He belonged to the Qasimid family, descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which dominated the Zaidi imamate of Yemen from 1597 to 1962.
However, the governor of the important trading port Mocha refused to acknowledge the usurpation of power, and received assistance from the Sultan of Lahej and Aden.
[1] The chief of Abu Arish in the Tihamah, Sharif Hamud (d. 1818), originally a vassal under the imam, had been forced to submit to the Wahhabi movement in 1803.
Sharif Hamud again proclaimed his allegiance to the Zaidi imam and restored to him the cities Luhayya, Hudaydah and Bayt al-Faqih.
At this time the Wahhabi movement of Arabia was vigorously attacked by the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha, a formal subject of the Ottoman sultan.
[2] While the Ottoman war against the Wahhabites was in full progress in 1816, al-Mutawakkil Ahmad died and was succeeded by his son al-Mahdi Abdallah.