Dawit II Dawit II ( Ge ' ez ዳዊት " dāwīt " ) , enthroned as Emperor Anbasa Segad ( Ge ' ez አንበሳ ሰገድ , " anbassā sagad " , Amh . " ānbessā seged " , ' to whom lions bow ' ) , better known by his birth name Lebna Dengel ( Ge ' ez ልብነ ድንግል " libna dingil " ; 1501 – September 2 , 1540 ) , was " " ( 1508 – 1540 ) of Ethiopia . A member of the Solomonic dynasty , he was the son of Emperor Na ' od and Queen Na ' od Mogasa . Early reign . Although she was well into her seventies , the Empress Mother Eleni stepped in to act as her step - great - grandson ' s regent until 1516 , when he came of age . During this time , she was aware that the neighboring Muslim states were benefitting from the assistance of other , larger Muslim countries like the Ottoman Empire . Eleni sought to neutralize this advantage by dispatching the Armenian Mateus to Portugal to ask for assistance . However , the Portuguese response did not arrive in Ethiopia until much later , when an embassy led by Dom Rodrigo de Lima arrived at Massawa on April 9 , 1520 . Transversing the Ethiopian highlands , they did not reach Dawit ' s camp until October 19 of that year . Francisco Álvares provides us a description of the Emperor : Dawit had ambushed and killed Emir Mahfuz of Adal in 1517 . About the same time a Portuguese fleet attacked Zeila , a Muslim stronghold , and burned it . In 1523 , Dawit campaigned amongst the Gurage near Lake Zway . Contemporaries concluded that the Muslim threat to Ethiopia was finally over , so when the diplomatic mission from Portugal arrived at last , Dawit denied that Mateus had the authority to negotiate treaties , ignoring Eleni ' s counsels . After a stay of six years , the Portuguese at last set sail and left a governing class who thought they were securely in control of the situation . As Paul B . Henze notes , " They were mistaken . " The Ethiopian – Adal war . With the death of Sultan Abu Bakr in 1520 , a young Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al - Ghazi consolidated his hold on the Adal Sultanate , making his candidate Umar Din Sultan , then began a campaign to extinguish the Empire of Ethiopia . The Imam crossed the Awash River and entered Fatagar in 1528 , looting and burning the town of Badeqe before Dawit could arrive with his army . The Imam began to withdraw , retreating across the Samara , a tributary of the Awash . The Imam ' s followers were accustomed to making lightning raids on Ethiopian territory , swiftly attacking and quickly returning home ; they had no experience in pitched battles , and Imam Ahmad Gragn struggled with numerous desertions . The Emperor Dawit caught up with Imam Ahmad Gragn ' s forces , and they engaged in battle on either March 7 or March 9 , 1529 at Shimbra Kure , but failed to destroy the Imam ' s army . While not a clear victory for the Imam , this battle still proved to the Imam ' s followers that they could fight the Ethiopian army . Imam Ahmad Gragn spent the next two years preoccupied beyond the Awash , but returned to attack Ethiopia in 1531 , where he scattered the army under the general Eslamu by firing the first cannon in the Horn of Africa . Dawit was forced to withdraw into the Ethiopian highlands and fortify the passes into Bet Amhara ( " the House of Amhara " ) , leaving the territories to the east and south under the protection of his general Wasan Sagad . However , Wasan Sagad was slain near Mount Busat while fighting Ura ' i Utman on 29 July ( 5 Nahase 1524 A . M . ) and his army scattered . The Imam surprised the Emperor at the Battle of Amba Sel on 27 October , where the Emperor was almost captured , a reversal , in the words of R . S . Whiteway , that left Lebna Dengel " never in a position to offer a pitched battle to his enemies . " The Imam ' s followers poured into Bet Amhara , pillaging every church they found , including Mekane Selassie , Atronsa Maryam , Debre Nagwadgwad and Ganata Giyorgis . Emperor Dawit fell back behind the Abay River to the relative security of Gojjam . Only their failure to capture the royal compound at Amba Geshen slowed the Muslims down . In the campaigns that followed , Ahmad ' s followers destroyed churches , monasteries , and converted Christians at the point of spear . In April 1533 , Ahmad once again assembled his troops at Debre Berhan to conquer — or at least ravage — the northern regions of Tigray , Begemder , and Gojjam . Both Ethiopia and Dawit suffered heavily from these assaults . The monastery of Debre Libanos was burned , and the establishments on the islands of Lake Tana looted . Dawit ' s eldest son Fiqtor was killed at Zara in Wag by a lieutenant of Ahmad on April 7 , 1537 ; another son , Menas , was captured on May 19 , 1539 , and later sent to Yemen . Amba Geshen fell to another assault in January , 1540 , the royal prisoners interred there were slaughtered with their guards and the royal treasury looted . During the years that he lived as an outlaw in his own realm , Dawit came to see Queen Eleni ' s wisdom in reaching out to Europe for help , and he dispatched João Bermudes , who had arrived in Ethiopia with Dom Rodrigo de Lima , to ask for it once again . However , this help in the form of Cristóvão da Gama and his picked troop of 400 did not reach Ethiopia until after Dawit was killed in battle near Debre Damo , 2 September 1540 . The Ethiopian historian Taddesse Tamrat writes , " The Muslim occupation of the Christian highlands under Ahmad Gragn lasted for little more than ten years , between 1531 and 1543 . But the amount of destruction brought about in these years can only be estimated in terms of centuries . " One of Dawit II ' s younger sons , Yaqob , is said to have stayed behind to hide in the province of Menz in Shewa . Yaqob ' s grandson Susenyos I defeated his various second cousins in 1604 to become Emperor and started the Gondar line of the Solomonic dynasty .