Prester John had been considered the ruler of India since the legend's beginnings, but "India" was a vague concept to the medieval Europeans. Writers often spoke of the "Three Indias", and lacking any real knowledge of the Indian Ocean they sometimes considered Ethiopia one of the three. After looking for Prester John in the Americas, Westerners knew that Ethiopia was a powerful Christian nation, but contact had been sporadic since the rise of Islam. No Prester John was to be found in Asia, so European imagination moved him around the blurry frontiers of "India" until it found an appropriately powerful kingdom for him in Ethiopia. Evidence has suggested that locating Prester John's kingdom in Ethiopia entered the collective consciousness around 1250.