Born with the name ‘Chapu’ in southern Ethiopia’s Khambata region in 1548, Malik Ambar fell into the hands of slave dealers as a young boy. He was bought and sold several times until he reached Baghdad where he was sold to a prominent merchant who educated and converted him to Islam and gave him the name ‘Ambar’- Arabic for amber, the brown Jewel.

In the early 1570s, Ambar arrived in Deccan where he was purchased by Chingiz Khan. Khan himself was a former slave who rose to become the chief minister of the state of Ahmednagar. He took Ambar under his wing and instructed him on military and administrative matters.

When Chingiz died in the 1580s, Amber was set free. For the next 20 years, he left Ahmednagar and led a mercenary company who worked for hire all over the Deccan. Ambar was bestowed with the title ‘Malik’, meaning leader or master.

In 1595, Malik returned to Ahmednagar and served under another Habshi (Ethiopian) lord. This was around the same time when Mughal Emperor Akbar began a significant military expedition towards Ahmednagar. At the time of the first siege, he had less than 150 cavalrymen in his command but within a year, he had 3,000 warriors and 7,000 by 1600.

Along with the Marathas, Ambar’s feud with the Mughals- now led by Emperor Jahangir- lasted for decades. He was widely known for unleashing guerrilla warfare on the Mughal army. Historian Eaton wrote that ‘general after general’ were dispatched from Delhi towards the south to beat the Ethiopian but failed.

In 1610, he managed to expel the Mughals from Ahmednagar fort and established a new capital, a city named Khirki or Aurangabad as it is known today. The city eventually became a booming metropolis, home to over 2 million people including the Marathas. The city’s most remarkable feature was the Neher water system, an intricate network of aqueducts, canal and reservoirs which provided clean water for the people of Aurangabad and its suburbs.

Ambar was also credited with creating a more efficient land revenue model of the time which was used by the Marathas. His administrative reforms allowed him to become a great patron of art and culture allowing dozens of new palaces, mosques, and infrastructure to be built.

Sometime around 1615, hostilities restarted between Ahmednagar and the Mughal Empire. Regarded as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare in the Deccan, Ambar would lure the enemy into his territory and then with his Maratha raiders, he would destroy their supply lines. The large Mughal armies could not survive in the Deccan land. Malik Ambar, therefore, effectively stopped any Mughal expansion for two decades. Mughal Emperor Jahangir considered Ambar his arch-nemesis.

Tensions culminated in the Battle of Bhatvadi in 1624. The combined Mughal-Bijapur army arrived in Bhatvadi was Ambar was waiting. He destroyed the dam of a nearby lake which caused flooding and prevented the allied cavalry from approaching his camp.

While he held the upper ground, Ambar’s army launched night raids on the enemy’s camp, eventually forcing the enemy to retreat. Malik’s army had achieved a decisive victory, making this the crowning achievement of his extraordinary career.

Malik Ambar died in 1626, at the old age of 78. Upon his death, Emperor Jahangir’s surrogate diarist, Mutamid Khan made an entry noting:

“He had no equal in warfare, in command, in sound judgment, and in administration. History records no other instance of an Abyssinian slave arriving at such eminence.”