From Stone to Dust: The Life of the Kufic-Inscribed Frieze of Wuqro Cherqos in Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Until 2010 (when it was broken by a tourist), a curious Kufic-inscribed sandstone block greeted those who entered the narthex of the eleventh-century church of Wuqro Cherqos in East Tigray, Ethiopia. My paper identifies the origin of this misunderstood fragment and presents it in the longue durée, from its architectural placement as part of an inscribed arch in the great mosque of a Fatimid trading colony to its medieval spoliation and use as a chancel arch in the church of Wuqro Cherqos, after northern Ethiopia emerged as a centralized power under the Zagwe dynasty. As the chancel in Wuqro Cherqos, the stone took on new meaning as a luxurious liturgical threshold, complementing the Egyptian and Indian silks that hung alongside it. After the arch came apart in the late 1990s, I show how modern Ethiopian scholars promoted the remaining Arabic-inscribed fragment as an ancient Ethiopian inscription. The life story of this stone fragment reveals a larger picture of Islam’s changing reception in Ethiopia from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century.