There is some disagreement over the exact length of Ali's reign. Al-Maqrizi in one place in his Historica Regum Islamiticorum in Abyssinia states that Ali was released after eight years of imprisonment, but in another place writes that he was in prison for a total of 30 years and died during the reign of his grandson Sa'ad ad-Din II. To further complicate the evidence, the chronicle of the Walashma dynasty gives him a reign of 40 years, and his son Ahmad a reign of only two.[4]