Umar Din

80
Umar Din bigraphy, stories - Sultan of the Adal Sultanate

Umar Din : biography

Umar Din () (r. 1526–1553) was a Sultan of the Sultanate of Adal. He was the brother of Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad.

Reign

Umar Din was made Sultan by Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi after he killed Umar Din’s brother Abu Bakr in 1526, and ruled at least until the Imam was killed in battle in 1542. Although Trimingham describes the Sultan as the Imam’s puppet,J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the University Press, 1952), p. 86. the Futuh al-Habasa of Sihab ad-Din records that the Sultan and the Imam quarrelled over the distribution of the alms tax at some point between the Battle of Shimbra Kure and the Battle of Amba Sel, which led to Imam Ahmad leaving Harar to live amongst the Somalis in Zarba for some time. This suggests Umar Din wielded some power of his own.Sihab ad-Din Ahmad bin ‘Abd al-Qader, Futuh al-Habasa: The conquest of Ethiopia, translated by Paul Lester Stenhouse with annotations by Richard Pankhurst (Hollywood: Tsehai, 2003), pp. 101-105

Notes

Category:16th-century monarchs in Africa Category:Walashma dynasty