Battle of Wayna Daga

Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=Battle of Wayna Daga
partof=the Ethiopian–Adal War and the Turkish-Portuguese War (1538-1557)


caption=
date=21 February 1543
place=modern Amhara Region, Ethiopia
result=decisive Abyssinian victory
combatant1=Ethiopian Empire
Kingdom of Portugal
combatant2=Adal Sultanate
Ottoman Empire
commander1=Emperor Galawdewos
commander2=Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi
strength1=8,000 Ethiopian infantry, 500 Ethiopian horse,
70 Portuguese musketeers, 60 Portuguese horse
strength2=14,000 infantry, 1200 horse, 200 Ottoman musketeers
casualties1=unknown
casualties2=extensive, but not precisely known;
160 Ottoman musketeers killed
Campaign
name=
battles=||

The Battle of Wayna Daga (Amharic for "Grape-cultivating altitude") occurred 21 February 1543 east of Lake Tana. Led by the Emperor Galawdewos, the combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeated the Muslim army led by Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi. Tradition states that Ahmad was killed by a Portuguese musketeer, who had charged alone into the Muslim lines. Once his soldiers learned of the Imam's death, they fled the battlefield.

Background

At the Battle of Wofla (28 August 1542, Imam Ahmad had crushed the Portuguese expeditionary force, killing most of its men, capturing practically all of the firearms they had, and capturing and killing its leader, Cristovão da Gama. By any reasonable assessment, the Imam enjoyed a decisive victory over his greatest foe; armies in the Horn of Africa melted away with the death of their leaders. So to reduce the strain on his treasury, he dismissed all but 200 of the mercenary Ottoman arquebusers, and relying on his own forces retired to Emfraz near Lake Tana for the coming rainy season.

However, da Gama had inspired a fierce loyalty in his surviving followers, all but 50 of whom had reassembled after their defeat around Queen Sabla Wengel, and taken refuge at "The Mountain of the Jews", which Whiteway identifies as Amba Sel. [R.S. Whiteway, editor and translator, "The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in 1441-1543", 1902. (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967), pp. 56 f.] Miguel de Castanhoso, writing decades after the fact, states that after the Emperor Gelawdewos had joined the survivors, and seeing the number of men who flocked to the Emperor's standard, at Christmas "we went to the Preste, ["Sic". Early visitors to Ethiopia commonly erroneously identified the Emperor with the legendary Prester John] and begged him to help us avenge the death of Dom Christovão." [Whiteway, p. 74] Gelawdewos agreed to march against the Imam The Portuguese firearms which had been stored at Debre Damo were produced; a message was sent to the missing company of Portuguese soldiers, but they failed to respond in time for the coming battle.

The allied forces spent the following months marching the provinces before heading to Imam Ahmad's camp next to Lake Tana. On 13 February 1543, they defeated a group of cavalry and infantry led by the Imam's lieutenant Sayid Mehmed in Wogera (roughly corresponding to the modern woreda of the same name), killing Sayid Mehmed. From the prisoners it was learned that the Imam was camped only 5 days' march away, and flush with victory the army marched to confront their enemy. [Whiteway, pp. 75f]

The Battle

Once the Ethiopian-Portuguese army found the army of Imam Ahmad, they set up camp nearby; Emperor Galawedewos advised against engaging the enemy right away, hoping that the 50 missing Portuguese soldiers would arrive soon; "in that country fifty Portuguese are a greater reinforcement than one thousand natives." [Whiteway, p. 77] For the following days, each camp preceded to harass the other by raiding with their cavalry. The allied side had the better of the exchange, keeping them from venturing from their camp for supplies, until the Muslims resorted to a stratagem to kill the leading Ethiopian soldier, Azmach Keflo, which demoralized the Ethiopian troops. [Whiteway, pp. 78f. Castanhoso describes Keflo as "captain-general of the camp", which Whiteway believes was equivalent to the post of Fitawrari.] Faced with the potential desertion of his force, Galawedewos decided he could wait no longer and prepared for an assault the next day.

The two forces started the main battle early the next day, with the Muslim force divided into two groups. At first, the Muslim side succeeded in driving the allied side back, until a charge by the Portuguese and Ethiopian cavalries broke up the charge. At this point Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi, with his son at his side, took to the field and led a renewed assault. [Whiteway, p. 80] It was in this charge that the Imam was killed by a bullet to his chest, which threw him from his horse, although the sources differ in how he died.

According to Castanhoso, the Imam was recognized by the Portuguese arquabusiers, who directed their combined firepower at him, and one of the arquebuses in the group fired the fatal shot. Although he was an eyewitness to the battle, Castanhoso constantly emphasizes in his account the corporate identity of the Portuguese expedition after Gama's death: "We bore before us the banner of Holy Compassion ("Sancta Misericordia"); the Preste had sought to appoint one of us Captain, but we desired none save the banner of himself to lead us, for it was not to be anticipated that we should follow another, having lost what we had lost." [Whiteway, p. 76]

There is another tradition, at least as old as John Bermudez, and repeated by every other near-contemporary source (e.g., Gaspar Correia, Jerónimo Lobo), that gives the credit of Imam Ahmad's death to one John of Castillo; John charged into the Muslim troops so he could fire upon Ahmad Gragn at point-blank range, after which the Imam's followers killed him. [See, for example, Jerónimo Lobo, "The Itinerário of Jerónimo Lobo", translated by Donald M. Lockhart (London: Hakluyt Society, 1984), p. 209] Both Castanhoso and the story of John of Castillo return to agreement about Imam Ahmad's fate after this point: at the end of the battle, when Emperor Galawedewos offered a his sister's hand in marriage to the man who killed the Imam, an Ethiopian soldier presented the Imam's head as proof of the deed; but a subsequent investigation revealed that the Portuguese had wounded him before the soldier had cut off the Imam's head, "thus he did not give his sister to that man, nor did he reward the Portuguese, as it was not known who wounded him". [Whiteway, p. 82]

Upon the death of the Imam, his followers began to flee the battlefield. Armies of that time and place tended to pledge their loyalty to a leader, not to a cause; most of his followers pragmatically looked to their own well-being. An exception was the captain of the Ottoman arquebusers, who seeing: that the Moors were giving way, he determiend to die; with bared arms, and a long broadsword in his hand, he swept a great space in front of him; he fought like a valiant cavalier, for five Abyssinian horsement were on him, who could neither make him yield nor slay him. One of them attacked him with a javelin; he wrenched it from his hand, he houghed another's horse, and none dared approach him. There came up a Portuguese horseman, by name Gonçalo Fernandes, who charged him spear in rest and wounded him sorely; the Turk grasped it [the spear] so firmly, that before he could disengage himself the Moor gave him a great cut above the knee that severed all the sinews and crippled him; finding himself wounded, he drew his sword and killed him. [Whiteway, p. 81]

Aftermath

The Imam's wife Bati del Wambara managed to escape the Ethiopian forces with the forty surviving Ottoman arquebusiers and return to Harar, but her son was captured in the aftermath and later exchanged for the Emperor's brother, Menas.

Notes