| The Sultanate of Adal | ||||
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| Territory of the Sultanate of Adal and its vassal states circa 1500. | ||||
| Capital | Zeila (initially) Harar |
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| Language(s) | Somali, Oromo, Afar, Arabic, Harar | |||
| Government | Monarchy | |||
| History | ||||
| - Established | 1415 | |||
| - Disestablished | 1555 | |||
| Today part of | Djibouti Eritrea Ethiopia Somalia |
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The Adal Sultanate or the Kingdom of Adal (Somali: Adaal, Ge'ez: አዳል ʾAdāl, Arabic: عدل) (c. 1415 - 1555) was a medieval multi-ethnic Muslim state located in the Horn of Africa.
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During its existence, Adal had relations and engaged in trade with other polities in Africa, the Near East, Europe and South Asia. Many of the historic cities in the Horn of Africa such as Maduna, Abasa, Berbera, Zeila and Harar flourished with courtyard houses, mosques, shrines, walled enclosures, and cisterns during the kingdom's Golden Age.
After the death of Sa'ad ad-Din II, it succeeded the Kingdom of Ifat, and Adalite armies under the leadership of illustrative rulers such as Sabr ad-Din II, Mansur ad-Din, Jamal ad-Din II, Shams ad-Din and general Mahfuz continued the struggle against the Solomonic Christian Empire.
At the turn of the 16th century, Adal organised an effective army led by Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi that invaded the Ethiopian Empire. This campaign is historically known as the Conquest of Abyssinia or Futuh al Habash, in which Ahmed pioneered the use of cannons supplied by the Ottoman Empire in Horn African warfare against Solomonic forces and the Portuguese army led by Cristóvão da Gama. At its height, the state controlled large parts of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea.
There is still debate over the ethnic composition of the kingdom. I.M Lewis states,
Somali forces contributed much to the Imām’s victories. Shihab ad-Din, the Muslim chronicler of the period, writing between 1540 and 1560, mentions them frequently (Futūḥ al-Ḥabasha, ed. And trs. R. Besset Paris, 1897.). The most prominent Somali groups in the campaigns were the Samaroon (Dir), Geri, Marrehān, and Harti - all Dārod clans. Shihāb d-Dīn is very vague as to their distribution and grazing areas, but describes the Harti as at the time in possession of the ancient eastern port of Mait. Of the Isāq only the Habar Magādle clan seem to have been involved and their distribution is not recorded. Finally several Dir clans also took part.[1]
This finding is supported in the more recent Oxford History of Islam:
The sultanate of Adal, which emerged as the major Muslim principality from 1420 to 1560, seems to have recruited its military force mainly from among the Somalis.[2]
Lewis, on the other hand, notes that the Imam's origins are unknown.[3] There is also evidence that the sultanate may have been largely Afar in nature. Ewald Wagner connects the name ʿAdäl with the Dankali (Afar) tribe Aḏaʿila and the Somali name for the clan Oda ʿAlï, proposing that the kingdom may have largely been composed of Afars.[4] Although Afars constituted a significant part of Adal, Didier Morin notes that "the exact influence of the ʿAfar inside the Kingdom of `Adal is still conjectural due to its multiethnic basis."[4] Nevertheless, Franz-Christoph Muth identifies Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi as Somali.[5]
In the mid-1520s, Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi conquered Adal and launched a holy war against Christian Ethiopia, which was then under the leadership of Lebna Dengel. Supplied by the Ottoman Empire with firearms, Ahmad was able to defeat the Ethiopians at the Battle of Shimbra Kure in 1529 and seize control of the wealthy Ethiopian highlands, though the Ethiopians continued to resist from the highlands. In 1541, the Portuguese, who had vested interests in the Indian Ocean, sent aid to the Ethiopians in the form of 400 musketeers. Adal, in response, received 900 from the Ottomans.
Imam Ahmad was initially successful against the Ethiopians while campaigning in the Autumn of 1542, killing the Portuguese commander Cristóvão da Gama in August that year. However, Portuguese musketry proved decisive in Adal's defeat at the Battle of Wayna Daga, near Lake Tana, in February 1543, where Ahmad was killed in battle. The Ethiopians subsequently retook the Amhara plateau and recouped their losses against Adal. The Ottomans, who had their own troubles to deal with in the Mediterranean, were unable to help Ahmad's successors. In 1577, the capital of the Adal Sultanate was moved from Zeila to Harar, and a sharp decline in Adal's power followed.
After the conflict between Adal and Ethiopia had subsided, the conquest of the highland regions of Ethiopia and Adal by the Oromo (namely, through military expansion and the installation of the Gadaa socio-political system) ended in the contraction of both regional powers and changed the dynamics of the region for centuries to come. In essence, what had happened is that the populations of the highlands had not ceased to exist as a result of the Gadaa expansion, but were simply incorporated into a different socio-political system.