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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Wedem Arad

Wedem Arad was Ethiopian emperor from 1299 to 1314.

"The Ethiopian Dynasty" blog provides a helpful, brief biography of Wedem Arad's military endeavors:

Only one military action is recorded for this ruler. In the first year of his reign, one Sheikh Abu-Abdallah had gathered a large following, and proclaimed a jihad against Wedem Arad's realm. Wedem Arad sent a number of agents into Abu-Abdallah's camp, who were able to persuade most of his followers to defect; without sufficient manpower, Abu-Abdallah was forced to agree to a treaty with Wedem Arad, in return for providing "them with all their needs until they are completely satisfied". Taddesse Tamrat suggests this involved giving them land to settle on, and notes that on the edge of the territory of Shewa there is a locality known as "Abdalla", which might be that settlement.

G.W.B. Huntingford speculates that the settlement of Tegulet first became the capital of Ethiopia during Wedem Arad's reign.

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Letter of Prester John to Emperor Charles IV
Letter of Prester John to Emperor Charles IV (c. 1370)

This letter, apparently produced in the same general era as the alleged 1306 Ethiopian embassy to Europe, exhorts the Holy Roman emperor to join the Ethiopian king in a crusade against Islam. Although it deviates from the standard Letter of Prester John, it is, like its predecessor, almost certainly a forgery.

Published by Leone del Prete in 1857, the Italian text, the manuscript of which is still housed in Florence, has been used as indirect evidence of the historicity of that 1306 embassy. Within the letter, the author makes reference to "other times we sent you an embassy and we did not receive an answer," which scholars have linked to the 1306 embassy. The letter's author signs the text "Re Voddomaradeg figliulo del ecclentissimo Re d'Etiopia, di Saionio, di Tobbia, di Nubbia, di terra di Bettesi e di Moritoro, e Preste Gian Re dell'India maggiore e minore."

Salvadore (pp. 602-3) describes the context surrounding the anonymous letter:
“The only other source relevant for this first Ethiopian expedition to Italy is a letter allegedly sent by Prester John to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1316-1378). The letter was certainly a European forgery; nevertheless, it indirectly confirms that the Ethiopian emperor Wedem Ra’ad, known in Renaissance Europe as the author, signed it as ‘King Voddomaradeg, son of the most excellent King of Ethiopia.’ Voddomaradeg represents quite a syllabic stretch from Wedem Ra’ad, but it confirms that the emperor had made himself known in Europe, most likely through the mission that reached Avignon via Rome and Genoa. What persuaded Wedem Ra’ad to send representatives to Europe? Had he been inspired by the Portuguese reconquista that had been completed in 1249 and whose echoes had reached Jerusalem and ultimately the Ethiopian Highlands? The encounter seems to be the first of a series of attempts that Ethiopian rulers made to establish formal contact with European elites on the basis of a common Christian identity. The quest for distant allies was not an Ethiopian fantasy, but rather the consequence of a desire that was reciprocated on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea."

Read the Italian edition of the letter.

See also Kaplan, 51-62.