Can you give me some info about him? Him consoldiating Muslim dominions in the Horn is interesting. Did he do it through war or was it some political game?
We know of this cause of an account by a man called abu bakar ba alawi or simply ba alawi. He wrote about it but not in details and he didn't cover everything there was to know about the walashama because there was already a cultural familiarity of these stories. Here is where i talked about it before.
Nothing much is known about the province of asmac it has been mentioned by ba alawi who was a contemporary of nur ibn mujahid. I'd guess it wasn't somali and it most likely was in close proximity to shewa itself. There were other provinces such as gabar gey that we know next to nothing of.
Where did walashama expand from? Their capital was ifat on the western side of the awash east of shewa. According to ba alawi after they defeated the shewa sultanate they proceeded to attack other muslim dynasty all of whom predates the solomonic dynasty. This conquest was from eastern shewa.
Here is an exert from ba alawi text. It says that after the conquest of shewa.
"The attack on gidiya and the destruction of a hay in muharam in the year 686 hijri (1288 ad) and he raided or attacked mora (later on a close ally of ifat according to amda sion chronicles) and adal and it's leader was killed in 687 hijri (1289 ad) and in that year died hity tahant and the conquest of wali asma' of hobat and obliterated it in the month of dulqe'da".
What made the walashama unique was that they commanded unprecedented authority over large stretch of land and were recognized as the the only imams even if it was at times a symbolic recognition.
The Ifats were named Imam of all the Muslim dominions? I guess they could be considered emperors right? Tho I don’t think Muslims do that
You're right he wasn't considered an emperor instead the walashama were considered imams of the muslims or you could say the amir of the mu'minin, even after the weakening political power of the walashama in 1330s the other muslim sultanates were still acknowledging the walashama as the imam of the muslims according to sheikh abd al-rahman al-zaylaci in the account of Ibn fadlallah al-umari.
Ifat/Adal were emperors once they conquered the other Muslim dominions. The other Muslim sultanates called them Imam tho. Though some like Arab Faqih called Ahmad the Left-Handed “Amir Al-Mu’minin” (Commander of the Faithful) in the Futuh for example
Pretty much except there was a lot of autonomy in the other muslim sultanate so it was not your typical empire. For example these muslim sultanate were always fighting each other and competing with each other for a long time so much so that some of them would use the help of the amhara to settle disputes between them.
It really doesn't matter what clan the imam came from as long as we know he is of somali origin. The imam didn't fight along, the futuh al-habasha was a team work with an army made out many different clans named in the manuscript. If one of these clans didn't participate the imam might not have scoured such an overwhelming victory against the solomonic dynasty.
Thank you, but I was not talking about the imam, I was talking about Samron during the Sultanate of IfatIt really doesn't matter what clan the imam came from as long as we know he is of somali origin. The imam didn't fight along, the futuh al-habasha was a team work with an army made out many different clans named in the manuscript. If one of these clans didn't participate the imam might not have scoured such an overwhelming victory against the solomonic dynasty.
Now if we wanna know what clan the imam came from for the sake of knowing i might have some evident based answer for you. The futuh as valuable as it may be it didn't talk much about the imam and his origin it didn't even state the full name of the imam but we have another manuscript from the same time period with useful information in regard of the imams origin. You see in 16th century 500 years ago there was a man called ba alawi and he wrote a number of manuscripts. One of these manuscripts carried the full name of the imam and went like this.
As you see the name of the imam is ahmed ibn ibrahim ibn omar ibn ahmed.
Now this is a vary important account of the imam's name but it's doesn't go further than this and we still haven't answered the question of where the imam came from. For our next clue we need to go to the 20th century to a man named ahmad a-shami a harari man interested in history and literature. He apparently had a manuscript kept by his family for generations. This manuscript also had a genealogy of the imam and it went like this.
Here is a translated version of the same text.
As you see both texts agrees with each other and the manuscript from ahmad al-shamsi expand on it were it mentions ahmad who they call a somali prince. The accounts gets a bit jumbled up and repeats gran a number of times because the original manuscript didn't show the name properly so we don't know what is writing but the final name is clear an it say karanle.
This means the imam is from the karanle clan. Notice how ahmad al-shamsi source is different from that of ba alawi and it's only concerned with the imam lineage. Aside from being two different sources that agrees with each one manuscript is 500 years ago and the other was kept by one of the families of harar. This confirms the imams lineage and genealogy as being a somali from the karanle tribe.
Ah yes my bad went a little to deep. The progenitor of samaroon clan named sheikh samaroon is a historical character. He fought with imam/sultan sacad a-din the sultan of ifat. His offspring's went on to settle from the coast all the way to hararghe. Here is his full name
There are Arab sources talking about him ?Ah yes my bad went a little to deep. The progenitor of samaroon clan named sheikh samaroon is a historical character. He fought with imam/sultan sacad a-din the sultan of ifat. His offspring's went on to settle from the coast all the way to hararghe. Here is his full name
No but this is a copy of a manuscript writing in arabic by the gadabuursi. I've talked about it in this post.
It really doesn't matter what clan the imam came from as long as we know he is of somali origin. The imam didn't fight along, the futuh al-habasha was a team work with an army made out many different clans named in the manuscript. If one of these clans didn't participate the imam might not have scoured such an overwhelming victory against the solomonic dynasty.
Now if we wanna know what clan the imam came from for the sake of knowing i might have some evident based answer for you. The futuh as valuable as it may be it didn't talk much about the imam and his origin, it didn't even state the full name of the imam but we have another manuscript from the same time period with useful information in regard to the imams origin. You see in the 16th century 500 years ago there was a man called ba alawi and he wrote a number of manuscripts. One of these manuscripts carried the full name of the imam and went like this.
As you see the name of the imam is ahmed ibn ibrahim ibn omar ibn ahmed.
Now this is a vary important account of the imam's name but it's doesn't go further than this and we still haven't answered the question of where the imam came from. For our next clue we need to go to the 20th century to a man named ahmad a-shami a harari man interested in history and literature. He apparently had a manuscript kept by his family for generations. This manuscript also had a genealogy of the imam and it went like this.
Here is a translated version of the same text.
As you see both texts agrees with each other and the manuscript from ahmad al-shamsi expand on it were it mentions ahmad who they call a somali prince. The accounts gets a bit jumbled up and repeats gran a number of times because the original manuscript didn't show the name properly so we don't know what is writing but the final name is clear an it say karanle.
This means the imam is from the karanle clan. Notice how ahmad al-shamsi source is different from that of ba alawi and it's only concerned with the imam lineage. Aside from being two different sources that agrees with each one manuscript is 500 years ago and the other was kept by one of the families of harar. This confirms the imams lineage and genealogy as being a somali from the karanle tribe.
No one seriously claims Ahmad the Left Handed as Oromo. Oromos were some random undocumented pagan (Not even Muslim) tribe before the Conquest of Abyssinia. They aren’t relevant until then.
Exactly. Ahmad had men from Europe Asia & Africa during his jihads, we should be focusing more on his accomplishments rather than ethnicity, but we should first mention he’s Somali as people like to discredit & lie about us on our contributions to Muslim kingdoms in the Horn
