Battle of Antukyah

Battle of Antukyah
Part of the Ethiopian–Adal war
Date 1531 Location Ethiopia, 89 km (55 mi) south of Lake Hayq Result Adalite victory Territorial changes Shewa, Fatagar and Ifat annexed by Adal
Belligerents
Adal Sultanate	Ethiopian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi Garad Hirabu Goita Tedros Al Somali	Eslamu, Governor of Fatagar
Strength
12,000 men 500 horses[1] (per Arab Faqīh) and 7 cannons	"anything up to 100,000 men"[2]

The Battle of Antukyah was fought in 1531 between Adal Sultanate forces under Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi and the Abyssinian army under Eslamu. Huntingford has located Antukyah about 89 kilometres (55 miles) south of Lake Hayq, at the edge of the Ethiopian Highlands, in the modern district of Antsokiya and Gemza.^[3]

Despite the care Eslamu took in deploying his men, and the number of them, the Ethiopian army panicked and fled when the Imam's cannons cut down thousands of them.^[1] According to sixteenth century Adal writer of Futuh al-Habasha Arab Faqīh, the number of dead and wounded was comparable to the previous Battle of Shimbra Kure.^[4]

Notes

1. Frederick A. Edwards (1905). The Conquest of Abyssinia pp.335.
2. Dennis Showalter, Early Modern Wars 1500–1775 [1]
3. Cited in 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), p. 35n. 137.
4. Sihab ad-Din Ahmad, Futuh, p. 139.