Dahlak Tombstones: Alid Flight & the Rise of Adal Sultanates

How did ancient tombstones on the remote Dahlik Archipelago prove a forgotten 8th-century migration of Alid elites fleeing Abbasid persecution, rewriting the history of the Horn of Africa?

Recent “intellectual archaeology” using funerary stelae from the Dahlik Islands (off Eritrea) has uncovered hard physical evidence of the Alid Sharifian Flight, a massive political exodus triggered by Abbasid purges in the late 8th century. The stones document two distinct waves of migration: the Hasanid flight of 762 CE, driven by a brutal crackdown on the military wing of the Alid resistance, and the Husaynid exodus of 786 CE, a strategic with...