# The seven Muslim kingdoms of the Horn: tribute, trade and money, 1300–1530 > What Chekroun and Hirsch's 2020 survey says about al-ʿUmari's seven Muslim kingdoms, their tribute to the Christian king, how the Barr Saʿd ad-Din took over Zeila, Hubat, the Harla and part of the Somali lands, the debate over war and peace in the 1400s, taxes, the trade towns, and the money used. Source page: https://calankii.com/en/history/seven-muslim-kingdoms-tribute-trade-and-money/ Last checked: 2026-11-12 Publisher: Calankii (https://calankii.com) ## In short This page follows Amélie Chekroun and Bertrand Hirsch, "The Sultanates of Medieval Ethiopia", in Samantha Kelly (ed.), *A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea* (Brill, 2020), pp. 86–112 ([HAL open preprint](https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02505420)). Page numbers below are those of the preprint, which runs from p. 63 to p. 81. The authors write that Muslim history in medieval Ethiopia has been studied far less than Christian history, and that archaeology is now testing the written sources (pp. 63–64). For the earlier sultanate of Shewa and the rise of the Walashma, see [The Sultanate of Shewa and the founding of Ifat](/en/history/sultanate-of-shewa-and-founding-of-ifat/). ## Two routes of Islam The authors describe two main routes by which Islam entered the region. From the 9th–10th centuries, the first ran north to south, from the Dahlak Islands in the Red Sea through eastern Tigray to the highlands. From the 12th–13th centuries, a second, which became the main one, ran from the port of Zeila on the [Gulf of Aden](/en/relations/yemen/) to the eastern highlands and the Rift Valley lakes (p. 65). They write that Zeila seems to have become dominant only in the 13th century, and that Ibn al-Mujawir, who died in 1291, made it the main port of the *barr al-ʿAjam*, the "coast of the non-Arabs", facing the Arab coast. Yemeni sources record merchants, scholars, pilgrims, soldiers, diplomats and slaves passing between Yemen and the Ethiopian sultanates through Zeila (pp. 70–71). For Zeila, see [Early Zeila before 1300](/en/history/early-zeila-before-1300/). ## The seven kingdoms and their tribute Al-ʿUmari, who wrote his *Masālik al-abṣār* in the 1330s from Ethiopian informants, named seven "Muslim kingdoms": Awfat (Ifat), Dawaro, Arababni, Hadiyya, Sharkha, Bali and Dara. He wrote that the whole area was called in Egypt and Syria "the country of Zaylaʿ", which "is however only one of their cities on the sea whose name has extended to the whole". The kingdoms were independent of each other, but each paid "a fixed tribute which they bring every year" to the Christian king, and none ruled "unless it is invested by the ruler of ʿAmhara" (pp. 72–73). The authors write that the Ge'ez account of King Amda Seyon's wars of 1332 gives the same picture: it says Hadiyya paid tribute from 1316–1317, and that one cause of the war was its ruler's refusal to pay. They add that this account may have been written in the 15th century (p. 73). Al-Maqrizi, writing in Cairo in the 1430s from Ethiopian travellers, says the Christian king held members of the Walashma family prisoner, appointed sultans, and sent "an army of 30,000 men" to help Sultan ʿAli put down the revolt of his nephew Haqq ad-Din (p. 73). See [Awfat, capital of the Ifat sultanate](/en/history/awfat-capital-of-ifat-and-walashma-tombs/). ## After Ifat After the fall of Ifat, al-Maqrizi says, the Christians turned its mosques into churches and appointed Christian governors, who took the name Walashma as a title. The authors write that the southern Muslim lands, including Dawaro, Bali, Fatagar, Ifat and Hadiyya, were under Christian control by the mid-15th century at the latest. Hadiyya kept some autonomy under a Muslim governor; the *Futūḥ al-Ḥabasha* says he paid a poll tax to the king and every year gave him one of his daughters to be baptised (pp. 74–75). The sons of Saʿd ad-Din returned from Yemen and founded the Barr Saʿd ad-Din, with its capital at Dakar. The authors write that some Arabic sources call its land ʿAdal, possibly linked to a Muslim community of ʿAdal that the Walashma attacked in 1288, and that the Christian sources use "Adal" for the whole sultanate. They write that the dynasty "imposed their power over many other formerly independent Islamic territories, both sedentary and nomadic, including Hūbat, Zaylaʿ, the Ḥārla territory, and part of the vast and complex territory of the Somali", and that the sources do not say how (p. 75). See [The death of Sultan Saʿd ad-Din at Zeila and his sons in Yemen](/en/history/saad-ad-din-death-at-zeila-and-sons-in-yemen/) and [Dakar, the lost capital of Adal](/en/history/dakar-lost-capital-of-adal-1415-1520/). ## War or peace in the 1400s? The Portuguese priest Francisco Alvares, in Ethiopia in the 1520s, thought Saʿd ad-Din's descendants kept peace with the Christian kings. Other writers describe constant war. The authors write that the truth lies between the two and that the 15th century has never been properly studied (pp. 75–76). They note: - **Raids and tribute.** The chronicles of Kings Zara Yaqob (1434–1468) and Baeda Maryam (1468–1478) record Christian raids on the Barr Saʿd ad-Din, and an embassy from the sultan offering tribute if the raids stopped (p. 76). - **The Futūḥ's view.** It says that from Saʿd ad-Din to Garad Abun "the infidels made incursions into the country of the Muslims… so that some of the Muslim towns even paid them the ḫarāǧ", until Imam Ahmad ended this (p. 76). - **Emir Mahfuz.** Some historians have seen Mahfuz, whose daughter Del Wambara married Imam Ahmad, as the head of a religious party opposed to the sultans. The authors write that every source that names him, including Alvares, the chronicle of Sarsa Dengel, Pedro Paez and the *Futūḥ*, calls him a commander under Sultan Muhammad (pp. 76–77). ## How the land was governed and taxed According to the *Futūḥ al-Ḥabasha*, the sultan appointed an emir over each territory. The sultan lived from the *kharāj* tax on the population, while emirs could raise armies to raid Christian lands for booty. The *Futūḥ* also records a dispute in the 1520s over the *zakāt*, the alms tax, which "the sultan, the emirs and the other rulers who governed the land of Saʿd al-Dīn" kept for themselves instead of giving it to the poor, a custom it says dated from Saʿd ad-Din (pp. 78–79). Al-ʿUmari wrote that most Muslims of the region were Hanafi but the rulers of Ifat were Shafiʿi; the authors cite a tomb at the capital of a "sheikh of the Walasmaʿ" of the Shafiʿi school (p. 78). ## Trade towns - **Ifat and Zeila.** Al-ʿUmari wrote that Ifat's king was respected because he ruled Zeila, "the port where the merchants who go to this kingdom approach", with imports of "silk and linen fabrics" from Egypt, Yemen and Iraq (p. 79). - **Manadeley.** Alvares described a town of about 1,000 people, "all Moors tributary to the Prester John", with 20 or 30 Christians collecting tolls, and merchants from Morocco, Tunis, Turkey, Greece, India, Hormuz and Cairo (p. 79). - **Gendevelu.** In 1523 an Ethiopian monk told the Venetian Alessandro Zorzi of a "great mercantile city" in Ifat, 65 days from Zeila, where camel caravans unloaded goods brought by ships from Cambay in India, and where Hungarian and Venetian ducats and the "silver coins of the Moors" were used. The authors suggest it may be the ruined town of Asbari (pp. 79–80). - **Christian traders.** The *Futūḥ* says the Christian king sent traders with gold, ivory, civet cats and slaves through the Muslim lands and across the sea to al-Shihr and Aden (p. 80). ## Money The authors write that the Muslim states hardly minted coins. Al-ʿUmari said their rulers used *kāmilī* silver dirhams minted in Egypt, and a hoard of such Mamluk dirhams was found in Ifat in the late 19th century, though it is now lost. A Rasulid trade manual of the late 13th century, the *Nūr al-maʿārif*, says that for everyday exchange people used *ḥaras*, "fragments of poor quality silver, of broken rings, bracelets or other", and in remoter places an iron money, the *ḥakūna*, made of small bundles of iron rods, some of which were found at Nora. Al-ʿUmari wrote that barter "in cows, sheep or textiles" stayed the most common form of exchange (p. 80). ## Related pages - [Zeila, Berbera and Mogadishu in the records of Rasulid Yemen](/en/history/rasulid-yemen-and-somali-ports-1229-1454/) - [Nomads, towns and the state in Ifat and Adal](/en/history/nomads-towns-and-the-state-ifat-adal/) - [Harar becomes the capital of Adal, 1520–1577](/en/history/harar-capital-of-adal-1520-1577/) - [The Harla and Harlaa](/en/history/the-harla-and-harlaa/) - [Futuh al-Habasha](/en/history/futuh-al-habasha/) --- I want to help with this: email hello@calankii.com. Fix this page: email hello@calankii.com with the page link and your source.