Two aspects of the video struck me the most. First was the impact of Lalibela and the construction of the churches. Since I began learning about this period in history over the summer it always struck me that the most well-known monuments built in Ethiopia actually were not from its best known Kingdom (Aksum), but from a smaller kingdom which came after. That combination of religious architecture with political structures is really fascinating to me. 

Similarly I was fascinated by the interaction between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in this time period. The impact of the rise of Islam on this region was significant, but I had not understood that the new religion also pushed in on Aksumite control of the Red Sea. More importantly though, the role of a Jewish Kingdom in the fall of Aksum was fascinating. My family heritage is both Jewish and Christian, and I knew that there were Jews in Ethiopia, but ignorantly I had always imagined them as a small group who had presumably migrated from elsewhere. But in fact the history of Judaism in Ethiopia is much richer than I had imagined - a Jewish queen (albeit a likely mythologized one) contributed to the fall of Aksum, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity includes many traces of its Jewish roots. 

The mixing of these three major religions in this one region of Africa - a continent not primarily associated with any of them - seems really important to know and understand. It reflects both the long history of complex interactions between these groups (as one presenter said - at the time moving between religions was easy, and most of the conflict was really political, not religious), and the importance that Africa played in the history of these three groups.