Hirabu bin Goita Tedros bin Adam - Futuh - Al Habasha

These are some quotes from the fatah ul habash book. As you can see the Marehan were led by a dude called Hirabu and his full name is not even Somali. In addition, he is forced to join the war, and when Imam Ahmed leaves, Hirabu and his people desert the war and return to their lands.

At this moment the companions of the imam screamed out, saying, ‘The infidels have tricked us; they are after the livestock,’ whereupon the imam split his forces into two divisions: one he entrusted to Garad Ahmusa, composed of the Somali spearmen of the Marraihan, the Gorgorah and the Hawiya; around one-thousand of them from among the most famous spearmen. And from the soldiers bearing shields, the same number.

”He sent (another messenger) to the tribe of Marraihan whose chieftain was Hirabu bin Goita Tedros bin Adam*, and he also sent (messengers) to the outlying Provinces to spur them on to the jihad, for God, and in the way of the Most High God.


Then Hirabu the chieftain of the Somali tribe of Marraihan, killed one of the equerries of the sultan ‘Umar Din when he was in Nageb. The imam heard about what Hirabu had done, and he said to the Sultan ‘Umar Din, ‘This Somali has acted treacherously towards you and killed your equerry.’ So the imam, and the sultan with him, prepared himself for an expedition and set out and arrived at the country of the Somalis, as far as Kidad. Hirabu. meantime, had fled and was hiding in his own country.The imam asked the sultan, ‘What shall we do now? I am going to send for him to hand over the horses, and to pay the blood-money. If he does so, then all is well: if he does not, then I shall go against him, while you go back to your country.’ So the imam sent to Hirabu to hand over the horses, and to pay the blood-money to some sharifs of the family of Ba’ Alawi, the Husainites, may God bless us through their means.”

The army camped around the city (Harar; my own barracks), with each tribe being kept apart from the others. The tribe of the Marraihan was, however, wavering. Their chieftain was a man fond of intrigue and procrastination. Extremely wily, he loved double-dealing and swindles. The imam organised some of his soldiers and went to the Marraihan and confronted Hirabu and his tribe and said to him: ‘Why are you lagging behind in coming on the jihad? Hirabu complained about his plight, and excused himself on the grounds of his poverty-stricken state.

”Now, having finished this, let us return to the earlier narrative, and look at what happened during the Somali campaign.When news of the imam’s leaving for the outlying provinces of Abyssinia reached them, a certain person, by name Hirabu, a chief of one of the Somali tribes called Marraihan, had arrived half-way along the route to the country of Harar. After verifying the departure of the imam to the land of Abbyssinia, he doubled back and returned to his own country.”

”He also sent (a messenger) to the tribe of Girri which was the tribe whose leader and chieftain was Mattan bin Utman bin Kaled, the Somali, his brother-in-law*

* 158) may also mean ‘the imam’s son-in-law’ See supra note 32. We know that the imam was only twenty-one when he defeated the patrician Degalhan (see p.27 supra) and that Mattan married his sister Fardusa (see p.44 infra).[/quote]