King Gälawdewos was considered as the restorer of the Christian kingdom from the decisive military defeat of the Muslim state of Adal, Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Ġāzī traditionally called Ahmad ‘Grañ. He was the second son of King Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl whom he succeeded in 1540. He fought Ahmad and defeated him with considerable support of the Portuguese. Then he maintained relative peace and security of the Christian kingdom for short time. He faced several challenges in the kingdom including the revival of the Muslim state of Adal, the expansion of the Oromo people from South to North and the occupation of Massawa by the Turkish forces. Finally, he confronted the Muslim forces, indeed with the joining of him a few Portuguese military armies, and was killed by Nur forces in 1559 and the Muslims cut his head took it as a war trophy.
His 19 years of reign is recounted in his official chronicle which was written two years after his death in 1561 most probably by the famous medieval church scholar ʿƎnbaqom. It was edited and translated into French by William Conzelman in 1895 whose edition and translation contributed for the reconstruction of the medieval history of Ethiopia in last 100 years. A new updated edition of this chronicle with annotated English translation is available that I have carried out for the fulfilment of my Ph.D. study.
Though the chronicle of King Gälawdewos is, next to the chronicles of Särṣä Dǝngǝl and Susǝnyos, the most voluminous of the chronicles of Ethiopian kings, only two-thirds of its content is valuable for the historical reconstruction. The remaining one-third, of clear literary value, is composed of praises, prophecies, panegyrics and biblical quotations which cannot be treated as historical data.
Evaluated from the historical point of view, the part of the Chronicle valuable for the historical reconstruction has many shortcomings. It lacks objectivity and reliability, particularly in unfolding the role of the Portuguese who, in fact, saved Gälawdewos’s force from a decisive defeat during the military confrontation with Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Ġāzī. Indeed, if one would consider what the Portuguese armies have done in those turbulent years, it would be justifiable if the chronicler dedicates at least a few chapters about them. But a very little information even in some cases inaccurate has been recorded in the chronicle. In general, the Chronicle provides intermittently very little information about the coming of the Portuguese army, why they were defeated in the first confrontation between the Muslims, the unnecessary act of the Portuguese army who killed a Muslim without the good will of the king, the coming of the Portuguese envoys. In all these narratives, the readers would clearly understand that the chronicler deliberately undermines the role of the Portuguese whose history is indeed well documented in the work of Castanhoso, chronicler of the Portuguese expedition. Let us examine such facts in the chronicle point by the point.
Even though the two sources are concerned about their own subject of discussion, the chronicler of Gälawdewos denies many basic facts concerning the Portuguese. The chronicler tends to glorify the protagonist, King Gälawdewos, and in some cases in the battles when the Portuguese were confronted with Aḥmad in the absence of Gälawdewos, he ascribes the final victory to the king. This is clear in Chapter 12 where the chronicler narrates the king’s bravery stating that the Portuguese involved in the struggle with unfaithful people, but the final victory was given to Gälawdewos. This chapter basically deals with the first military confrontation between the Portuguese soldiers and the forces of Aḥmad at the time when Gälawdewos was in Šäwa. From then, the king moved to Tǝgray to meet them after their victory. In this passage, the chronicler obviously makes a statement incompatible with the fact. The whole text reads like this
“In the second year of the reign of Mar Gälawdewos the church of Tǝgray won again a partial victory over the Muslim tribes from around Aräfta because the final vic