History Ethiopia

Between 1540 and 1559, King Galawdewos, with the assistance of the Portuguese soldiers, undertook the first attempts against the Adalites and the Oromo nomads to restore the former state frontiers and the corresponding central authority of the Hatse State of Ethiopia.

When Galawdewos succeeded his tather as the Hatse of Ethiopia in 1540, Imam Ahmed Gragn was the effective ruler of Ethiopia from his Dambia Headquarters in Sahart.

In Tigrai, Galawdewos encountered the Adalites, and suffered defeat and retreated to Semen before he fled to Shewa, Fatagar and Dawaro in the South. It seems that he fled from Shahart-Semen to the south by the way of Wadla-Begamdir-Gojam-Gindeberet crossing the Abay River twice, first from Begamdir into Gojam and second from Gojam into Gindeberet-Shewa.

When some 400 Portuguese soldiers, under the leadership of Dom Cristovao da Gama, landed in Massawa in July 1541, Galawdewos was in the south. The Portuguese marched to the regional capital of Debarwa, in the province of Seraye, where they stayed until December, 1541.

From Debarwa, in company with the king’s mother, the Portuguese marched towards the south via Agame in their attempt to join the king in the south. On the way, in February 1542, they captured Amba Sanayt in Agame from the Adalites. After that Imam encountered the Portuguese again in Antalo, and suffered defeat in two battles.

However, in August, 1542, with the assistance of Turkish soldiers, Imam Ahmed fought and defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of Wafla to the south of Lake Ashange.

The leader of the Portuguese soldiers fled to Massawa from the battlefield, 120 soldiers fled to Massawa from the battlefield, 120 soldiers, with the king’s mother, retreated towards the northwest and managed to join the king in Semen.

From Semen, the king and the Portuguese marched together to Dambia and, on February 22, 1543 they encountered Imam Ahmed Gragn’s soldiers at the Battle of Wayna Daga near Lake Tana. Gragn was killed in the battle. Following the death of their leader the Adalites left the north in flight.

After the death of Imam Ahmed Gragn, Galawdewos was in Dembia from February to September, 1543 consolidating the provinces and peoples of Dembia, Gojam, Begamdir, Lasta, Semen, Tigrai, etc. in the northwest and north. During this transitional time, Vizi Abbas, the cousin and successor of the late Imam Ahmed, fled from his gubernatoral region of Begamdir and seized the provinces of Fatagar, Dawaro, and Bali in the Southeast as his bases to encounter the Gelawdewos counter-offensive.

To face the new Adalite challenge under Vizi Abbas, and to consolidate the provinces and peoples of Shewa, Fatagar, Damot, Gafat, Enariya, Gurage, Waj and Hadiya, in the south, mid-west, and southeast, Galawdewos left the north with his Portuguese soldiers sometime during the closing months of 1543, and established Waj in the Zway area as the permanent seat of his government.

In October 1544, Galawdewos fought and killed Vizi Abbas at the head of his Adalite Army in the Battle of Waj. From his Waj base, Galawdewos also organized and led successful campaigns for the Hatse State restoration against the postwar provinces and peoples of Hadiya, Gurage, Damot, Gafat, and Enariya, and he made his first encounter with the new forces of the Oromo under the Bifole Luba (1546-1554) in the province of Dawaro.

Between the second half of the 1540s and 1550s, Galawdewos and his warlords, Fanuel and Hamalmal, made a series of campaigns against the Adalites for Hatse State Restoration in the region from Barr Saad El Dien to the Barr El Ajan, that is, roughly from the Awash-Zeila in the northeast to the Indian Ocean in the southeast.

Finally in 1559, Emir Nur, the Adalite successor of the late Vizir Abbas, fought and killed King Galawdewos himself at the second battle of Waj. However, when Emir Nur marched in triumph from Waj to Harer, his own country of Adal outside Harer city was already occupied by the Oromo invaders.

During the closing years of the reign of Galawdewos, in 1557, the Turks invaded and occupied the Ethiopian coastal island and port of Massawa. Between 1557 and 1589, the Turks from Suakin and Massawa made a series of more than ten different invasions into the provinces of Bahrenegash and Tigrai marching over the coastal region of Arkiko to the regional capital of Debarwa.

In the period 1557 to 1558, a Turkish invasion force from Suakin invaded the regions of Arkiko, Hamasen, Seraye, Akaleguzay, Bur, Tigrai, and Mazaga, occupied the regional capital of Debarwa, and plundered the famous monastery of Debra Damo before it was defeated and expelled by an Ethiopian army dispatched by Galawdewos in September, 1558.

In 1562, the Turks from Massawa, in collaboration with Bahrenegash Yishak (Bohri), (the governor of the Bahrenegash province,) temporarily occupied the region between Massawa and Debarwa before they were fought, defeated and expelled by King Minas (1559-1563) in April 1562.

Then, in 1572-1578, and again from Massawa the Turks made a series of incursions into Hamasen, Seraye, and Tigrai.

However, in November-December 1578, a massive Ethiopian army gathered from the provinces of Bali, Sharka, Hadiya, Waj, Damot, Shewa, Gojam, and Dembia, including Adal and Oromo warriors under the leadership of Sarsa Dengil, fought and defeated them in the series of Seraye Battles in which both Bahrenegash Yishak and the leader of the Turks were killed.

Finally between 1588 and 1589, the Turks from Dehano (Arkiko) on the coast invaded Hamasen, Seraye, and Tigrai occupying Debarwa until they were expelled by the Ethiopian army of Sarsa Dengil.

In January, 1589, Sarsa Dengil, in a counter offensive, at the head of the Ethiopian army, went from Debarwa to Dahano (Arkiko) and there he fought and defeated the enemy.

However, the Turks escaped from Arkiko to Massawa by boat. The Ethiopian army and leader possessed no boats or naval force with which they could dislodge the defeated enemy from Massawa Island. Here the Turks stayed until the second decade of the last century when the island was seized by the Egyptians.

The objectives of Sarsa Dengil’s domestic policy between 1563 and 1597 were ceaseless and unsuccessful campaigns for the restoration of the Hatse State and for centralized control of the regions of Gafat, Damot, Bizamo, Enariy, Bosha, Gurage, Hadiya, Adal, Falasha, Agaw, Shinasha, Gumuz, and the Oromo tribes.

In 1563, Sarsa Dengil became the Hatse of Ethiopia in Begamdir against his rivals and, from there, by the way of Gojam, he came to the Gindebert-Mugar area and established temporary centres of state consolidation, first in Gindebert and then in Waj.

He organized and led in person a series of campaigns against the Gafat, Damot, Bizamo, Gurage, Enariya, Bosha, and Hadiya countries. In 1577, he marched from Waj across the countries of Sharka and Hadiya, and fought and killed the last rebellious Adalite Sultan, Mahamed IV, at the Wabe Valley Battle in the Southeast. In the 1570s and 1580s, the other targets of Sarsa Dengil’s wars were various Oromo tribes in the South, and Felasha, the Agew, Shinasha and Gumuz peoples in Begamdir, Wegera, Semen, Dembia and Gojam.

In the final analysis, these wars of Sarsa Dengil, by expelling the Turks from the two northern provinces of Bahrenegash and Tigrai, and by repulsing various Oromo tribes from the provinces of Tigrai, Lasta, Begamdir, Dembia, and Gojam, created historical conditions for the subsequent rise of the Gondarian state of Ethiopia in the northwest in the lands of the Agew, Felasha, and Gumuz peoples.

(Source: National Atlas of Ethiopia)

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