Baghdad Overwrite: Hidden Abyssinian Kingdom of the Red Sea

Was the rise of the Najahid dynasty on the Red Sea coast a slave-soldier revolt as Baghdad claimed, or the culmination of centuries of Abyssinian power and the birth of a sovereign kingdom?

The transcript reveals how the Abbasid Caliphate’s official historical narrative deliberately rewrote the history of Red Sea coastal kingdoms through what historians call the “Baghdad overwrite.” From the capital’s perspective, local rulers were mere appointees and power shifts were dismissed as slave-soldier revolts. However, local evidence from the Dahlik Islands and Red Sea coast tells a completely different story: a sovereign Abyssinian power ba...