dynasty reached its apex under the successive reigns of Sultan Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, who successfully consolidated Gobroon power during the Bardera wars, and Sultan Ahmed Yusuf, who was considered to be the most powerful king in east Africa in his time. He managed to gather 20 thousand brave & strong Somali troops and invaded the Zanzibar island near Tanzania and he captured the Islands, slaughtered all the Arabic troops and freed the Bantu slaves and through his military dominance, Sultan Yusuf managed to exact tribute from the Omani king in the coastal town of Lamu. The Gobroon army numbered 20,000 men in times of peace, and could be raised to 50,000 troops in times of war. The supreme commanders of the army were the Sultan and his brother, who in turn had Malaakhs and Garads under them. The military was supplied with rifles and cannons by Somali traders of the coastal regions that controlled the East African arms trade. Darawiish Wars At the end of the 19th century, the Berlin conference gathered together Europe's most powerful countries who decided amongst themselves the fate of the African continent. The British, Italians and Ethiopians partitioned Greater Somalia into spheres of influence, cutting into the previous nomadic grazing system and Somali civilizational network that connected port cities with those of the interior. The Ethiopian Emperor Menelik's Somali expedition, consisting of an army of 11,000 men, made a deep push into the vicinity of Luuq in Somalia. However, his troops were soundly defeated by the Gobroon army, with only 200 soldiers returning alive. The Ethiopians subsequently refrained from further expeditions into the interior of Somalia, but continued to oppress the people in the Ogaden by plundering the nomads of their livestock numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The British blockade in firearms to the Somalis rendered the nomads in the Ogaden helpless against the armies of Menelik. With the establishment of important Muslim orders headed by Somali scholars such as Shaykh Abd Al-Rahman bin Ahmad al-Zayla'i and Uways al-Barawi, a rebirth of Islam in East Africa was soon afoot. The resistance against the colonization of Muslim lands in Africa and Asia by the Afghans and Mahdists would inspire a large resistance movement in Somalia. Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a former nomad boy that had traveled to many Muslim centers in the Islamic world, returned to Somalia as a grown man and began promoting the Salihiya