Covilhan found himself detained, or so he claimed, by Eskander’s successors.
The Ethiopian rulers apparently loved him so much that they simply wanted to
keep him at the court forever. Covilhan married an Ethiopian woman and had
in the following decades a Rasputinesque life in the Ethiopian court. He lost
virtually all contact with Portugal until 1520 , when Father Alvares discovered
him. By that time, he spent thirty-three years in Ethiopia.
To Alvares, “this honorable man of merit and credit” seemed to be well
established. He was living near the court, and the only thing he seemed to
complain of was the fact that in “the thirty-three years that had passed he had
not confessed... because in this country they do not keep the secret of confes-
sion.” Covilhan instead had been accustomed to go “to church and there
confessed his sins to God.”^58 Deeply affected, the monk immediately adopted
Covilhan as his “spiritual son.” Covilhan told Alvares about Prester John’s wars
with the Moors in the region and how, he, Covilhan, had taken active part.^59
Though one gets the impression that Covilhan was the only foreigner in
the region, we know that Italians were there as well. Alvares describes the
seaport city of Manadeley (in northeastern Ethiopia) as swarming with “mer-
chants of all nations.”^60 Covilhan was able to furnish his Portuguese guests
with a wealth of information on the geography of the land and the East African
region, mentioning to Alvares that “the Nile rises [in] or issues from” the
“kingdom of Gojama” (Gojam, in northwestern Ethiopia).
The report turns vague, however, with regard to what lies beyond the
borders of the kingdom of Gojam. Alvares says that all that he was able to
learn is that “there are deserts and mountains and beyond them Jews.” Alvares
adds a strange disclaimer: “I do not credit it or affirm it; I speak as I heard
general report[s] and not from persons whom I can quote.”^61 Clearly, a discus-
sion of Jews in Ethiopia was problematic. Was he referencing theayhud,who
still opposed and resisted the ruling dynasty?
Covilhan’s career illustrates the extent to which European powers seeking
paths to the Indian Ocean relied on information supplied by individuals and
their investment in maintaining a network of information gatherers. In the
absence of widely accessible geographic knowledge, such individuals were of
immense importance. Europeans also had to rely heavily on Others to guaran-
tee safe travel in non-Christian lands: “On many occasions... a messenger,
often a Jew, an Armenian, or a convert from Islam, traveled overland through
the Moslem countries, in disguise if necessary.”^62 Such conditions produced
the marvelous careers of, among others, Leo Africanus—a Christian convert
from Islam—and the Moroccan Jewish spy Samuel Pallache (b. 1550 ), who was
able to inhabit no less than “three worlds.”^63 In this regard, the early success of
David Reuveni in Rome and Lisbon was not unusual at all and belongs to what
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