Firearms carried Imam Ahmad of Adal deep into the Ethiopian highlands
In 1529 the Ethiopian emperor gathered troops from every corner of his realm to meet a much smaller army from the Sultanate of Adal. Its leader, Imam Ahmad, known as Grañ or Gurey, the left-handed, had matchlock gunmen. The rout that followed opened a war that swept Adal's forces across most of Abyssinia.
Ahmad ibn Ibrahim was born around 21 July 1506 in the lowlands of Hubat, in the Sultanate of Adal in the Horn of Africa. His ethnic origin is disputed; historians have called him Somali, Harla or Harari, or Balaw. He spent much time in the walled city of Harar but withdrew to Hubat in protest at the worldly rule of Sultan Abu Bakr. He rose in the service of Garad Abun Adashe, who admired his courage and arranged his marriage to Bati del Wambara, daughter of the late Imam Mahfuz.
When Emperor Dawit II sent the general Degelhan against the young rebel, Ahmad split his force in three and ambushed the Ethiopians at Hubat, and his fame spread. The sultan besieged him for ten days before sheikhs from Harar brokered a truce, but by 1527 Ahmad led Adal as imam. At Shimbra Kure in 1529, both Christian and Muslim chroniclers agree the emperor's army was far larger, yet the imam won decisively; the historian Richard Pankhurst credits his matchlockmen, probably the first firearms Ethiopian forces had faced.
Tribal feuds forced a pause, and Ahmad used it to build an army loyal to him rather than to clan leaders. From 1531 came the full invasion: victory at Antukyah, then Fatagar, Shewa and Amhara. The chronicler Arab Faqih records the imam marvelling that no church in Byzantium or India could match those he found, and then ordering them destroyed. Many conversions were forced, and captives were executed. After the victory at Amba Sel, Dawit II could no longer meet him in open battle and lived as a hunted fugitive.
The war then widened. A Portuguese intervention on the Ethiopian side drew the conflict into the rivalry between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire, and after 1541 the imam's fortunes turned; he was defeated and died on 10 February 1543. His campaigns remain a vivid part of historical memory in both Ethiopia and Somalia.
Source: Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi
