Walashma

The Walashma were a Muslim dynasty of the Horn of Africa that ruled Ifat and later Adal. They rose in eastern Shewa in the thirteenth century, annexing the Makhzumi Sultanate in 1278; in 1288 Wali Asma conquered Hubat and Adal.

Their contest with the Christian Solomonic emperors began in 1332, when Haqq ad-Din I was killed fighting Amda Seyon I. In 1403 the last Ifat sultan, Sa'ad ad-Din II, was killed at Zeila; his sons fled to Yemen and returned in 1415, when Sabr ad-Din III founded Adal with its seat at Dakkar and later Harar.

By the late fifteenth century power was passing to emirs and imams. The imam Ahmed Gran conquered most of Abyssinia in the 1530s before his death in 1543; in 1577 the court moved to Aussa, the sultanate became an imamate and the Walashma line ended.