King Ṭanṭawǝdǝm’s land charter to the church of Qǝfrǝyā  – attested in MS Ethio-SPaRe UM-035 (ʿUrā Qirqos, XVIIIth century) – sheds more light on the much earlier history of Ethiopia, X-XIIIth centuries. The recent edition and translation made by Marie-Laure Derat shows that this land charter has all chances to improve our knowledge about Christian-Muslim relationships at that early time. Yet, due to complexity of the text and our lack of knowledge on punctuation marks, narrative about Christian-Muslim relationships, as recorded in MS Ethio-SPaRe UM-035, allows various interpretations. Furthermore, comparative work with another Medieval archive, from Dabra Libānos in Ham (L’evangelo d’oro), brings new supportive evidence to consider XVIIIth century King Ṭanṭawǝdǝm’s land charter a copy of an older document, probably from King Ṭanṭawǝdǝm’s time. At the same time, the research on the archive of Dabra Libānos in Ham shows that a copy of a document is rarely identical to the original, but undergoes certain updates, which might be the case of King Ṭanṭawǝdǝm’s land charter as well.

---

---