Lebna Dengel

Lebna Dengel, who reigned as Dawit II, was emperor of Ethiopia from 1508 to 1540 and saw most of his empire overrun. He came to the throne as a child under the regency of his grandmother Eleni, a remarkable ruler in her own right who opened diplomatic contact with Portugal in 1509 against the objections of the court. When he took power himself he reversed her caution, defeated the Adal emir Mahfuz in 1517, and concluded that he did not need European help. That judgement cost him everything. In 1529 Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, called Gragn the left-handed, invaded from Adal with Ottoman firearms and matchlock infantry against an Ethiopian army that had neither, and destroyed it at Shimbra Kure. Over the following decade Gragn took most of the highlands, burned churches and monasteries with centuries of manuscripts in them, and forced mass conversion. Lebna Dengel spent his last years a fugitive moving between mountain strongholds, and died in one in 1540 without seeing the Portuguese expedition his appeals had finally summoned. Four hundred Portuguese musketeers under Cristóvão da Gama landed the following year and, with his son Gelawdewos, turned the war. The state survived, much reduced, and its cultural losses were never recovered. European writers of the period identified Ethiopia with the legend of Prester John, and the letters between his court and Lisbon are among the earliest sustained diplomatic exchanges between Africa and Europe. His queen Sabla Wangel held out at the fortress of Amba Geshen and lived to see the reconquest.

• Lived: 1496 CE – 1540 CE
• Nationality: Ethiopian
• Roles: ruler