Northern Beja hills

Who holds it

Name

Not known; kin of the Hadariba of Aydhab

Title

Clan chiefs

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

How things stand that morning

Grazing; no conflict recorded.

Customs

Clan chiefs and elders; inheritance through the mother; Islam among the leading lineages, older beliefs elsewhere.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Al-Aswani and Ibn Battuta place the Hadariba further north; their southern reach in 1200 is inferred.

On the map: Clan ranges overlap; drawn as one block.

Primary sources for Beja

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Exhortations and Reflections on the Quarters and Monuments: the chapters on Nubia and the Beja, al-Maqrizi (about 1417 to 1442, at Cairo). Two centuries late, but al-Maqrizi copied earlier books that are now lost, above all the account of Nubia by Ibn Salim al-Aswani, who went as Fatimid envoy to Dongola about 970 and described the Nubian king, his court, the eparch, the church and the land, which is the fullest description of Makuria ever written and still broadly valid in 1200; he also gives the Beja tribes, the oases, the baqt treaty and the Ayyubid campaigns against Nubia of 1173. Read online
• The History of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Abu al-Makarim (formerly attributed to Abu Salih the Armenian) (about 1177 to 1208; the core about 1200). The one Christian text written in Egypt around 1200 that looks south: it describes the kingdom of the Nubians with its king at Dongola, his churches, the eparch of Nobadia, the churches of Qasr Ibrim and the raid of Shams al-Dawla Turanshah in 1173, the kingdom of Alwa (Alodia) with its 400 churches and its capital Soba, and the Abyssinians with their king, their metropolitan sent from Alexandria, the church of Aksum and the Ark, as a Coptic churchman heard of them through the patriarchate. Read online
• Dictionary of Countries: the entries on Africa, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Mosul and Aleppo). Entries written within a generation of 1200 from earlier books and from informants: Maqdishu (Mogadishu), described as a town of the Barbar (Somali) on the edge of the Zanj country with no single ruler but elders for each group, the earliest notice of the town; Manbasa (Mombasa), Lanjuya (Zanzibar) and the Zanj coast; Zayla, Barbara and the Dahlak islands; Dunqula (Dongola) and the Nubians; the Beja; Kanem, Zaghawa, Ghana, Kawkaw and the Sudan, mostly from al-Bakri and al-Idrisi; and the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Read online
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online
• Oriental Sources concerning Nubia, Various (collected and translated by Giovanni Vantini) (the collection published 1975). The standard collection, in English, of every eastern passage on Christian Nubia, and so the quickest way to all that was written about Makuria and Alodia near 1200: Abu al-Makarim, Ibn al-Athir on Turanshah's campaign of 1173, Ibn Jubayr and Yaqut, the History of the Patriarchs, Abu Shama, and the later Ibn Said, Abu'l-Fida, al-Nuwayri, Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi (who preserves the tenth-century Ibn Salim al-Aswani).