In the meantime, several new factors of significance entered the situation during the Great War. The ill-fated pro-Muslim prince Lij Yasu became Emperor of Ethiopia in December 1913, and moved his court from Dire Dawa to Harar amongst his Muslim subjects with whom his sympathies lay. With the not-disinterested support of the Turkish and German Consuls in Ethiopia, the new Emperor conceived the aim of creating a vast Muslim Empire in N.E. Africa. To this end he entered into relations with Sayyid Muhammad, probably supplying him with financial aid and arms, and arranged for a German mechanic called Emil Kirsch to join the Dervishes and work for them as an armourer at their new headquarters at Taleh where a formidable ring of fortresses had been built by Yemeni masons.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 231