Early in the fourteenth century, Haq ad-Din, Sultan of Ifat, turned the sporadic and disjointed forays of his predecessors into a full-scale war of aggression, and apparently for the first time, couched his call to arms in the form of a religious war against the Abyssinian ‘infidels’. At first the Muslims were successful. Christian territory was invaded, churches razed, and Christians forced to apostasize at the point of the sword. In 1415, however, the Muslims were routed and the ruler of Ifat, Sa‘d ad-Din, pursued and eventually killed in his last stronghold on the island off the coast of Zeila which to this day bears his name. From this period the Arab chroniclers refer to Adal as the ‘Land of Sa‘d ad-Din’. This crushing defeat, and Sa‘d ad-Din’s martyrdom, for his death soon came to be regarded in this light, took place in the reign of the Abyssinian Negus Yeshaq (1414–29) and it is in the songs celebrating his victories over the Muslims that the name ‘Somali’ is first recorded.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 97