Sultanate of Dahlak
The Sultanate of Dahlak was a small medieval kingdom covering the Dahlak Archipelago and parts of the Eritrean coast. First attested in 1093, it quickly profited from its strategic trading location, gaining heavily from being near to Yemen as well as Egypt and India. After the mid 13th century Dahlak lost its trade monopoly and subsequently started to decline. Both the Ethiopian empire and Yemen tried to enforce their authority over the sultanate. It was eventually annexed by the Ottomans in 1557, who made it part of the Habesh Eyalet.
History
Origins and early history
After the Umayyads seized Dahlak in 702, they made it a prison and place of forced exile, as did the early Abbasids who succeeded them. By the 9th century the Dahlak islands had come under the rule of the king of Mdri Bahri . Around 900 he concluded a treaty of friendship with the Ziyadid sultan of Zabid in Yemen, and by the mid 10th century it is recorded that Dahlak was forced to pay tribute to Sultan Ishaq ibn Ibrahim. A century later, Dahlak was involved in a power struggle between the Ziyadids and the Najahids, as the latter had fled to there in 1061. Battles were fought until 1086, when the Najahids managed to restore their rule in Zabid. It was in the second half of the 11th century, under the rule of the Najahids, when the Dahlak archipelago prospered the most.The first sultan who is attestable is Sultan Mubarak, whose funerary stele states died in 1093. His dynasty apparently lasted until 1230/1249. It was during this period, the 11th–mid 13th century, that the Sultanate enjoyed its greatest prosperity. This prosperity was mostly based on the monopoly of the external trade of the Mdri Bahri, but also involvement in the transit trade between Egypt and India. It was also through Dahlak that Midre Bahri maintained diplomatic relations with Yemen. In the mid 13th century, however, the Zagwe kings began to make use of a new trading route in the south, with the port town Zeila as its final destination. Thus Dahlak lost its trading monopoly. Around the same time, Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi records that the Dahlak sultans struggled to stay independent from the Rasulids.
From the 12th century the sultans of Dahlak controlled the important trading town of Massawa on the African Red Sea coast, which was governed by a deputy titled the Nai'b. Other coastal settlements on the African continent might have been controlled by the Dahlak sultans as well, at least temporarily. To the Eritrean, the sultan of Dahlak was known as Seyuma Bahr, in contrast to the Bahr Negash of Medri Bahri.
It was shortly after the death of Sultan Mubarak that the Dahlak sultanate began to mint coins, which were used to pay for imported goods such as Egyptian textiles and storax balsam.
The Muslims of Dahlak were probably not successful in proselytizing Mdri Bahri. The Eritrean Church had been well-established for centuries. Muslims were tolerated only as traders.