One of the characteristic features of Ethiopian life in the middle ages, and indeed up to relatively recent times, was the Emperor's camp, a vast establishment which moved around the country at the ruler's wish, and was often composed of several thousand tents and upwards of a hundred thousand people.
The existence of such a multitude of people resulted in a far more pronounced division of labour than existed elsewhere in the land, for the inhabitants of such camps included not only the sovereign's soldiers and servants, but also their families and various categories of men and women ministering to their needs. Among such persons, according to the sixteenth century Portuguese priest Francesco Alvares, who provides us with our first testimony on this score, were a singi- ficant number of "prostitutes" though exactly what is implied in the term is not defined.
Alvares records that at the camp of Emperor Lebnä Dengel (1508-1540) he saw "the tents of the prostitutes, whom they call Amaritas," i.e. amarli, an Amharic word defined by the Italian linguist Ignazio Guidi at the beginning of the twentieth century as a female minstrel or dancing girl. The Portuguese traveller, who fails to give us any details which would enable us to evaluate how far he is correct in terming them "prostitutes/' adds that these women women were "numerous," and that "an immense number" of them were "rich and well dressed." Such women seem to have formed an integral part of the moving camp, and, we may assume, would have spent much of the time, like the camp's population at large, in travel- ling from one site to another, but how far we can consider them in the modern sense as "prostitutes" is open to question.