After the decline of the Axumite empire, lamenting their lost grandeur, Ethiopia's rulers retreated with their Christian subjects to the lofty escarpment of the central uplands. There, protected by mountain battlements more formidable than anything the hand of man could fashion, they were able to repel an increasingly expansionist and militant Islam trapping and confusing their enemies in the precipitous maze of valleys that intersects the high plateau.

Inevitably, a fortress mentality took root: an intense suspicion of the motives of strangers, a hatred of intrusion and interference, a protective secrecy. During this period roughly from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries AD - the Ethiopians, encompassed by the enemies of their religion, were described by the British historian Edward Gibbon as having slept for near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten. It is true, moreover, that in holding back those who sought to destroy their faith, the highlanders also effectively cut themselves off from the evolving mainstream of Christian culture. This is the only sense, however, in which they slept. Their unique, idiosyncratic civilization was otherwise very much awake - a singular and spirited affirmation of the creative power of the human intellect.

Many improvisations were so vital, so uplifting, that they have endured to the present day as living expressions of the central and lasting values of Christian Ethiopian culture. Paramount among these priceless legacies, like a great heart beating out an ancient but powerful pulse, is the monastic settlement of Lalibela on a natural 2,600-metre rock terrace surrounded on all sides by rugged and forbidding mountains in the northern extreme of the modern province of Wollo.

Once the thriving and populous capital city of a medieval dynasty, the passing centuries have reduced Lalibela to a village. From the road below, it remains little more than invisible against a horizon dominated by the 4,200-metre peak of Mount Abuna Joseph.

Even close-up it seems wholly unremarkable. It is this camouflaged, chameleon quality, however, that gives the remote settlement its special and lasting place in the life of the highlands - for there, some 800 years ago, safe from the prying eyes and plundering hands of hostile interlopers, a noble king fashioned a secret marvel.

Lalibela, previously known as Roha, is named after the king. The word itself, which translates to mean the bees, recognizes his sovereignty and the people of the region still recount the legend that explains why.