Abyssinian–Adal war

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Ethiopian–Adal War
Part of the Ottoman-Ethiopian Wars, Somali–Portuguese conflicts and Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1538–1560)

Early 20th century folk drawing of Cristóvão da Gama and Imam Ahmad's deaths.
Date9 March 1529 – 21 February 1543
(13 years, 11 months, 1 week and 5 days)
Location
Ethiopia and Eritrea
Result Ethiopian–Portuguese victory[1][2][3]
Territorial
changes
Belligerents
Ethiopian Empire
Portuguese Empire (1541–43)		 Adal Sultanate
Ottoman Empire (1542–43)
Commanders and leaders
Ethiopian Empire Dawit II #[9]
Ethiopian Empire Gelawdewos
Portuguese Empire Cristóvão da Gama Executed		 Adal Sultanate Ahmad ibn Ibrahim †
Strength
Portuguese Empire 400 musketeers (1541)[10] Ottoman Empire 700 soldiers, 10 field guns (1542)[10]

The Ethiopian–Adal War, also known as the Abyssinian–Adal War and Futūḥ Al-Ḥabaša (Arabic: فتوح الحبش, lit. 'Conquest of Abyssinia'), was a war fought between the Christian Ethiopian Empire and the Muslim Adal Sultanate from 1529 to 1543. The Christian Ethiopian troops were drawn mainly from Tigray, Agaw, Gojjam, Begemder, and Angot, with smaller contingents from Qeda (a district just north of Angot) and Gan (a province in the historic Amhara homeland).[11][12] At the closing of the war, the Christian forces were supported by the Portuguese Empire with no less than 400 musketeers.[13] The Adal forces were composed of Harla/Harari,[14][15] Somali,[16] Afar as well as Arab and Turkish gunmen. Both sides would see the Maya mercenaries at times join their ranks.[17]: 188  The conflict was followed shortly by the 16th century Ottoman–Ethiopian War.[18]

Background

Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi was a military leader of the medieval Adal Sultanate in the northern Horn of Africa. Between 1529 and 1543, he embarked on a campaign referred to as the Futuh al-Habasha, bringing the three-quarters of Christian Abyssinia under the control of the Muslim empire.[19] With an army composed of Harari (Harla), and Somalis,[20] al-Ghazi's forces came close to extinguishing the ancient Ethiopian kingdom, slaughtering any Ethiopian who refused to convert to Islam.[21] Within the span of fourteen years the Imam was able to conquer the heartland of the country, wreaking havoc on the Christian nation.[22] However, the Abyssinians managed to secure the assistance of Cristóvão da Gama's Portuguese troops, and maintained their domain's autonomy. Both polities exhausted their resources and manpower in the process, resulting in the contraction of the two powers and altering regional dynamics for centuries to come. Many historians trace the origin of hostile Ethiopia–Somalia relations to this war.[23] Some scholars also argue that this conflict proved the value, through their use on both sides, of firearms such as the matchlock musket, cannons, and the arquebus over traditional weapons.[24]

Course of the war

In 1529, Imam Ahmad's Adal troops defeated a larger Ethiopian contingent at the Battle of Shimbra Kure. The Harari cavalry also known as the Malassay were instrumental in this battle, as the Abyssinian troops were outmaneuvered.[25][26]

The victories that gave the followers of Imam Ahmad the upper hand came in 1531. The first was the Battle of Antukyah, where cannon fire at the start panicked the Ethiopian soldiers. The second was the Battle of Amba Sel, where troops under the Imam not only defeated but dispersed the Ethiopian army and captured items of the Imperial regalia. These victories allowed the Adalites to enter the Ethiopian Highlands, where they began to sack and burn numerous churches, including Atronsa Maryam, where the remains of several Emperors had been interred.[27]

Imam Ahmad defeated the armies of Agame and Tembien and marched towards Aksum to capture the historical Ethiopian city to solidify his rule in Ethiopia, echoing Mehmed II conquest of Constantinople, but the locals of Tigray had all assembled to defend their holy city. The Imam defeated and killed a large number of them as Arab Faqīh states, "Not a single one managed to slip away. They killed them in the forts, in the valleys and in the gorges. The ground was so thickly covered with their corpses, that it was impossible to walk in that place because of the dead bodies." he estimates that over 10,000 Christians were killed. The Imam reached Aksum and besieged the city, whereupon he destroyed the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. During his invasion of the Tigray region Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi visited the tomb of Najashi in Negash to pay his respects.[28]

Geographically isolated from the main theatre of war, the country of the Bahr Nagash was among the last parts of the empire to face the Imam's armies directly. Men from Särayé had nonetheless joined the imperial forces fighting Ahmad further south. During those engagements, Bahr Negash Zä-Wängel, who held the port of Dehono, and the governor of Hamasén both died in battle against the Adäl army in Damot, and the ruler of Särayé was taken captive.[29]

Having subdued the rest of the empire, the Imam turned northward in 1535, marching into Tegray and seizing Aksum before sending part of his army across the Märäb River into Särayé. Seeking to maintain local cooperation, the Adäl commanders installed Tédros, a relative of a prominent Christian family, as a subordinate governor under Vizier 'Abbas, the Imam's nephew. Local resistance proved fierce. A nobleman named Täsfa Le'ul killed Tédros and then 'Addolé, one of the Imam's senior commanders, whose severed head was despatched to Emperor Gelawdewos as a token of defiance. The Emperor marked the occasion with public celebration. The Imam retaliated by marching into Särayé in force, routing the defenders and putting Täsfa Le'ul and his sons to death. He then reorganised the administration of the region, appointing Täsfawi, the brother of the slain Tédros, as provincial governor and a local man named 'Afra as Bahr Negash.[30]

The Adäl hold on Tegray lasted roughly a year before disease, supply failures and a conversion crisis within Ahmad's army prompted a withdrawal. The destruction left behind was severe. When the Portuguese soldier Miguel de Castanhoso reached the summit in 1541 he found churches burnt and the countryside around Debarwa, the Bahr Negash's seat of power, entirely abandoned, the inhabitants having fled into the hills with their livestock. Monks who had spent the occupation in hiding emerged to greet the Portuguese column carrying crosses and praying aloud.[31][32]

Dawit was stabbed to death in his bed by an unknown assailant at Debre Damo[33] and his son and future emperor Prince Menas was captured by the forces of Imam Ahmad; the Empress was unable to react as she was besieged in the capital. The Portuguese forces would also be ambushed by the Adalites at the Battle of Massawa becoming the first encounter between the two groups.[34] In February 1541, the Portuguese navy landed in Ethiopia 400 musketeers led by Cristóvão da Gama via Massawa, a port in the province of Medri Bahri. The Portuguese went on to win great battles, such as the Battle of Baçente, Jarte, Hill of the Jews which halted Adal's expansion. The turning point of the war seems to have begun at that moment.[35]

Wounded at Dambeya by the Portuguese in April 1542, the first engagement of his career in which he faced an enemy equipped with cannons, Ahmad Gragn sent an urgent appeal to Zebid. He promised, in return for renewed Ottoman aid, to become a vassal of Sultan Suleiman I. The Turks eagerly responded by providing him with ten field-guns and 700 soldiers, with which he used, along vastly superior numbers, to surprise the Portuguese camp in an attack which resulted in their victory. Half of the defenders were killed, but the survivors joined the army of Gelawdewos.[10][36]

The Ethiopians and the Portuguese led by the Emperor, scored a decisive victory in the Battle of Wayna Daga, where tradition states that Imam Ahmad was shot in the chest by a Portuguese musketeer named João de Castilho, who had charged alone into the Muslim lines and died. The wounded Imam was then beheaded by an Ethiopian cavalry commander, Azmach Calite.[37][38][39] His son Muhammad was taken prisoner at the same battle. [40] Once the Imam's soldiers learned of his death, they fled the battlefield.[41] The death of Imam Ahmad and the victory at Wayna Daga caused a collapse of Ahmad's forces and forced an Adalite retreat from Ethiopia.

It was Bahr Nagash Yeshaq who first made contact with the Portuguese fleet at Massawa and persuaded the viceroy to send Cristóvão da Gama's force to the aid of Emperor Gelawdewos. He sheltered the expedition at Debarwa through the rains of 1541, supplying it with soldiers, guides and provisions before the march inland began. The Encyclopaedia Aethiopica notes that Castanhoso's entire account of the campaign refers to Yeshaq only by his title, never once by name, reflecting the weight the office carried at the time.[42][43] Yeshaq's own father had spent the occupation as a convert to Islam in the Imam's service, though after Ahmad's death he slipped away with a young member of the imperial family he had been guarding and negotiated a pardon from Gälawdewos in exchange for returning the child. Castanhoso believed the Emperor's willingness to forgive owed much to the debt he felt toward the Bahr Nagash for his assistance to the Portuguese.[44]

Aftermath

Mohammed Hassen has plausibly argued that because this conflict severely weakened both participants, it provided an opportunity for the Oromo people to conquer and migrate into the historically Gafat land of Welega south of the Blue Nile and eastward to the walls of Harar, establishing new territories.[45]

The war contributed to the permanent loss of Fatagar, a Christian imperial province on the northern shore of the Awaš river with deep ties to the Solomonic dynasty. Ase Zärʿa Yaqob had been born there and Ase Bäydä Maryam had been crowned there. Ahmad's forces had raided the province as early as 1526 or 1527, and on a later return burned the royal palace at Badeqé and stripped it of its gold and cloth. Once Adäl power collapsed, the province passed into Oromo hands and the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica records that the toponym Fätägar gradually disappeared from use as the region ceased to be an imperial administrative unit.[46][47]

The Gafat people, a Semitic-speaking group who had inhabited the territory around the upper Awaš and had sent soldiers to fight for Lebnä Dengel, were similarly left exposed. With the imperial system no longer able to project power into the south, they came under sustained Oromo pressure from the late 16th century onward and large numbers were displaced from their ancestral territory.[48]

Abyssinian raids into the Lowland Islamic populations continued intensely and frequently into the middle of the 17th century.[49]

The war was devastating for the Harari people which resulted in massive casualties for them and the conflict is regarded as one of the reasons for their rapid population decline.[50] According to historian El Amin Abdel Karim Ahmed:[51]

"The Muslim Semitic-speaking Harari once occupied more extensive territories as part of the medieval Muslim state of Adal with the town of Harar as its metropolitan centre. Politically weakened by the internal disputes and militarily exhausted by the jihad wars of the sixteenth century the Harari became an easy prey for the invading Oromo who battered and harassed them relentlessly. As a result they were constantly pushed back and managed to survive only as an isolated people confined within the stone-walled town of Harar and its immediate environs, while the Oromo occupied the regions all around them. Nevertheless Harar survived and continued its precarious existence as the capital of an emirate of the same name."

See also

Bibliography

  • Pankhurst, Richard (1998). The Ethiopians: A History. Peoples of Africa. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-22493-9.

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