Eparch Adama

Who he is

Name

Adama

Title

Eparch of Nobadia (the king's governor of the north; the Arabs call him the Lord of the Mountain, sahib al-jabal)

Since

Not pinned; attested 16 August 1199 (DBMNT 588), when he gave land by a sale in form to the church of the Holy Trinity

Born

Not known

Family

Not known

Confidence

medium

Named in DBMNT 588 (Qasr Ibrim, house 177, Archive 3). Other deeds of the 1190s mention the eparch of Nobadia without his name. The same deed names a vice-eparch, a triklinios and a scribe of the eparch.

Overlord

King Basil of Dotawo.

What it holds

• Qasr Ibrim, his residence
• Faras and its district through the domestikos of Faras
• Tafa, the northern district near the frontier, through the domestikos of Tafa (DBMNT 586)
• Jebel Adda (Addo), Arminna, Toshka, Tamit, Adindan, Serra, Meinarti and the Second Cataract
• The Batn al-Hajar with its fortified villages (Kulubnarti)
• Sai and the reach to the Third Cataract (a tot of Sai is listed in the deeds)
• The trade with Egypt through Aswan

How it was acquired

Appointed by the king; date not known.

Allies and rivals

The Ayyubid governor of Qus and the commander at Aswan across the frontier; the Banu Kanz settled in the north; the bishops of Qasr Ibrim, Faras and Kourte.

How things stand that morning

Governing at Qasr Ibrim in peace. The Ayyubid occupation of Ibrim (1173-1175) is a generation past.

Wealth

Tolls and gifts on the Egypt trade; land and the Lower Nubian harvest; his own estates (he gives land to the church in 1199).

Military

The fortress of Qasr Ibrim on its cliff; the walled town of Jebel Adda; the Nubian archers of the north who fought the Kurds in 1175.

Threats

• A frontier quarrel with the new Ayyubid government at Aswan
• Famine in Egypt in 1200-1202 pushing refugees and raiders south

Places of note

• Jebel Adda: Walled town (Addo of the deeds)
• Tafa: Northernmost Nubian district, under a domestikos

Where the sources disagree

• Older works put the eparch at Faras; in the twelfth century the deeds and Abu al-Makarim place him at Qasr Ibrim.

Evidence: Named in one dated deed of August 1199; the office and its subordinates are well documented in the Qasr Ibrim deeds.

On the map: The southern limit of the eparch's province near the Third Cataract is an estimate; the villages lay in a ribbon along the river, mostly now drowned. The northern part of his province, from the frontier just south of Aswan (about 24.0 N) to 23.3 N, with Tafa and Kalabsha, is drawn as Makurian on this map by a map ruling; the Latin East map, which filled that strip from its anchors at Philae (Egypt) and Qasr Ibrim (beyond its map), still shows it Egyptian and bedouin, though in 1200 it was Nubian.

Primary sources for Makuria

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
• History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrij and continuators (Various) (compiled in Arabic 1088 to 1094 from Coptic lives; continued for the patriarchs of 1102 to 1243 and later). The Coptic church's own record. Read online
• Old Nubian and Greek documents from Qasr Ibrim and the Nubian royal documents (the dated Qasr Ibrim land sales and letters run from the 1150s to the 1460s; the royal documents of the 1180s and 1190s are the nearest to 1200). The only documents from inside Nubia: land sales, letters and legal texts from Qasr Ibrim in Old Nubian, dated by the reigning king, his eparch and the local officials, which give the names and titles of the court of Dotawo (the Nubians' own name for the kingdom) in the generation around 1200. 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 Picture of the Earth, Ibn Hawqal (about 977, revised to about 988). Two centuries old by 1200 but the only early geographer who had crossed the Sahara himself: he was at Sijilmasa and Awdaghust in 951, saw the gold trade and the famous cheque for 42,000 dinars, and described the king of Ghana as the richest on earth, with notes on the veiled Sanhaja, the Ibadi towns, the Fezzan, Nubia and Alodia, and the Zanj. 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).