge polarized around the political question of order and violence. This article analyzes the literary manipulation of sacred operated by the author who resorts to characters and stereotypes in order to react, on a symbolic field, to the maritime weakness that affects the Hafsid kingdom – a regional power dominated in the Western Mediterranean Basin. It also examines the local rooting of a war-oriented discourse produced by a frontier society.