The Battle of Fatagar was fought in either 1516 or 1517, between the Ethiopian Empire under Emperor Lebna Dengel and troops of the Adal Sultanate led by Mahfuz, on the frontier of the Ethiopian province of Fatagar. The battle ended in a decisive Ethiopian victory. According to the Portuguese chaplain Francisco Álvares, Mahfuz, who had raided Ethiopian territory every Lent for some twenty-five years, was killed after he challenged the Ethiopians to single combat and a monk named Gabra Endreyas answered the challenge. Adal's ruler, Sultan Muhammad, managed to escape the battlefield. Following the battle, Lebna Dengel raided Adal itself, and Muhammad was murdered after returning home, after which the sultanate passed through a period of dynastic instability.
The battle is known mainly from two largely independent accounts: that of Álvares, who was in Ethiopia with a Portuguese embassy from 1520 to 1526 and recorded what he was told by others, and a short passage in the introductory chapter of the chronicle of Sarsa Dengel. Muslim sources say almost nothing about it. Modern historians disagree about its date and about whether the Adalite army was led by Mahfuz acting largely on his own or by the sultan with Mahfuz as his commander.
Background
Fatagar and the frontier
Fatagar (also spelled Fatigar or Fatajar) lay on the south-eastern edge of the Ethiopian highlands, north of Dawaro and bordering the territory of Adal. One of the three main routes from the plateau towards the port of Zeila ran through it. It was one of the eastern regions taken from the Muslims by the Solomonic kings, who used it as a base: Emperor Dawit established the royal camp at Yalabasha in Fatagar, Zar'a Ya'eqob and Eskender were born there, and Zar'a Ya'eqob founded two royal churches in the province. Eskender was crowned at Yalabasha.
The defense of the province was solely based on one governor. As mentioned in Taddesse Tamrat, the governor Amda Mika’el, who was appointed by Zar’a Ya’eqob, enjoyed a good, united command until his fall from power in about 1485. After he fell from power, the province was divided among lower rank officials. The *Futūḥ al-Ḥabaša* says that the province was divided into seven commands and even Pankhurst states that Lebna Dengel later divided it into seven Christian chiefs. This is regarded as one of the weaknesses of the defense of the frontier as noted by Taddesse. The author Álvares who travelled in the province with the imperial court describes it as a land of plains and low hills growing wheat and barley, with many churches and monasteries, and a large hill that Beckingham and Huntingford identify as Mount Zuqualla.
A recent geographic study by Amélie Chekroun, based on the Futūḥ al-Ḥabaša, locates Fatagar north of the southern bend of the Awash, bounded by Mount Zeqwala (Zuqualla) and the Mojo, Dukham and Kassam rivers (names still in use for the same watercourses), and notes that in the early sixteenth century it was concentrated on the river's north bank rather than both banks. She argues that Álvares's own distances for the frontier (a day's march from Adal's nearest market and eight days' march from the port of Zeila) cannot be taken at face value for locating Fatagar, as that would put its eastern edge in what is now Somaliland. She says fixed landmarks, not his marching times, are what helps locate the province on the map.
The Futūḥ also corroborates the "seven commands" claim above in its own words: it says that in the previous reign, Fatagar had a single Ethiopian baṭrīq (military governor) in overall command, and that Lebna Dengel appointed seven who competed with each other, of whom the text names only one, Islamu, as "governor".
Adal and Mahfuz
The Walasma' dynasty returned from exile in Yemen in 1415 and re-established itself in Adal, with its capital at Dakar near Harar. Emperor Eskender had attacked and destroyed Dakar around 1480. Muhammad ibn Azhar ad-Din became sultan in March 1488. Older scholarship generally portrays him as a ruler who preferred peace with the Christians, and Mahfuz as the leader of a more militant faction.. According to Pankhurst, Emperor Ba'eda Maryam's marriage to Eleni, daughter of the Hadiya ruler Mehmäd, was likely intended to break the existing Hadiya-Adal axis, which had already posed a threat to the empire.
According to Álvares, who was told the story chiefly by Pero da Covilhã and other informants, Mahfuz invaded Ethiopian territory every Lent for about twenty-five years, beginning under Emperor Eskender and continuing under Na'od and into the early years of Lebna Dengel. Lent, when the fast weakened the Christians, was his preferred season. In one raid he is said to have carried off nineteen thousand captives, who were sent as gifts to rulers in Arabia. On his twenty-fourth expedition he entered Fatagar. The population fled to a large hill, but Mahfuz followed them and burned the churches and monasteries. He then separated the peasants, whom he told to go home and sow for the next year so that his army could feed itself when it returned, from the professional soldiers (chäwa), who were put to the sword. Mahfuz is reported to have caused the deaths of Ethiopian Emperors Na'od and Eskender. The British explorer, Richard Burton asserted that Mahfuz had offered a bribe to one of Emperor Eskender's escorts in order to orchestrate the emperor's murder.
Older literature calls Mahfuz an "imam" and governor of Zeila as well as leader of Harar, and Kropp's notes to the Ethiopian chronicle likewise describe him as governor of Zeila. Chekroun points out that none of the primary sources gives him either title: the Futūḥ al-Ḥabaša calls him an emir or garād, and the Ethiopian and Portuguese texts call him a vizier or captain. Bruce, an example of this older literature, states that the Sherif of Mecca rewarded Mahfuz's raids with a green silk standard and a black velvet tent embroidered with gold, and made him shaykh of Zeila.
Ethiopia under Lebna Dengel
Lebna Dengel had come to the throne in 1508, aged about twelve, and the kingdom was governed by a regency headed by his mother, Na'od Mogasa, and Queen Eleni, with the advice of leading courtiers. The sources differ on his age at the time of the battle: Álvares gives seventeen, the Ethiopian chronicle twenty.
The frontier had gone badly in the preceding years. Taddesse Tamrat writes that under Na'od Muslim attacks on the frontier districts of Ifat and Fatagar increased and that defections from the frontier troops were frequent. The first years of Lebna Dengel's reign brought continuous Muslim successes on the eastern frontier, and even the official chronicles report no Christian victory until he had been on the throne for eight years.
Prelude
According to Álvares, Lebna Dengel had sent spies into Adal to find out where Mahfuz wanted to strike next. They reported that the sultan himself was coming with Mahfuz and a large force, that the army had already entered Fatagar and begun destroying the newly grown crops, and that it planned to raid elsewhere once Lent began. The emperor's advisers said that Lebna Dengel was still too young to fight in the field and that his regional commanders could deal with the invaders. He refused to listen to their advice and insisted on going to the battlefield in person, to avenge the wrongs done to himself, his father, and his uncle Eskender. To avoid warning the enemy, he set out without calling up troops from distant provinces and marched day and night.
His camp was pitched at dawn close to the first market town of Adal. The Muslim army had passed through a nearby pass the day before and was now only about half a league within the boundaries of Ethiopia, so the emperor's army was positioned along its line of retreat. The Ethiopian chronicle portrays this situation differently: there, the king of Adal marches against Lebna Dengel with a large army led by his vizier Mahfuz, and the emperor, on hearing of it, hurries to meet him.
Bruce's account, while based on Álvares, gives more detail about both the preparations and the ambush. According to Bruce, the empress disapproved of the king conducting the campaign in person, citing his inexperience in warfare, and urged him to delegate the task to more experienced officers. The king answered that every capable officer had already tried his skill against the Adalites and failed, so that the army had lost confidence in them, and that he was determined to put himself to the same test. On this occasion the army's willingness to fight was high, since the young nobility was glad to have a leader their own age, and the empress funded the campaign generously from her own treasury. As the army advanced through Fatagar towards Aussa, which Bruce takes to be the capital of Adal, the frontier force met a valley surrounded by mountains on every side except for two openings. The king divided the army into two parts, taking one part with himself and giving the bitwädäd the other to seal the second opening, so that the Muslim army, believing it had slipped past the Ethiopians unseen, had in fact marched into a trap.
Battle
According to Álvares, both armies met at dawn. Upon recognizing the red tents, which only appeared during grand events, Mahfuz informed the sultan that the emperor was there in person and urged him to flee, since he himself was ready to stay and perish. The sultan then fled with four horsemen, one of whom was the son of an Ethiopian courtier of the rank of bitwädäd who had gone over to the Muslims. Bruce gives a different motive for the same escape: on his telling, Mahfuz had long believed a prophecy that he would die if he ever fought the Ethiopian king in person, and, once he recognised the king's scarlet tent among the enemy lines, took this as confirmation that his hour had come. It was Mahfuz, not fear on the sultan's part, who urged Muhammad, a ruler who Bruce describes as never fond of fighting, to slip away through a lesser mountain track with his household and a few friends, leaving Mahfuz in command. Being unaware of the retreat, Lebna Dengel ordered his troops to celebrate communion and eat before arranging them in ranks around the time of terce.
Mahfuz then came forward and asked whether any Christian knight would fight him to the death. However, according to Bruce, the challenge involved more detail: once satisfied the sultan had safely gotten away, Mahfuz sent a message to the Ethiopian camp offering single combat, on terms that, Bruce notes, were not certainly agreed, that whichever champion fell, his own army would withdraw without shedding further blood. A monk named Gabra Endreyas accepted the challenge, killed Mahfuz, and cut off his head. Bruce describes this monk as a man of great family, who had had part of his tongue cut out by Na'od for speaking too freely, but who was nonetheless the most learned man at court and, in strength and skill, unmatched by any soldier in the army; for this reason he asked the king's permission to fight the challenger himself, and received it amid the applause of the nobility. Of the killing blow, Bruce writes that Gabra Endreyas, "seeing his opportunity, with a two-handed sword struck [Mahfuz] between the lower part of the neck and the shoulder so violently, that he nearly divided his body into two, and felled him dead to the ground," then cut off the head and threw it at the king's feet, crying, "There is the Goliah of the Infidels."
The Ethiopians then began to attack. There was little chance of escape for the Muslims, as the emperor's camp held the main pass while the other pass was already filled with troops. Bruce had this cry serve as the signal for the general assault. Lebna Dengel's men drove the Muslims back onto the Bitwädäd's fresh forces, who forced them back again to the emperor, until, with no way out of the valley, the survivors scattered into the mountains, where they were hunted down by local peasants or left to die of thirst and starvation. Bruce puts Muslim losses at about twelve thousand against light Ethiopian casualties, and adds that the Prophet's green standard and the sultan's black velvet, gold tent were captured, along with a large amount of cattle and merchandise. The Ethiopian chronicle agrees that Mahfuz fell that day and that very few of his men escaped. It also reports that the emperor's troops killed many horsemen and shield bearers, spearmen, and that the fleeing sultan was, according to some, sighted by people of Dawaro who let him go home in peace, while others said they never saw him.
Later accounts add detail of uncertain reliability. Conti Rossini considered the roughly twelve-thousand figure given above by Bruce, and also found in Barros and other later writers, to be exaggerated.