Imam Ahmad's son and the end of the war, 1543–1560: al-Jaziri's biography

In short

The war between Adal and the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia in the 1530s and 1540s is known mostly from the Futūḥ al-Ḥabasha, which stops about 1535, and from Christian and Portuguese sources. In 2025 the historian Amélie Chekroun identified a new Muslim account of the last years of the war: a biography of Ahmad, son of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, written in Cairo by ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jaziri. She translated it into French. Her article is "Derniers échos du jihad éthiopien (XVIe siècle) : l'apport de la biographie du fils de l'imām Aḥmad par al-Jazīrī", Bellica 3, no. 2 (2025): 9–30 (HAL open copy). Page numbers below are the journal's. For the war itself, see Imam Ahmad and the Adal campaigns, 1527–1543.

The author

Al-Jaziri (1505 to about 1570) was a Sufi who, from the late 1530s to 1569, was secretary of the office of the pilgrimage from Cairo to Mecca. He wrote a history of the pilgrimage, al-Durar al-farāʾid al-munaẓẓama. In a chapter on the pilgrimages of kings, he gave several pages to Ahmad, the only person from Ethiopia in the book. Chekroun writes that al-Jaziri knew Ahmad personally, says he liked him, and several times cites "trustworthy men who came from Ethiopia" (pp. 15–16). She translated the text from the 2002 Beirut edition, itself based on a manuscript at the Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez (pp. 17–18).

Which son?

According to the Futūḥ al-Ḥabasha, the Imam and his wife Del Wambara had a son Muhammad, born in 1528, and a son Ahmad al-Najashi, born in 1533 in Tigray, who died of leprosy a year later. Chekroun writes that the Ahmad of al-Jaziri, a young adolescent in 1543, is either that Muhammad or another son not otherwise known. The chronicle of King Galawdewos calls the captured son "Mäḫammäd" or "Məhmäd", and also names another son, "Ali-Gärad", captured earlier, and a third, "Nasraddin", who ruled for a time in Dawaro (pp. 16–17).

The last battle, 1543

Al-Jaziri's account of the last battle, in Chekroun's translation (pp. 25–26):

• The armies. The Christian king, whom al-Jaziri calls Atnab Sakkad (Galawdewos), gathered Ethiopian Christians and "Franks" (Portuguese). The armies met at a place al-Jaziri spells "Wunā Dakā", the Wayna Daga of the Ge'ez sources, east of Lake Tana.
• The Imam in red. The Imam rode out at dawn, and "all his clothing and his mount were red, as were all his soldiers and their horses".
• His death. A commander of the Christian king named Kalid, who had grown up in the Imam's army and then deserted, recognised him. A Portuguese gunman shot him, not knowing who he was. Kalid cut off his head and brought it to the king, who did not believe it until Ethiopian notables confirmed it was the Imam's. Kalid then shouted in the Ethiopian language, "For whom are you fighting, when Garad Ahmad is dead?", and the Imam's army scattered.
• The aftermath. The camp was looted and the son was captured and sent to the king. The Imam's wife and the rest of the army went to a land called Atbara, "whose people are all Muslim Arabs", and from there she went to Aden.

Chekroun writes that this matches the Ge'ez and Portuguese accounts on many points. The Portuguese wrote that one of their own men shot the Imam and that an Ethiopian soldier tried to take the credit; the Ge'ez sources credit an Ethiopian soldier (p. 19).

The exchange of the princes

Al-Jaziri writes that, earlier in the war, the Imam had captured Minas, a young son of the Christian king, and sent him with other captives by ship to Yemen to be sold. The Ottoman governor of Yemen, Mustafa Pasha al-Nashshar, bought him, learned who he was, taught him suras of the Qur'an, and decided against castrating him. The Imam's widow brought the Pasha rich gifts and asked him to write to the Christian king's mother. Letters went back and forth, and the queen mother sent Ahmad, with ingots of gold, while her son was away at war. Mustafa Pasha then sent Minas home with an escort. When the king returned, he was angry, fearing that Ahmad would "become like his father" (pp. 26–27). Chekroun notes that the Ge'ez sources also describe this exchange between the two mothers, Del Wambara and Queen Sabla Wangel (p. 17). Minas later ruled Ethiopia from 1559 to 1563. Al-Jaziri writes that he hid his conversion to Islam and refused to "draw the sword against the Muslims" (pp. 27–28).

Ahmad in Cairo

Ahmad followed Mustafa Pasha to Cairo when the Pasha was removed from Yemen in 1545–1546. The governor of Egypt wrote to Sultan Süleyman, and Ahmad went to Constantinople, where the sultan granted him an allowance "according to the custom for the sons of kings". He lived in a house over the Birkat al-Fil pond in Cairo and was promised soldiers and weapons to avenge his father. Al-Jaziri describes him as handsome, intelligent and generous. When Özdemir Pasha was sent to conquer the Ethiopian coast, Ahmad was not included. His allowance shrank, he fell into debt, and he spent time at al-Azhar reading books. In 1558–1559 he joined the pilgrim caravan in disguise, planning to sail home after Mecca, but he was arrested there and brought back in chains. He fell ill and died near al-Azhar in 1559–1560 (pp. 28–29). Chekroun notes that Özdemir Pasha died the same year (p. 21).

Captives and the slave trade

Al-Jaziri writes that the Imam swore to keep sending Ethiopian captives abroad until each was worth one dinar, that one convoy numbered 940, and that he himself bought an Ethiopian girl in Cairo in 1538–1539 for ten gold pieces (pp. 24–25). Chekroun writes that the war greatly increased the number of Ethiopian slaves on the markets of Yemen and Egypt, and that the trade through Zeila was much older than the war. She cites the Gujarati historian Hajji al-Dabir (died 1611) on soldiers of Ethiopian origin in the armies of Gujarat as a result of the war (pp. 18–19).

Other Muslim sources on the war

Chekroun lists other mentions (pp. 11–14):

• Hadramawt. The annals of Ba Faqih, published in part by Robert Serjeant, record under 1541–1542 that the Imam asked the Ottoman governor at Zabid for help and received 500 Turks with their equipment.
• India. Al-ʿAydarus, writing in Ahmadabad in 1603, mentions the Imam's rise at Harar and says the author's own father was sent to help him in 1532–1533.
• An Ottoman report of 1525. The naval commander Selman Reis wrote that near Zeila was a town called Janasir whose rulers were called Mujahid, that "most books of learning are distributed from Zeila", and that raids were made every year against the Habash. Chekroun notes a place of that name, with ruins, about two kilometres from Derbiga east of Harar.
• An Ottoman letter of about 1541 calls the Imam "Sultan Ahmed, ruler of the province of Habesh".
• An Ottoman letter of 28 December 1544 reports that "Abbas, the nephew of Mujahid" had raised a great army and retaken the lands the Imam had held. Chekroun notes that the Galawdewos chronicle describes this resistance by the vizier Abbas, which ended with his death at the end of 1544.

Related pages

• Futuh al-Habasha
• Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi
• Harar becomes the capital of Adal, 1520–1577
• Dakar, the lost capital of Adal
• The death of Sultan Saʿd ad-Din at Zeila and his sons in Yemen
• The end of Adal, 1543–1583: Emir Nur, the Ottomans at Zeila and the move to Awsa