"Ras" Ali was officially a Christian but his contemporaries doubted the sincerity of his faith and suspected that he was a secret Muslim. Some modern scholars consider him as indifferent to religion as he was to the problems of ruling his portion of Ethiopia, although Trimingham observes that he attempted to revive the cult of Ahmad Gragn by requiring pilgrimages to his tomb. In any case, the morale of the Ethiopian Church reached its lowest point in the 1840s and 1850s.