Gnisci, Jacopo;
(2025)
Imaging Sanctity in Early Solomonic Ethiopia:
The Portrait of ‘Qǝddus’ ʾIyasus Moʾa.
In: Gnisci, Jacopo and Dege-Müller, Sophia and Karlsson, Jonas and Pisani, Vitagrazia, (eds.)
Manuscript Treasures from Afro-Eurasia: Scribes, Patrons, Collectors, and Readers.
(pp. 251-280).
De Gruyter: Berlin, Germany.
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Abstract
The monastery of Dabra Ḥayq ʾƎsṭifānos owns a richly illuminated gospel book that was commissioned by its founding abbot ʾIyasus Moʾa who appears in a prefatory portrait at the very front of the volume. The image is accompanied by a caption which identifies the figure as a ‘saint’. Because it uncharacteristic for the Christian Ethiopian tradition to identify a living individual in such a way, scholars have debated whether this portrait was added to the manuscript after ʾIyasus Moʾa’s death. The present contribution revisits this question to show that the image and the caption were part of the abbot’s commission. The article then goes onto to demonstrate that the miniature deliberately blurred the distinction between ʾIyasus Moʾa and the other saintly figures in the volume and argues that this was done intentionally to legitimise his position as one of the most powerful individuals of his time.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Imaging Sanctity in Early Solomonic Ethiopia: The Portrait of ‘Qǝddus’ ʾIyasus Moʾa |
| ISBN-13: | 978-3-11-163626-9 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1515/9783111636344-008 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111636344-008 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 the author, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History of Art |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207163 |
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