King Lalibela carves the rock-hewn churches of a 'New Jerusalem'
- Date
- c. 1181–1221 CE
- Category
- Religion & ideology
- Region
- East Africa (Ethiopia)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
During the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the Zagwe king Gebre Mesqel Lalibela commissioned a remarkable complex of monolithic churches cut directly downward into the volcanic rock of the Ethiopian highlands.
Eleven churches, four of them entirely free-standing, were created by a subtractive process, hewing each structure, its windows, columns and interior, from a single block of living stone and linking them with trenches, tunnels and drainage channels. The site was conceived as a New Jerusalem, giving Ethiopian Christians a place of pilgrimage after Muslim expansion had cut access to the Holy Land; features were named after Jordan, Golgotha and Bethlehem. The churches express the deep antiquity of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, which traced its roots to the fourth-century kingdom of Aksum, and the ambition of the Zagwe dynasty to anchor sacred geography within Africa itself. Still in active religious use more than eight centuries later and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Lalibela stands among the foremost achievements of medieval African architecture and a monument to the resilience of African Christianity.
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Empires active in c. 1181–1221 CE
- Jurchen Jin Dynasty1115 CE – 1234 CE
- Song Dynasty960 CE – 1279 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Kingdom of Chimor (Chimú)900 CE – 1470 CE
Related religion & ideology events
- Samudra Pasai and the spread of Islam into Indonesiac. 1267 CE
- The Investiture Controversy and the Walk to Canossa1075–1122 (Investiture Controversy)
- Anawrahta establishes Theravada Buddhism across the Pagan realm1057 CE
- The East–West Schism splits Latin and Greek Christianity16 July 1054
- The Western Schism divides the Latin Church1378–1417 CE
- Guru Nanak Begins Preaching and Founds Sikhismc. 1499
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Religion
Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.
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