Portrait of Lebnä-Dengel

Unlike the invented emperor Alchitrof nearby, this man was real. Lebna Dengel ruled Ethiopia from 1508 and reigned into a catastrophe: in the 1520s and 30s a Muslim general the Ethiopians called Gragn, the Left-handed, overran much of his Christian kingdom. Desperate, the emperor sent to Portugal for help, and a small Portuguese force did arrive at last, muskets and all, though only after his death in 1540. To Europeans he fed the old dream of Prester John, a mighty Christian king somewhere beyond the Muslim lands, an ally against Islam waiting to be found in Africa.