Ethiopia's relations with the Muslim world
The relations which since earliest times have linked the populations of the two shores of the Red Sea, Arabs and Ethiopians, began to change with the rise of Islam, as from then on they were expressed as relations between Christians and Muslims. The traditions collected in the biographies of the Prophet Mu1}ammad record various episodes involving early contacts of nascent Islam with Ethiopia: (I) The letter of Mu1}ammad to the negus (Arabic natjjJishi) inviting him to join the new religion, starting with the Qoranic passage (4: 169) which invites 'the People of the Book' (ahl al-Kitab) to reconsider the person of Jesus in the light of Islamic teachings. I (2) The mission to Ethiopia of 'Amr ibn al-'A~, the future Muslim conqueror of Egypt, who was sent, when still a 'pagan', by the Meccan oligarchy to the negus to oppose the progress of Islam, but instead was converted to the Islamic religion. (3) The emigration to Ethiopia of Dja'far ibn Abi Talib, cousin of Mu1}ammad and brother of the future Caliph 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, who went to the court of the negus with other Muslims in order to escape the hostilities of the ~urayshites. According to some traditions he succeeded in converting the negus; the latter, in his turn, to avoid the hostility of his Christian subjects, resorted to the stratagem of concealing in his breast the text of the passage of the Qoran mentioned above and thus pretended to swear in a way conformable to the Christian faith. ' This action ofDja'far perhaps later inspired the claims of various princes and leaders of Ethiopia and Somalia to be descended from members of Abi Talib's family, as we shall see later on. (4) Another group of traditions of early Islam concerns Bilal, the faithful slave of Ethiopian origin. Biliil became a freed slave of Abu 'Bakr (the future first Caliph), and was, according to the legend, the second male convert to Islam,' the first being Abu
Africafrom the Seventh to the Eleventh Century
Bakr himself. In fact, the first person converted to Islam was a woman: KhadiQia the wife of the Prophet Mul}ammad. A trusty follower Of the Pr~phet, Bilal, was appointed by him mu' adhdhin with the task of calling the faithful to prayer in the mosque; and he remained in this office until the Caliphate of 'Vmar, when he went with the Muslim army to Syria, where he died and was buried. Many other traditions generally refer to the Ethiopian Bilal and the Prophet's predilection for him and people of the same origin, like the saying 'Who brings an Ethiopian man or an Ethiopian woman into his house, brings the blessing of God there'. This affection for the Ethiopians also gave rise to some opuscula of Arabic literature.2 There is the work of Ibn al-Qiawzi (d. S96/1200) with the pompous title 'The Lightening of the darkness on the merits of the Blacks and Ethiopians' (Tanwir al-g!!:abashfifarjl a/-Sudiin wa l-Ifabash). The Egyptian polyhistor al-Suyuti (d. 9II/1SOS) wrote a special treatise entitled 'The Raising of the status of the Ethiopians' (Raf' sha'n alIfubshan), which he later summarized in his other work 'Flowers of the {hrones on the history of the Ethiopians' (Azhiir al-'urush fi akhbiir alHubuill. Another work of this kind is 'The Coloured brocade on the good qualities of the Ethiopians' (Al-Tiriiz al-mankush fi ma&iisinal-Ifubush~3 written in 991/1S83 by Mul}ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ba~i al-Bukhari al-Makkt. It became fashionable to insert in these works one or more chapters on Ethiopian words which are supposed to occur in the Revelation, i.e. in the Qoran and also in die &adiths, i.e. traditional accounts of the .Pr?phet's deeds and sayings. Some of the words listed as such are not EthIOpian but of an origin that remained unknown to Arabic authors. But many others are clearly of Ethiopian (Ge'ez) origin; at the beginning of the seventh century they were in common usage in Arabia.4 In some cases a genuine Arab word was given a specific religious meaning under the influence of the cognate Ethiopian. The linguistic observations of Arabic authors are of interest also for the linguistic history of Ethiopian languages, because the saying 'The szn of Bllal is skin with God' gives the terminus ante quem for the transition from sh to sin the pronunciation of Ethiopian, since it is already reported by Ibn Sa'd, who wrote in 230/844-S. 5 2. B. Lewis, 1971, p. 37. 3. German translation by M. Weisweiler, 1924. 4. Cf. A. Jeffery, 1938. In the Qpran we find the following Ethiopian words: mi!!!..kat, from Eth. maskot, window; kijlain, dual ofEth. kefi, portion, part; burhiin, an evident proof, Eth. light, illumination; tabiit, Eth. Ark of Covenant, chest; hawiiriyyiin, Eth. disciples, apostles; ma~hllf, Eth. a copy, book; ma'ida, table, Lord's table; malak, angel, etc. Ethiopian too is the word sana, attributed to BiIal (Eth. sannay, beautiful), and also minbar, pulpit, Eth. manbar. 5· Ibn Sa'd, 1905-28, Vol. 3, pp. 165-70.
The Muslim settlement on the Dahlak Islands Relations between the nascent Muslim state and Ethiopia did not have a friendly character. Already during Mul}ammad's life an Ethiopian fleet attacked the Arabian port of Shu'ayba and some years later the Caliph 'Vmar was forced to send four ships and two hundred men against 'the Ethiopians who committed many evil deeds to Muslims in Arabia', 6 but this expedition against the Axumites seems to have achieved little. Throughout the seventh century the Red Sea remained firmly in Ethiopian hands and only gradually did the Muslims gain the upper hand. In 702 the Ethiopians attacked I:Iiiliaz for the last time and their fleet occupied Djidda for a while, thus creating panic in Mecca. Whether these attacks were undertaken by regular Axumite forces or by Ethiopian pirates remains obscure. In any case as a retaliation for the last attack the Arabs occupied and destroyed Adulis7 and established themselves on the Dahlak Islands in the Gulf of Masawa, opposite Adulis. These islands afforded the possibility of controlling the sea traffic of Ethiopia, because Adulis was a stopping place on the route to the Indies, and this traffic was one of the main resources of the Axum state, together with the caravan route to the Nile Valley which also made Adulis the outlet for goods coming from Nubia. From the second half of the eighth century on, no more Ethiopian naval raids are mentioned and the same is true about Ethiopian seafaring in general. It seems that the Arabs had destroyed the Ethiopian navy which appears again on the scene only in the fourteenth century. During these centuries the Muslims exercised full control of the seaborne trade of the Red Sea, thus increasing the isolation of Ethiopia .. The occupation of Dahlak took place early in the Vmayyad period and the islands were also used as a place of political exile. We have evidence of this already during the reign of Caliph Sulayman (9617 I s-()917 17) when the Arab poet al-Al).wa~was exiled to the Dahlak Islands for some of his satirical verses. 8 • Subsequently, under the Abbasids, the islands served as a base for ensuring a safe sea voyage for the pilgrims to the Holy Places, at a time when the Red Sea was infested by pirates. At the beginning of the fourth/tenth century an independent Muslim principality was established on the Dahlak Islands. This state played a highly important role in the economic history of Ethiopia as well as in the spread of Islam in this region. 9 It took over the ancient trade of Adulis and maintained brisk trade relations with Christian Ethiopia. I 0 6. AI-Tabari, 1879-1901, Vol. I, p. 1889. 7. R. Paribeni, 1908. 8. Cf. K. Pernicek, 1960. It is noteworthy that in modern times, too, the Nokra Island was used as a penal station for politicians regarded as undesir'able by the Italian Fascist government. 9· Cf. Chapter 3 above. 10. AI-Ya'~iibi, 1883, p. 219.
Africa/rom the Seventh to the Eleventh Century
Evidence of the mercantile activity of the Dahlak sultanate exists in an Arabo-Tewish document of the Fa!imid epoch, found in the Cairo Geniza. The do""cumentstates that a merchant originating from Tripolitania (he is called al-Lebdi, i.e. native of Leptis Magna) on his passage from Egypt to India stopped at Dahlak for business purposes sometime before the year 490/1097. We have a rich documentation on the duration of the Sultanate on the Dahlak Islands and also on the degree of Islamic culture of its inhabitants in more than two hundred Arabic inscriptions found on the main island, Dahlak Kabir , which are now in various museums (Modena, Treviso, Barle-Duc, Cairo and Asmara). The oldest of these inscriptions is dated 298/911 and the most recent bears the date of 946/1539. They are written in a grammatically correct Arabic and, with many quotations from the Qoran, follow the formulae in use at that time in neighbouring Islamic countries. I I These inscriptions also allow us to reconstruct partially the genealogy and succession of the sultans of Dahlak, mainly from the fifth/eleventh century on. I 2 Alongside these documents indicating the continuous presence of the Arabs the tradition which is widespread along the African coast from the Gulf ~f Masawa to that of Djibuti must not be neglected. This tradition attributes to the 'Furs' (Persians) the construction of monuments, in general large cisterns for the collection of water, the remains of which can still be seen in Dahlak Kabir and in Ada!. This may be evidence of the presence of Persian traders or commercial agencies on the African coast, or it may document the fact that the sovereigns of both coasts of the Red Sea employed Persian engineers for these constructions, given the renown acquired by the Persians in the Muslim world for their water storage and distribution works. Three Dahlak inscriptions mention personages who died on these islands and whose nisba (indicative of the place of origin) was .al-Kaysi, derived from the name of the Arab 'tribe' of Kays, which succeeded Siraf, the famous trade emporium, in the hegemony of the Arab/ Persian Gulf traffic in the fourth/tenth century. I 3
The Muslim states of southern Ethiopia The African coast of the Red Sea thus kept its old function in the traffic to the Indies, although within the new economic system of the Islamic world. But of course the Muslim merchants very soon pushed forward from the coast into the neighbouring regions of Ethiopia in search of merchandise for their commerce. In the north we thus have documentation of a Muslim I I. On these inscriptions see B. Malmusi, 1895; G. Oman, 1974b (with a full up-to-date bibliography). 12. Cf. R. Basset, 1893; G. Wiet, 1953; S. Tedeschi, 1969. 13. G. Puglisi, 1969; 1953.
Ethiopia's relations with the Muslim world
trading centre even in the territory of the kingdom ofAxum, namely, in Enderta, at the edge of the Tigrai near the River Mareb. The presence of these Muslims is documented by a group of Arabic inscriptions which are dated from 391/987 to 549/II54, dates which, as can be seen, correspond to the period of greatness of the sultanate of the Dahlak Islands, with which this trading centre must have been connected. 14 But while in the north the Christian state of Axum prevented a greater extension of Islam, its development in the south of Ethiopia was very different. Here, too, it set out from the sea along the natural route which leads from the Gulf of Djibuti through the depression of the valley of the River I::Iawash to the richest regions of the south and west of the Ethiopian plateau. Once again, therefore, the spread of Islam follows the trade routes; indeed, even today naggadie, which in Amharic means 'merchant', typically means 'Muslim' in the language of the oromo (Galla) of southern Ethiopia. I 5 Various southern Ethiopian populations; from the coast of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden up to the Blue Nile, were thus converted to Islam. And in this way various Muslim sultanates were formed; what had been local state organizations probably being transformed into Islamic states. In these sultanates a hereditary aristocracy was dominant which was, or pretended to be, of Arab origin, while the mass of the population were Ethiopian and probably belonged to the Cushite family of the Sidamas. During the historical period in which the documents enable us to follow these sultanates, although they were often at war with each other they were under the hegemony of one of them which imposed its authority on the others; and on the other hand they had relations, generally not very friendly, with the state of Christian Ethiopia which, as we shall see, was to come ever closer to them in its movement of expansion. The first of these sultanates was that of Damut which, as the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun records, exercised its hegemonic sway as far as liat (i.e. as far as the region between the present Shoa and the lowland plain of Dancalia). It is difficult to locate this sultanate precisely, because today 'Damut' is a region north of the Blue Nile and south of Godjam, but in East Africa other cases have already been noted where populations forced to move have taken the name of the old country with them into the new territories and given it to their new home. In any case Damut must have been a territory in the south-west of Ethiopia in the sector nearest to the Blue Nile. Ibn Khaldun relates how Damut was attacked and conquered by the Negus Of Christian Ethiopia and how a race called Walasma' lived in it, which then emigrated further east and settled in liat where it formed another sultanate. I 6 14¡ C. Pansera, 1945; M. Schneider, 1967, 1969. 15¡ Cf. Chapter 3 above. 16. Ibn Khaldiin, 1925-56, Vol. 2, p. 108.
We are better documented on the sultanate of Shoa which was in its turn to exercise sway over Muslim southern Ethiopia. The sult~nate comprised at least the eastern zone of present Shoa. It was governed by a dynasty of sultans who declared themselves to be Makhziimi, because they said they were descended from the famous Banii Makhziim, a Meccan ~ablla to which Khalid ibn al- Walid, the first Muslim conqueror of Syria, belonged. The names of the sultans preserved in the document mentioned above prove the use of an Ethiopian language of the Semitic family, although it is different from those known hitherto. But the hypothesis should also be considered that the Chronological Repertory preserves only the official 'reign names', while the sultans could have had a Muslim personal name, as was still the case recently with the Muslim populations of the Ethiopian West (the Sultan of Genina, known in 1928 by the Oromo (Galla) name of Abba Djifar meaning 'Lord of the dappled steed', had his Muslim name of Mul).ammad ibn Oa'iid). The Makhziimi dynasty, according to the document mentioned above, ruled over Shoa at least from the year 283/896-7 and its sovereigns succeeded each other for four centuries until 684/1285, when the last Sultan and his family were deposed and murdered by the Sultan of Ifat. I 7 Among the names of the Makhziimi sultans preserved to us it is worth noting some that appear characteristic: Giramgaz'i (i.e. 'terrific lord') who reigned from 660/1262 to 662/1263, when he abdicated in favour of his brother Dilgamis. The name of this successor Oil-gamis can be interpreted as 'victorious buffalo' or 'buffalo in Victory', according to a type of regal name that is attested in Christian Ethiopia also. I 8 Thus the name of Sultan Barb-ar'ad means 'terror of the spears' and this too is a type of regal name common in Christian Ethiopia. It suffices to mention Negus Sayfa Ar'ad, 'terror of the swords'. Barb-ar'ad was reigning in Muslim Shoa in 502/1108. It should also be pointed out that, according to the document already referred to, it appears that women had a certain importance in political power in the sultanate of Shoa, which corresponds rather to the Ethiopian tradition than to the official situation of the other Muslim countries. Thus the Chronological Repertory of Shoa begins by recording the dating from a queen; then the marriages of two sultans are recorded. And the second of these marriages, that of Sultan Oil-marrah with the daughter of the Sultan of lIat in 669/1271 is an attempt at a marriage alliance, when lIat was becoming more threatening in its attitude to Shoa. The history of Shoa as it emerges from the Chronological Repertory consists of a series of internal struggles between the various leaders, and externally a series of raids and wars against the neighbouring Muslim states, especially against lIat. But it is also recorded in this document that in 677/ 1278 Sultan Dil-marrah, defeated and deposed by his internal enemies, 17. Cf. E. Cerulli, 1941. 18. Dil-gamis reigned from 1263 to 1269.
took refuge with the Negus of Christian Ethiopia. This is an important piece of historical evidence proving that the consolidation of Christian Ethiopia under the rule of the first Solomonids began to exert an influence on the weakening of the Sultanate of Shoa caused by its fratricidal struggles. Moreover, it should be noted, in this connection, that the Chronological Repertory also lists among the dates of the Shoan sultans the date of the death of Negus Yekuno Amlak, the first Solomonid sovereign of Christian Ethiopia. Similarly and for opposite reasons this document lists the date of the fall of the Abbasid caliphate at the hands of the Mongols in 656/1258. The sultanate of Shoa finally lost its independence as a result of the action of the neighbouring Sultanate of lIat. At the end of the civil strife which had troubled Muslim Shoa from 675/1276 to 678/1280 the Sultanate of lIat intervened directly in the weakened Shoan state, and on 26 April 1280 (19 Ohii l-l).idjdja 678) occupied the centre ofShoa and put an end to that sultanate. Since the commercial route through the Nile Valley had been definitely closed to Christian Ethiopia and the sea route to the Indies had been reduced to a minimum, because of the consolidated and extended Muslim expansion, what had been the Christian kingdom of Axum was compelled to seek its expansion southwards, that is towards the centre of the Ethiopian plateau. Accordingly there was first a transfer of the capital from Axum to the central region of Lasta and then, after the Solomonid dynasty had become established on the throne, its further transfer to the frontier of Shoa which was then Muslim. Moreover the monastery of St Stephen on Lake Bayq was recognized as the Christian religious centre, before it too was transferred to Absbo (Babra Barkan) right in Shoan conquered territory. These events naturally caused Christian Ethiopia to exert strong pressure on the Muslim states of southern Ethiopia, which were thus directly threatened; and while, as we shall see, the individual sultans set about their defence, there also arose independent movements of reaction headed by Muslim religious leaders. The first of which we have knowledge was the one led by the shaykh Mul).ammad Abii 'Abdallah in 693/1298-(), during the reign of Negus Wedem Ra'ad in Christian Ethiopia. This is recorded by the Egyptian chronicler al-Mufac.lQal, although with the addition of popular legendary details. The Negus succeeded' by a skilful political manoeuvre in separating the shaykh Mul).ammad from some of his followers; in the end he offered the Muslim agitator and those who had remained loyal to him a settlement in territory controlled by Christian Ethiopia, and in this way the movement of Mul).ammad Abii 'Abdallah failed. 19 Meanwhile i'n the Muslim areas of southern Ethiopia, as we have seen, the hegemony of Muslim Shoa was succeeded by the hegemony of lIat.
Ethiopia's relations with the Muslim world
Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century
The Sultanate of IIat, which thus succeeded that of Shoa in the hegemony over the Islam of southern Ethiopia, was ruled by a dynasty which had the name (of local origin) of Walasma'. They came firstly into IIat as refugees from the ancient Muslim state of Damiit, as Ibn Khaldiin testifies. However, the Walasma' dynasty also boasted a distant Arab origin and, according to the oral tradition preserved to our times, considered its progenitor to be 'A~il ibn Abi Talib, brother of Caliph 'Ali and ofQia'far ibn Abi Talib who , as we have seen , had been one of the first Muslims to take refuge in Ethiopia. According to the apologetic writing, the History of the Walasma', on the contrary, the founder of the dynasty 'Umar ibn Dunya-l).awz20 was descended from al-H~san, one of the two sons of Caliph 'Ali The first part of the History of the Walasma' seems however to be legendary; for example, the duration of 120 years for the life of 'Umar Walasma', who reigned for 80 of them; and the tradition regarding the holy Sultan Qiamal aI-din i,bn Baziyii who had the genii at his command, one of whom brought him a letter from the Nile in an hour and another brought him water from the River I:Iawash (these maybe assimilations of the ideas of Ethiopian 'paganism' on the minor divinities living in running waters). The first date mentioned in the History of the Walasma' is that of 778/1376-7; but the synchronisms with the Ethiopian Chronicles and with the Arab historians permit earlier datings. For example, Sultan Sabr aI-din fought for a long time against Negus 'Amda Seyon (who reigned from 1314 to 1344). Therefore, however that may be, since the legendary tradition reckons a total of ninety-six years for the duration of the reigns from Sultan Sabr aI-din to 'Umar Walasma', if as a vague assumption we adhered to this date, we should have to put the foundation of the Walasma' dynasty of IIat at the end of the twelfth century, with all the necessary reserves and . doubts due to the imperfection of the documentation we have quoted. Sabr aI-din, made war on Christian Ethiopia and he is represented, also in the Ethiopian Chronicles, as the most important of the Muslim sovereigns of the South: he is in fact designated as 'King of the Infidels' (Negusa 'elwan). This confirms the position of hegemony which IIat meanwhile held in the first half of the fourteenth century of the Christian era after the fall of the Sultanate of Shoa. 2 1 But two more useful items of historical in20. For this name it might be possible to think of a Semitic-Ethiopian word which would correspond to the Ethiopian (Ge'ez): ~a1lJz and interpret the name: Dunya-1;Jawz as Mundi suavitas (almost 'deliciae generis humani'!). It would then be a relic of ancient Ethiopian tradition in the names of the Walasma' princes. In any case the name Walasma' is not Arabic, but I h~ve not been able to reconstitute it with Ethiopian words, at least to date. It is perhaps composed of the ancient Semitic 'WA' which means 'of', 'related to' and 'AL'ASMA" which means 'the gills'. 21. Cf. J. Perruchon, 1889.
formation are furnished by the Ethiopian Chronicle on the war of Sulta~ Sabr aI-din. The first is the first documentation of the use of ~at by EthI~pian Muslims. The ~at (this is the Arabic ~ord; ~nAm?aric it is chat) is a shrub (Catha edulis), whose leaves have a shght stImulatmg effect. The u~e of kat ('which keeps the family awake at night', as a popular son? says) IS th~ characteristic feature of the Muslims in Ethiopia. Here we see It already so much used that Sabr aI-din in his warlike boasting proclaims that he will take possession of the capital of Christian Ethiopia and 'will plant ~at there because the Muslims like this plant very much'. A ~econd important point for Ethiopian history in the Chronicle cited is a reference by the chronicler to the fact that after the victory of the negus over the Muslims when the Christian sovereign wished to take advantage of his success in o;der to advance into the Muslim country and establish his armed forces there, he came up against the opposition of his soldiers. Having obtained the victory and the booty, they wanted to return home and enjoy the fruits of it, and did not understand the need for. a ~erman~nt occupation of the enemy country. This psychologica.l fact IS ~nterestI~g because we shall find a similar happening two centunes later (m the SIXteenth century) this time with the Muslim soldiers of the Imam Al).med ibn Ibrahim who likewise showed their repugnance for a permanent conquest of the t:rritory of the defeated peoples. Thus, according to the Ethiopian chronicler, the soldiers say to the Christian sovereign: '0 Negus, you have fought and have saved us from the hands of the infidel; and now by your counsel let us go back to our villages'. And the N~gus repli~s: 'Animals return to their pasture'. No differently two centunes later wIll the Ara.b chronicler represent the Muslim soldiers, who after the victory say to theIr leader Ahmed ibn Ibrahim: '0 Imam of the Muslims, you see what has happened. Many of our soldiers have been. s~ain. Many of us are covered with wounds. We have only scanty provlSlons. Lead the army to our country. There they will reorganize us and we will reorganize o~r ranks'. But in the end in both cases the soldiers accept the order of then leader, although only after showing their discontent. 22 . . The advance southwards of the new Solomonid dynasty of Chnstlan Ethiopia and the expansion in Shoa of Muslim IIat were bound to lead to a struggle between the two states. The first encounter of which w~ h~ve record is in the chronicle of Negus 'Amda Seyon I, when the EthIOpIan sovereign states that, at the beginning of his reign, he had defeated Sultan Hakk aI-din of Ifat and slain the Muslim prince Darader, brother of I:Ia~~ ;l-di~. 2 3 It should be pointed out here that the A~abic Histor;: of the Walasma' makes no mention of I:Ia~~ aI-din or of thIS war but smce t~e Muslim chronicler attributes the beginning of the struggles of the Chnstians to Sultan I:Ia~~ aI-din II, who reigned from 1376 to 1386 (many W. G. Conzelman, 1895. 23. G. W. B. Huntingford, 1965. 22.
Africafrom the Seventh to the Eleventh Century
decades after I:Ia~~ aI-din I), it may be a mistake on the part of the chronicler or of his source. But .the first war between Ethiopia and Hat that is amply documented for us IS the one waged during the reign of Negus 'Amda Seyon I (131444) and of Sultan Sabr aI-din I in 1332.24 Sabr aI-din attacks the troops of the ~egus who have entered Shoa, but is defeated after a fierce struggle an.d IS_ force~ to make an act of submission. The Negus appoints prince DJamal al-dm, brother of Sabr aI-din, to be Sultan of Hat, but because of the spur~ous origin of his power he fails to acquire authority; and shortly aft~r. he IS ~usted by a vast movement of Muslim reaction stirred up by a relIgIOus agitator, the ~ac;li Salel). The latter manages to form a league of Muslim princes, among whom the Sultan of Adal (to the east of Hat) distinguishes himself, this time in the first place. However, the Negus manages to win once again, and this time his victory is the start of a new era among the petty Muslim states of the south, because from now on the hegemony passes from lIat to the Sultanate of Adal, although the power remains with the prince of the Walasma' dynasty. So we may say that in two centuries (the thirteenth and fourteenth) the political centre of Ethiopian Islam was shifted three times, and always in a west-east direction towards the edge of the plateau: from Damiit to Shoa, from Shoa to liat, and from liat to Adal. The victory won by Negus 'Amda Seyon over the Muslims impelled his successors to undertake a series of military operations in the south. Thus Negus Dawit I (1382-1411) defeated and killed in battle Sultan Hakk aldi~ II in ?76/1376-7; and his successor, Negus Yesl).aq, defeated S'~ltan Sa ad al-dm, the successor of I:Ia~~ aI-din II, and pushed on towards the sea as far as Zayla'. Of the victories of Negus Yesl).aq there survives a long victory song sung by his soldiers, which is valuable for us because it preserves t~e names of the various Muslim countries which that Negus, in his . war agamst Sa'ad aI-din, had conquered and laid waste. The poetic document thus completes and specifies the list of the Muslim countries which about a century before had joined the Islamic league formed as a result of the preaching of the ~ac;li Salel)., as we have seen, against Negus 'Amda Seyon. On the Muslim side, Sultan Sa'ad aI-din, who fell in battle against the Christians in 1415, became the eponymous hero of the Muslim resistance against the invading Neguses and from that time the Muslim south that had remained independent took the name of 'land of Sa'ad aI-din' (barr Sa'ad ai-dIn). . But the Sultanate of Adal, now at the head of Ethiopian Islam, recovered ~fter a few decades; and there followed a strong and complex attempt to mvade Shoa, now not only Christian but also the seat of the Neglises. The Muslim army was led by Sultan Shihab aI-din Al).med Badlay (who in the Ethiopian Chronicles is called: Arwe Badlay, 'the wild beast Badlay'). After
Ethiopia's relations with the Muslim world
some initial successes Badlay was defeated by Negus Zare'a Ya'qob in a great battle at Egubba on 29 December 1445 and the Sultan fell in the fighting. The Negus pursued the Muslim arm; as far as the River Hawash and gained a booty which seemed really wonderful to the Christia~ Ethiopians. This was because the commercial relations which the Sultanate of Adal had with the potentates of the Arabian Peninsula enabled the Muslims to obtain luxury articles which the Christian Ethiopians, still blocked in their relations with the outside world, could not yet procure. Thus a Christian document, for example, records: And the robes [of the Sultan] and the robes of his chief men were adorned with silver and shone on every side. And the dagger that he [the Sultan] had at his side was richly ornamented with gold and precious ~tones; and his amulet was adorned with drops of gold; and the lettermg of the amulet had been made with gold paint. And his umbrella was from the country of Syria of a workmanship that caused those who looked at it to marvel, and on it were painted winged serpents. After the battle of Egubba the Sultans of Adal, where the dynasty of the Walasma', formerly sultans ofIiat, had continued, established their capital at Dakar at the edge of the eastern lowland plain. But a few years later Negus Eskender took the offensive, entered Adal, and conquered and destroyed Dakar. However, on its way back to its territory in Shoa, the Christian army was surprised in 1475 by that of the Sultan of Adal, Shams aI-din ibn Mul).ammad, and Negus Eskender was defeated and died in the battle. But the Muslims did not follow up this victory, because Adal was paralysed and impoverished by the struggles of the various emirs for the supremacy of the country. Then the capital was transferred again eastward to Aussa down in the lowland until finally Sultan Abii Bakr ibn Mul).ammad ibn A~har aI-din transferred the capital from Adal to Harar in 926/1520. He thus founded the dynasty of the Emirs of Harar, which for three centuries held power in the Muslim state which from that time on was called the emirate of Harar. This was because Mul).ammad ibn Abii Bakr ibn A~har aI-din, who had shifted the capital to the south for reasons of safety, held supreme power in name ~mly, since he maintained on the throne the pr~nces of the Walasma' dynasty for whom he kept the title of Sultan. In this way he avoided charges of illegitimacy and secured for his effective power the nominal one of the old dynasty. His successors didrhe same, until the Walasma' dynasty became extinct in obscure circumstances. The new Sultanate of Harar was also soon torn by civil strife; and this lasted until a strong personality arose, namely, the future Imam Al).med ibn Ibrahim who gained the ascendancy and concentrated all power in his hands.