ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the events on the coast and the first interactions between the Portuguese and Ethiopian clerics and officers were recorded in the Carta and in the first pages of Alvares's Verdadera Informacam. The Portuguese were making their way north on the East African coast, and by the early 16th century they had started to preside over the Arabian Sea, by seizing Cochin, Socotra, Hormuz, and Goa. In the Sultanate of Adal, already in the 1490s, political leadership shifted from the Walasma Sultan Muhammad ibn Azhar ad-Din to Mahfuz ibn Muhammad, governor of Zeila. The Ottoman Empire was making headway into the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, laying the foundation for four centuries of hegemony in the Muslim world. Matewos's predicament was the by-product of a struggle for power and resources within the Estado, one in which the ambassador became an unwilling participant.
