After a period of relative stability in the fifteenth century, a sequence of events shook the Ethiopian kingdom to its foundations, bringing it to the brink of collapse. First, came an invasion from the neighboring Muslim Sultanate of Adal (a Muslim state located in the Horn of Africa, c. 1415 to 1577) led by a general called Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi whose army pillaged and destroyed numerous churches and Christian works of art across the country between 1529 and 1543. Incursions by the Oromo people from the south throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries further strained the country’s fragile structures. To make matters worse, the conversion to Catholicism of Emperor Susenyos in 1622 soon plunged the country into a civil war, for many of his subjects refused to adhere to the religious beliefs and liturgical practices that the Jesuit missionaries present in Ethiopia wanted to enforce. The conflict lasted until his abdication in favor of his son Fasilides in 1632.
“He makes me laugh,” is one of the reasons women often say they find their mate attractive. A sense of humor in a man has been scientifically proven to draw the attention of women. “Studies have found that both women and men list ‘a sense of humor’ as a highly desirable trait in a potential romantic partner,” Dr. Beall says. “But other studies have found that only women actually rate a funnier man as more desirable—women’s desirability was less affected by how funny they actually were.” This means women want men who make them laugh, but men want women to laugh at their jokes. “Some have argued that women’s particularly pronounced attraction to funnier men is deeply rooted in our evolutionary past,” Dr. Beall says.
