Reconstruction
Lalibela, formerly called Roha, became a monumental center of Christian Ethiopia under the Zagwe dynasty. Ethiopian tradition attributes its rock-hewn churches to King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, who probably ruled around 1181–1221, but archaeology reveals a longer and more complicated history. The complex developed in several phases, possibly beginning centuries before his reign and culminating during the thirteenth century. Builders cut structures downward through volcanic rock, then opened interiors, trenches, passages, drainage channels, cisterns, and pools. This was an extraordinary transformation of a highland landscape into a place of worship, burial, political authority, and pilgrimage.
The food sustaining medieval Lalibela is less visible than its architecture. No excavated menu or surviving recipe securely identifies what worshippers ate at a particular church feast. A 2026 archaeobotanical preprint concerning medieval sites around Lalibela reports cereals including barley, wheat, sorghum, millets, and teff; legumes including lentils, chickpeas, and Ethiopian field peas; and oil plants such as flax, sesame, and noog. Because the study remained under review, these findings are provisional, and evidence from neighboring sites cannot automatically be assigned to every household or ceremony at Lalibela.
Even so, the crop range supports a cautious reconstruction of highland meals based on grain breads or porridges accompanied by cooked pulses and plant oils. An early-fourteenth-century Arabic geographical account independently states that teff and teff bread were produced in Ethiopia, although it does not locate them specifically at Lalibela. It would be premature to place modern, round, spongy teff injera on a thirteenth-century table: recent historical research argues that today’s characteristic injera developed much later, as teff consumption expanded between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Fasting and feasting undoubtedly structured later Ethiopian Orthodox life, and Lalibela remains a major setting for that cycle. In current church practice, fasts exclude meat, dairy products, and eggs, while major feasts end abstinence and permit richer animal-source foods. Medieval Ethiopian Christians also fasted, but the precise Lalibela calendar, rules, dishes, and participation levels between 1150 and 1350 are not directly documented. Modern customs therefore illuminate continuity in religious values without serving as exact descriptions of medieval meals.
Lalibela’s defensible food legacy lies in the durable relationship among sacred time, highland farming, and communal eating. Its churches gathered clergy, rulers, residents, and pilgrims within an agricultural landscape whose cereals and pulses could support both abstinent meals and festive hospitality. Today, fasting stews, injera, and meat-centered holiday dishes continue to distinguish restraint from celebration in Ethiopian Orthodox communities. That continuity is cultural rather than a proven recipe-by-recipe lineage from King Lalibela’s court.
Historical context
Lalibela stood about 2,630 meters above sea level in the northern Ethiopian Highlands. The Zagwe dynasty governed a Christian kingdom centered in Lasta until its displacement by Yekuno Amlak and the emerging Solomonic dynasty in 1270. The churches were created within an older highland tradition of cutting and building in rock, while Ethiopian Christianity maintained religious connections with the Alexandrian Church. Jerusalem fell to Saladin in 1187, an event later tradition associated with Lalibela’s symbolism as a “New Jerusalem,” although the exact development of that interpretation remains debated. No reliable medieval population estimate exists for Roha or its pilgrimage gatherings.
Evidence
Archaeological
StrongThe churches, trenches, passages, pools, cisterns, drainage works, associated structures, and rock-cut stratigraphy directly establish Lalibela as a medieval religious and political complex with multiple phases.
Archaeobotanical
LimitedA 2026 preprint reports cereals, pulses, and oil crops from excavated medieval sites in the Lalibela region, but it was still under review and does not establish a specific church menu.
Written sources
ModerateMedieval and later texts support the political and religious importance of Lalibela, while an early-fourteenth-century Arabic account records teff cultivation and teff bread in Ethiopia. These sources provide little direct evidence for meals at Lalibela itself.
Recipe evidence
LimitedNo securely dated recipe from medieval Lalibela is known. Modern fasting and feast dishes cannot be projected backward unchanged.
Food identification
LimitedRegional plant remains permit identification of crop taxa, but their culinary forms—bread, porridge, stew, beverage, or another preparation—usually remain inferential.
Dating
ModerateThe late twelfth and thirteenth centuries were central to Lalibela’s monumental and royal history, but stratigraphic studies indicate that the complex developed in several phases extending earlier than King Lalibela’s reign.
Preparation method
InterpretiveGrinding cereals, cooking pulses, and making simple breads or porridges are reasonable reconstructions from the crop assemblage and regional food technologies, not directly observed medieval Lalibela recipes.
Geographic attribution
ModerateThe monumental setting is securely located at Lalibela, but some agricultural evidence comes from nearby regional sites and some written food evidence applies to Ethiopia generally.
Historical interpretation
InterpretiveThe association of sacred calendars with contrasting fast and feast foods is strongly documented in modern Ethiopian Orthodoxy, but the exact form of this system at medieval Lalibela remains incompletely known.
Sources
- 1.François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar, Laurent Bruxelles, Romain Mensan, et al. (2010). Rock-cut stratigraphy: sequencing the Lalibela churches. Antiquity 84(326): 1135–1150. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00067132Primary archaeology
- 2.Marie-Laure Derat, Claire Bosc-Tiessé, Antoine Garric, et al. (2021). The rock-cut churches of Lalibela and the cave church of Washa Mika'el: troglodytism and the Christianisation of the Ethiopian Highlands. Antiquity 95(380): 467–486. doi:10.15184/aqy.2021.20Primary archaeology
- 3.Hiroki Ishikawa (2023). Increase in Teff Consumption in Northern Ethiopia between the 16th and 18th Centuries and the Birth of Injera. African Study Monographs, Supplementary Issue 61: 7–40. doi:10.14989/282789Scientific literature
- 4.Amesias Alemu Eshetu, Alemseged Beldados Aleho, Tania Tribe, et al. (2026). On the Agricultural Economy of the Medieval Inhabitants of Lalibela and Environs, Ethiopia. SSRN preprint, under review. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6734Scientific literature
- 5.Eline D’Haene, Senne Vandevelde, and Bart Minten (2021). Fasting, food and farming: Value chains and food taboos in Ethiopia. PLOS ONE 16(12): e0259982. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0259982Scientific literature
- 6.Satheesh Neela and Solomon Workneh Fanta (2020). Injera (An Ethnic, Traditional Staple Food of Ethiopia): A review on Traditional Practice to Scientific Developments. Journal of Ethnic Foods 7: 32. doi:10.1186/s42779-020-00069-xModern synthesis
- 7.UNESCO World Heritage Centre (n.d.). Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela. UNESCO World Heritage List, property 18. whc.unesco.org/en/list/18Modern synthesis
Limitations
- moderatedescription
The churches securely anchor medieval religious life, but specific Lalibela fast and feast menus are not directly documented. Regional archaeobotanical evidence is partly provisional, and modern Orthodox dishes and fasting rules should not be treated as unchanged medieval practice.
- minordate start/date end
The 1150–1350 range captures Lalibela’s principal medieval royal and pilgrimage phase, but archaeological stratigraphy indicates that parts of the complex may date from substantially earlier phases, possibly beginning between the seventh and tenth centuries.
