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'Badlay ibn Sa'ad ad-Din II' (also known as 'Sihab ad-Din Ahmad Badlay'^[1][2], 'Arwe Badlay' - "Badlay the Beast") (died 1445) was a sultan of Adal and a son of Sa'ad ad-Din II.
Sultan Badlay moved the capital of Adal to Dakkar (a few miles southeast of Harar) upon his ascension; Pankhurst states that he founded that town.^[3] He rebelled against his Ethiopian overlord, leading a jihad and succeeded in capturing the province of Bale. Then in 1443, he invaded the Ethiopian province of Dawaro, and again in 1445, but Emperor Zara Yaqob defeated and killed him in the Battle of Gomit.^[4] The Royal Chronicle of Zara Yaqob rerports that the Emperor cut Badlay's body into pieces and sent the parts to different parts of his realm: his head to a place called "Amba", and other parts of his body to Axum, Manhadbe (possibly the Manadeley Francisco Álvares visited in the 1520s), Wasel (near modern Dessie), Jejeno (likely Mekane Selassie), Lawo (possibly Lawo Gabaya), and Wiz (location unknown).^[5]

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Notes

1. G.W.B. Huntingford, ''Historical Geography of Ethiopia'' (London: British Academy, 1989), p. 101. ISBN 0-19-726055-1
2. Pankhurst, Richard. ''The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century'' (Asmara, Eritrea: Red Sea Press, 1997), pp.56
3. Richard Pankhurst, ''History of Ethiopian Towns'' (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), p. 49.
4. J. Spencer Trimingham, ''Islam in Ethiopia'' (Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the University Press, 1952), p. 75.
5. Identification of place names is from Huntingford, p. 104.