Adal and Ethiopia: the sixteenth-century war that reshaped the Horn

Harar — Between 1529 and 1543, armies from the Adal Sultanate — based in Harar and Zeila — pushed deep into the Ethiopian highlands under the command of Imam Ahmad, remembered in Ge'ez chronicles as 'Gragn'. Manuscripts, churches and towns burned; whole libraries of history were lost.

The tide turned when a small Portuguese expeditionary force under Cristóvão da Gama landed at Massawa. Ahmad was killed at the Battle of Wayna Daga in 1543, but the war left both realms exhausted and opened space for the Oromo migrations that reshaped the region in the following century.