s did much to open Abyssinia to the world, but most of the
population of that day was nomadic. In the fourth century Byzantine
influences began to be felt, and in 330 St. Athanasius of Alexandria
consecrated Fromentius as Bishop of Ethiopia. He tutored the heir to the
Abyssinian kingdom and began its gradual christianization. By the early
part of the sixth century Abyssinia was trading with India and Byzantium
and was so far recognized as a Christian country that the Emperor
Justinian appealed to King Kaleb to protect the Christians in southwestern
Arabia. Kaleb conquered Yemen in 525 and held it fifty years.

Eventually a Jewish princess, Judith, usurped the Axumite throne; the
Abyssinians were expelled from Arabia, and a long period begins when as
Gibbon says, "encompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians
slept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they
were forgotten." Throughout the middle ages, however, the legend of a
great Christian kingdom hidden away in Africa persisted, and the search
for Prester John became one of the world quests.

It was the expanding power of Abyssinia that led Rome to call in the
Nubians from the western desert. The Nubians had formed a strong league of
tribes, and as the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia declined they drove back
the Abyssinians, who had already established themselves at Meroe.

In the sixth century the Nubians were converted to Christianity by a
Byzantine priest, and they immediately began to develop. A new capital,
Dongola, replaced Nepata and Meroe, and by the twelfth century churches
and brick dwellings had appeared. As the Mohammedan flood pressed up the
Nile valley it was the Nubians that held it back for two centuries.

Farther south other wild tribes pushed out of the Sudan and began a
similar development. Chief among these were the Fung, who fixed their
capital at Senaar, at the junction of the White and Blue Nile. When the
Mohammedan flood finally passed over Nubia, the Fung diverted it by
declaring themselves Moslems. This left the Fung as the dominant power in
the fifteenth century from the Three Cataracts to Fazogli and from the Red
Sea at Suakin to the White Nile. Islam then swept on south in a great
circle, skirted the Great Lakes, and then curled back to Somaliland,
completely isolating Abyssinia.

Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries the Egyptian Sudan became a
congeries of Mohammedan kingdoms with Arab, mulatt