Rabat I (1616/7 - 1644/5) was a ruler of the

Kingdom of Sennar The Funj Sultanate, also known as Funjistan, Sultanate of Sennar (after its capital Sennar) or Blue Sultanate (due to the traditional Sudanese convention of referring to black people as blue) (), was a monarchy in what is now Sudan, northwester ...

. According to

James Bruce James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who physically confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North and East Africa and in 1770 became the fir ...

, he was the son of

Badi I Badi I (1611/12 – 1616/17), also known as Badi el Kawam, was a ruler of the Kingdom of Sennar. During his reign, Sennar was at peace with its neighbor, Ethiopia. The Ethiopian ''Royal Chronicles'' mention that Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia responde ...

. He intrigued in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

n politics a number of times. Early in his reign he detained the

Copt Copts (; ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group native to Northeast Africa who have primarily inhabited the area of modern Egypt since antiquity. They are, like the broader Egyptian population, descended from the ancient Egyptians. Copts pre ...

ic bishop Abba Yeshaq, who had passed through Sennar on his way to Ethiopia. Richard Pankhurst, ''The Ethiopian Borderlands'' (Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press, 1997), p. 369. Pankhurst refers to him as "Erubat". A later act was his attempt to convert Saga Krestos, the son of

Emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Yaqob of Ethiopia, to Islam, which resulted in Saga Krestos' departure.E.A Wallis Budge. ''A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia'', 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970), p. 373. In response to a slave raid by Emperor

Susenyos of Ethiopia Susenyos I ( ; –1575 – 17 September 1632), also known as Susenyos the Catholic, was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1607 to 1632, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty. His throne names were Seltan Sagad and Malak Sagad III. He was the son of '' ...

in 1619, Rabat led a great army against the Ethiopians, and slew one of the Imperial officials, a Muslim named Muhammed Sayed. In response, Emperor Susenyos marched to the border and defeated Rabat's army.

Notes

Funj sultans 17th-century monarchs in Africa Year of birth uncertain {{Africa-royal-stub