sent to a company of Portuguese soldiers who had proceeded to Debarwa to find passage home, but they failed to respond in time for the coming battle. The allied forces spent the following months marching the provinces before heading to Imam Ahmad's camp next to Lake Tana. On 13 February 1543, they defeated a group of cavalry and infantry led by the Imam's lieutenant Sayid Mehmed in Wogera (roughly corresponding to the modern woreda of the same name), killing Sayid Mehmed. From the prisoners it was learned that the Imam was camped only 5 days' march away at Deresgue, and flush with victory the army marched to confront their enemy. Location As with many of the battles in Castanhoso's narrative, published 20 years after the events they describe, the exact location where the two forces encountered one another is not known. General histories of Ethiopia are vague: Paul B. Henze, in his Layers of Time, implies the battlefield was near Lake Tana, and in a footnote states that much of the combat activity at this time "would seem to have been in Gaynt", the former province located southeast of Lake Tana. Richard Pankhurst in The Ethiopian: A History places the engagement in "Western Bagemder", which covered the area corresponding to the contemporary Debub Gondar Zone. Lastly, the name itself is of little help: "Wayna Daga" is the traditional Amharic word for the climatic regions between the higher, mountainous "Daga" elevations (2,600 meters above sea level and above) and the lowland "Qolla" elevations (between 1,400 and 2,000 meters above sea level). Most of the lands around Lake Tana fall into this middle climatic region. Whiteway, in his introduction to Castanhoso's account, discusses the evidence he was able to compile for its location. Castanhoso himself does not name the place; it was Pedro Páez who first provided the name of "Wayna Daga". Paez's younger contemporary, Jerónimo Lobo, locates the battle at a place called Granhi Berr Jaaf Granhi, or "Granhi's Gate, Granhi's Tree"; Lobo was told the locale acquired this name when Imam Ahmad, finding himself mortally wounded in the battle, "in great pain and rage, took the unsheathed scimitar with which he was fighting and struck a blow on the trunk of a tree near him". Lobo adds that he was shown the place, tree and mark. James Bruce, travelling south of Dengel Ber over three centuries later, mentions passing "the