Ethiopia

Hey, im just wondering something when I saw the map below. Ethiopia was Christian while it was surrounded by an advancing Islam. How did they manage to keep their faith and did they have any contact with the catholic nations in Europe?

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Ethiopia was and is not Catholic to begin with. It belongs largely to the Monophysite or, better said, Miaphysite strain of Christianity, as a part of the Coptic church. Ties that mattered were with Egypt. That ties were mantained, all along the time Egypt was under Muslim rule, without structural problems (but with occasional crises) even when the Coptic Pope (not to be confused with the Roman Pope) was essentially an important figure within the court of the Muslim rulers of Egypt.
Also, your map is inaccurate in a very important way: the majority of peasantry in the Muslim ruled areas after the first conquests remained majoritarily Christian, Jewish or Mazdeist for a long time. Conversion was often a long process, that took centuries in some places. Muslims had usually little problem about tolerating Christians wherever there was not a political conflict with a Christian power, and often even in that case.
Ethiopia of course clung to Christianity also because it was surrounded by Muslims. However, actual serious Muslim attemps to conquer it came fairly late AFAIK.
 
Ethiopia remained Christian because of a combination of 1) it was essentially too far away to easily conquer, 2) the Ethiopian highlands was great defensive territory, and 3) it was too poor to be worth the effort compared to other areas. It already had its own indigenous church that was organized enough to make sure that itinerant Muslim traders and such couldn't proselytize and convert people as it did on the eastern coast of Africa.

For that matter, most of what is now Sudan was also Christian (or at least ruled by Christians) until around 1400s to early 1500s.

Contact with Europe was very sparse. There was some minor contact when the Crusaders had control of Jerusalem, and Ethiopian bishops attended the Council of Florence around 1440. After the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope, they established regular contact with Ethiopia.
 
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