Abbot ʿĔnbāqom (1470-1565) was a Yemeni convert to Christianity. He witnessed Ethiopia’s Islamic conquest by Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (Ahmad Grāñ) in the sixteenth century. Many churches and monasteries were destroyed during the military incursions, and Christians were confronted with the choice of conversion or death, with many apostatising. ʿĔnbāqom addressed this threat by writing to Grāñ to refrain and convert to Christianity, resulting in considerable correspondence with the Imam. One of the letters evolved into a Christian edition entitled Anqäs’ä Amin (The Door of Faith). This pastoral work was a call to the remnant of Christians to persevere in their faith in Christ, including a plea to those who had left the Christian fold to return. ʿĔnbāqom additionally played a prominent role in translation projects and the restoration of ecclesiastical and other literature destroyed during the invasion. This study attempts to evaluate ʿĔnbāqom’s impact on, and contribution to, Christian-Muslim engagement in sixteenth century Ethiopia. This is a historical research with a focus on ʿĔnbāqom’s magnum opus work Anqäs’ä Amin. The second chapter provides a background to the Christian-Muslim engagement before and during ʿĔnbāqom’s time in Ethiopia, followed by a chapter outlining an intellectual biography of the Abbot through the primary use of a hagiographical source in the reconstruction of his life, by creating a distinction between the ʿĔnbāqom of history and Saint of faith. Chapter four focuses on ʿĔnbāqom’s writings, especially Anqäs’ä Amin. Chapter five and six examine selected themes of the pre-modern monk’s theological approach to Islam and Christian-Muslim engagement. In the past Anqäs’ä Amin has been unwarrantedly dismissed as an insignificant work. This research not only analyses Anqäs’ä Amin, but also highlights its significance, and the substantial contribution ʿĔnbāqom made. His reflections on Islam were quite ahead of his time, as attested by the most recent scholarship on the Qur’an. He had constructed his argument by starting with the Qur’anic witness of previous Scriptures and Christian doctrines, and he had explained Christian theology through the use of, and in contradistinction to, Islamic Scripture. He raised the superior position of Jesus as portrayed in the Qur’an in his engagement with Muslims. In addition, this research focuses on the neglected missiological dimensions developed by ʿĔnbāqom during his response to the military Islamic conquest. ʿĔnbāqom pioneered Christian reading of the Qur’an in sixteenth-century Ethiopia, and was the first to translate the Islamic Scripture into Ge’ez. Finally, ʿĔnbāqom’s writings had a two-fold pedagogical role:
• translating Christianity to Muslims
• interpreting Islam to Christians