Was there ever a time when Europeans, instead of seeing Sub-Saharan Africa and its inhabitants as inferior, saw them as equals or superior in certain aspects?

“We who profess Christianity ought to be ashamed of ourselves, since the Ethiopians seem to surpass us in regard to the cult and observance of the religion”

- Adamus Carolus to Damião de Góis, 28 October 1540

Ethiopia was seen in high regard by Europeans from the 13th to the 16th century. Europeans from the Mediterranean started having contact with the Christian Ethiopians and were marveled to have found the mystical Prester John of legend, a Christian king that lived beyond Muslim controlled lands. In many of the official contacts with Ethiopians, the Europeans described the as coming from Prester John lands and called the emperor of Ethiopia “Prester John” in their communications.

From historical documents, like Jacopo Filippo Foresti’s Supplementum Chonicarum, it’s known that Ethiopian monks and priests arrived sometimes in European cities in pilgrimage. There was also constant contact in Jerusalem dating to much earlier. The chronicles describing these Ethiopian travellers don’t seem to dismiss them as inferior to other Christian pilgrims.

I’ll quote from Salvadore’s book here:

“The experience of Ethiopian pilgrims and representatives as active agents of transcontinental discovery is particularly remarkable because, in spite of their physical appearance, they were welcomed as intellectuals and diplomats in a variety of European locales. The same societies that were quickly becoming familiar with the callous trade in African bodies and the related categories of racial difference, which would shape world history to this day, extended the Ethiopians deference and respect.”

In 1428 an Ethiopian embassy arrived in Valencia to try to seal a marriage alliance between the Crown of Aragon (a monarchy that was centered around eastern Spain, but which included many lands in the Mediterranean, like Naples and Sicily) and the Empire of Ethiopia.

More specifically, ambassadors were following the order of their kings to establish an alliance between Alfonso V of Aragon and Emperor Ishaq of Ethiopia (after the first contact of 1428 there was a back and forth between the two countries). This alliance between two Christian kingdoms was aimed to coordinate their forces against the Muslim states that existed between them, especially the Mamluks of Egypt.

From the letters of the Catalan archives, it’s known that the 1428 proposal was for Alfonso’s sister, Joana, to marry Ishaq and for an Ethiopian princess to marry Alfonso’s son, Pedro. If they were open to marry each other’s families, it doesn’t seem the Europeans looked down on them as they did in the Modern Era, after African slavery and serfdom became the norm in European’s view of Africa.

In 1450, Emperor Zara Yaq’ob of Ethiopia sent a second embassy to Naples, another city of the Crown of Aragon. It was received with much pomp and circumstance. Alfonso V tried to send two embassies to Ethiopia in return (in January 1452 and July 1453), but neither arrived. Some Europeans did arrive in Ethiopia (Catalans to be more precise), but the officials to seal the alliance didn’t.

The Portuguese also found Ethiopia in the 16th century, after they circumnavigated southern Africa on their way to India. From the letter I quoted earlier, you can see that they also were marveled at the country they had found, a reaction similar to when they found the Indian or East Asian kingdoms (and probably greater because they had found fellow Christians).

Sources:

GARRETSON, PETER P. “A NOTE ON RELATIONS BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND THE KINGDOM OF ARAGON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.” Rassegna Di Studi Etiopici, vol. 37, 1993, pp. 37–44. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41299786.

SALVADORE, MATTEO “The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555” (2016)