Harar Was A Mere Mass Of Bedouin Villages During The Reign Of Mohammed
Gragne, The "Left-Handed" Attila Of Adel.
[13] Supplied with Arab
mercenaries from Mocha, and by the Turks of Yemen with a body of
Janissaries and a train of artillery, he burst into Efat and Fatigar.
In
A.D. 1528 he took possession of Shoa, overran Amhara, burned the churches
and carried away an immense booty. The next campaign enabled him to winter
at Begmeder: in the following year he hunted the Emperor David through
Tigre to the borders of Senaar, gave battle to the Christians on the banks
of the Nile, and with his own hand killed the monk Gabriel, then an old
man. Reinforced by Gideon and Judith, king and queen of the Samen Jews,
and aided by a violent famine which prostrated what had escaped the spear,
he perpetrated every manner of atrocity, captured and burned Axum,
destroyed the princes of the royal blood on the mountain of Amba Geshe
[14], and slew in A.D. 1540, David, third of his name and last emperor of
AEthiopia who displayed the magnificence of "King of Kings."
Claudius, the successor to the tottering throne, sent as his ambassador to
Europe, one John Bermudez, a Portuguese, who had been detained in
Abyssinia, and promised, it is said, submission to the Pontiff of Rome,
and the cession of the third of his dominions in return for
reinforcements. By order of John III., Don Stephen and Don Christopher,
sons of Don Vasco de Gama, cruised up the Red Sea with a powerful
flotilla, and the younger brother, landing at Masawwah with 400
musqueteers, slew Nur the governor and sent his head to Gondar, where the
Iteghe Sabel Wenghel received it as an omen of good fortune.
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