Dahlak

Dahlak was a Muslim sultanate on the Red Sea archipelago off Eritrea, with a deputy governing Massawa at its height. By 1337 it had lost its Ethiopian trade monopoly and come under Yemen’s Rasulid dynasty.

In 1464 and 1465 Emperor Zara Yaqob sacked Massawa and the islands. Dahlak later became a Tahirid vassal; the Portuguese devastated it again in 1541. Ottoman annexation of the islands in 1557 ended the sultanate.