THE ROMANCE OF THE PORTUGUESE IN ABYSSIA CHARLES F. REY H. F. & G. WITHERBY
326 High Holborn London W.C.I
Library Press, Lowestoft 1929
CHAPTER X

No sooner had the Portuguese mission left the shores of Abyssinia than the prosperous and comparatively peaceful position of the country, which had so strongly influenced King Lebna Dengel in adopting the unfortunate course of letting them go without achieving any definite result, began to be threatened. The Turks and the Moslem nations bordering on Ethiopia had been alarmed by the possibilities of the alliance between the Portuguese and the byssinians to which da Lima's mission had seemed to point, and had determined on combined action to conquer Abyssinia, and to close to Europeans the entrance to the Red Sea in order to facilitate their attack on India. Egypt and the Yemen had already been conquered; now the Christian pilgrim caravans to Jerusalem too were massacred, Zeila was occupied, arms were distributed to the Adals, the age-long foes of Abyssinia, and to the Emir ofarar. They found a ready ally in the person of a most remarkable Somali, Ahmed Gran~ by name. Born about 1506, he had been an ordinary soldier in the troop of the Emir of Harar, and by his gifts of leadership and fanatical zeal for the Moslem faith, had rapidly carved out a leading position for himself at the early age of twenty, by which time he had already become the recognised leader of the more daring warriors of Harar. He had carried out a series of successful raids and forays intoAbyssinia on an ever-increasing scale, until in 1527, when only twenty-one years old, he won a really substantial victory at Eddir over the emperor's brother-in-law, Degalhan, who was returning from a successful expedition into Adal. Gran~ was so named (Gran~ means "left") from his habit of using his sword with his left hand. He was no mere marauder; he was a skilful general and aborn leader of men; his religious fanaticism led him to endeavour to subjugate Abyssinia, and though cruel and severe he was eminently just, displaying many generous sentiments and being personally entirely disdainful of money. The vast amount of gold and other rich booty obtained from pillaging the churches and monasteries of Abyssinia he divided fairly amongst his followers, not forgetting those whose duties prevented their taking part in the actual pillaging; a share was always laid aside for the "public treasury," and when Gran~ thought all had enough he burnedthe rest. He himself taught the Koran to the children of his followers. His wife, Batya del Wambara, who plays an important part in the story of Abyssinia and who is described later on, was the daughter of the celebrated Arab chief, Mahfuz, who after twenty-five years of successful raiding into Abyssinia, during which time he drove off whole villages of men, women and children to be sold as slaves in Arabia and India, was defeated and killed by Lebna Dengel in 1517. Roused by Gran~'s success, Lebna Dengel determined to crush his new enemy, and to repeat his victory of ten years previously; he collected a large army and marched westwards to the attack. But the fates were now against him, and the good fortune which had smiled on the first nineteen years of his reign had left him to return no more. Firearms had been introduced into Arabia in 1515, Moslem merchants had brought them over to Zeila, and Gran~ was able to obtain some of these for his Somals, besides reinforcements of Turkish matchlockmen from Zebid and Arab mercenaries. Guns had not then reached Abyssinia (two were first brought in by Arabs in 1530), and consequently the relative fighting strength of the Moslems was much greater than that of their Abyssinian adversaries, a disproportion which was further increased by Gran~'s real skill as a general.

Lebna Dengel gained a preliminary victory at Samarna, but on March 7th, 1529, the Abyssinians suffered a crushing and overwhelming defeat at Shembera-Kourey, when thousands of their best men were slain, and an enormous amount of booty fell into the hands of Gran~.

The effects of this battle were decisive; for over a decade the Moslems pillaged and ravaged the unhappy kingdom from end to end, defeating the king and his forces whenever they met them, until the wretched monarch, hunted like a wild beast from one refuge to another, had hardly a mountain to in his country where he could call himself safe. One son was captured in 1539; another was killed in battle in the same year; his wife and remaining children were shut up in the impregnable Amba or mountain fortress of Debra Damo; and the crowning blow fell in 1539, when the royal Amba of Geshen, on which were incarcerated all royal princes except his immediate family, and the vast accumulated treasures of genrerations of kings, was captured by treachery, the entire population massacred, and the incalculable wealth stored therein during ceturies was carried off.

Beginning in th south, province after province fell before Gran~; Shoa, Fatagar (Arsi), Angot (North Shoa), Begemdir, Lasta (North Wello), Endegibtan (South Wello), Amhara (Gojam),Bahr-Nagast (Eritrea), Sabamaib (Tigre), Damot (East Wellega), Dawarro (Harar), Sigumo (Sidamo), Bizamo (West Wellega), Bali (Bale), Bizume (Gomu-Gofa), Enerraya (Illubabor/Keffa), were all in turn overrun by the Moslems. Time and again the king himself was almost captured; his adventures and hair-breadth escapes as recounted in the Abyssinian and even in the Arab chronicles read like a romance. On one occasion he was being chased round Lake Tana; he and his followers were crossing a narrow defile leading to the passage of the Ghion (Abai), just below where it issues from the lake, when Gran~ himself, leading the pursuit, came up with them and got right in among the King's men. Gran~ was pressed so tightly amongst them that he could not use his drawn sword, and thus just missed killing or capturing the king, who almost alone escaped by the fleetness of his horse.

The desolation wrought by this period of pillage is almost impossible to describe. Crops could not be cultivated, whole peoples starved; it was unsafe even to light a fire, lest a marauding party should be attracted thereby, and on this account it is alleged the Abyssinians then began the practice, which obtains today, of eating their meat raw. Their wonderful monasteries and churches were sacked and burned, irreplaceable old manuscripts, as well as vast stores of wealth accumulated in the sacred buildings, were destroyed or stolen. Even the ancient monastery of Debra Libanos in the south, the seat of learning, and the wonderful old church of Axum in the north, the crowning place of the monarchs for centuries, shared the common fate, and the loss to the country and indeed to the world may be measured by the descriptions given by the Moslem chronicler who accompanied Gran~ of the wealth that was scattered abroad.

Detailed accounts are given of the sacking and burning of over fifty of the principal churches and monasteries, some of them centuries old, all of them enriched with the accumulated wealth of years which had been placed there for safe-keeping. The pillage of the church of Mekana Selassie may be quoted as a typical example. Regarding this act of vandalism the chronicler says: "He himself (i.e. Ahmed Gran~) arrived at Mekana Selassie, and penetrated into it with admiration. He entered with his companions, and in contemplating it they almost lost the power of vision. It was ornamented with sheets of gold and silver on which had been placed incrustations of pearls: the leaf of a wooden doorway was ten cubits long and four wide: it was covered with sheets of gold and silver, and over the gold had been placed incrustations in various colours. the church was 100 cubits long; its width as much as its height, over 150 cubits; the ceiling and the interior courts were covered with sheets of gold and ornamented with golden statues. The Moslems were amazed at this work.....they crowded in and he [i.e. Gran~] said to them: 'What any man takes shall be for himself excepting the sheets.' They set to work with a thousand axes tearing down the gold and the incrustations which were in the church, from mid-afternoon until night; each man took as much gold as he wanted and was rich forever; more than a third of the gold was burned with the church."

The church of Atronsa Maryam was pillaged from midday until the following morning. The Moslems tore out rich brocaded velvets and silks, gold and silver in heaps, gold cups, dishes and censers, a "tabot" (ark of the covenant) of gold on four feet, weighing more than a thousand ounces, an illuminated Bible bound in sheets of gold, and countless other riches, until they were tired of carrying their loot and loading it up. Much still remained, so they set fire to the church and the store-houses and burned everything. So stricken with grief were some monks at the destruction of their church and its accumulated treasures that they threw themselves into the flames and perished there, an event quoted by the Moslem chronicler with grim satisfaction, and the pleasant addendum, "May God fight them." Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely.

The fiendish delight in destruction, as well as the thirst for loot, is evident from the foregoing extracts. And the fanaticism of the invading hordes is no less apparent from the writer's description of the battles. The Christian Abyssinians are always described as "infidels" or "polytheists"; when one of them is killed in battle "god hurled his sould into hell," and the kindly epithet, "May God's curse be on him," is generally appended to any reference to a prominent leader. Thousands of Abyssinians are always killed in every battle, though the Moslem losses are either nil or almost negligible; when a Moslem of note does happen to be slain "God hastened his soul to Paradise - what a happy ending," is the description.

The effects of all these years of ruthless massacre and pillage can hardly be over-rated - indeed it is probable that they have lasted until today, forthe country was permanently impoverished, the population decimated, and its whole development and progress thrown back for centuries.

But in spite of all these crushing and overwhelming disasters the Abyssinian king refused to yeild or to make terms with Gran~, and maintained a sort of guerilla warfare among the mountains. By 1538, when he was almost at the zenith of his misfortunes, Gran~, according to the old Ethiopian chronicler, sent messengers to Lebna Dengel saying: "Give me your daughter to wife, and let us make peace; if you do not as I bid you, there is nowhere where you may lay your head."

But the sturdy king, battered as he was by fortune, would listen to no overtures, and his uncompromising answer was full of dignity: "I will not give her to you, for you are an infidel: it is better to fall into the Lord's hands than into yours, for his power is as great as his pity. It is he who makes the weak strong and the strong weak."

He still hoped for help from Portugal, whither he had despatched Bermudez in 1535, and in 1540 he heard the news that an expedition was on its way. But he was not destined to see it, for worn out by the ten years of hardship, disaster and tribulation, national and personal, he died a fugitive among his mountains in September 1540, a few months before the arrival of his allies.

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