King Basil

Who he is

Name

Basil (Basileios; counted Basil II in modern lists)

Title

King of Dotawo (the Old Nubian name of the joined kingdom of Makuria and Nobadia)

Since

Not pinned. A deed of about 1190-1198 (DBMNT 585) already dates by him; he is the reigning king in deeds of 30 December 1198 (DBMNT 586) and 16 August 1199 (DBMNT 588), four and a half months before 1 January 1200

Born

Not known; Godlewski (2019) makes him and his brother Georgios children in 1155, so he is probably in his fifties in 1200

Family

Son of David (who seized the Makurian throne in 1154) and of Iesusikol, sister of King Mouse (Moses); so the sister's son of Mouse, the heir under the Nubian custom of succession through the king's sister. Brother of Georgios (Georgios VI), who was co-king with Mouse in 1186. A queen mother (Old Nubian ngonnen) stands beside him in the deeds of 1198-1199, unnamed; Godlewski ties Iesusikol to Basil as queen mother. Wife and children not known

Confidence

medium

The Qasr Ibrim deeds name the reigning king in their dating formula. Mouse (Moses, often called Moses Georgios) is crowned in 1155 (DBMNT 581, 22 August 1155) and last dated on 1 November 1190 (DBMNT 584). A letter of 17 September 1186 (DBMNT 610) to the Coptic patriarch Mark III, asking him to ordain one Iesou as bishop, carries the king's titles; Godlewski (2019) reads the 1186 material as naming Mouse and Georgios VI together as kings of Makuria and Alodia.

Basil then dates the deeds of 1198 and 1199 alone. Whether Georgios VI was dead, retired or reigning elsewhere (in Alodia?) on 1 January 1200 is not pinned, nor whether Mouse was still alive (see notes)

What it holds

• Old Dongola with the citadel, palaces and Throne Hall
• The Dongola Reach from the Third to the Fourth Cataract, with the islands of Argo and others
• Banganarti (church of Raphael, with royal portraits)
• The Wadi Abu Dom road and the monastery of Ghazali
• The Fourth Cataract and the reach to Abu Hamad
• The royal granaries (keeper of the granaries in the deeds)
• Overlordship of Nobadia through the eparch

How it was acquired

By inheritance through his mother from his uncle Mouse; date not pinned (between 1190 and 1198).

Allies and rivals

His brother Georgios (VI), co-king with Mouse in 1186, whose position in 1200 is unknown; Mouse himself, if alive; the eparch Adama; the bishops; Egypt's governor at Qus.

How things stand that morning

Reigning, if nothing changed between August 1199 and January 1200.

Wealth

The royal share of the Nile harvest and the granaries; the trade with Egypt that passes through the eparch; the baqt goods (not pinned).

Military

The royal army of archers and horsemen; the citadel of Dongola. No numbers known.

Threats

• A rival claim from his brother's line or from Alodia
• Famine after the low flood of 1200

Places of note

• Banganarti: Royal pilgrimage church

Where the sources disagree

• Not to be confused with Basil (Basileios), father of Georgios V, king about 1089 (Basil I in modern lists).

Evidence: Dated deeds of 1198 and 1199 name him; nothing else of his reign is known.

On the map: The farmland is a ribbon along the river; the polygon takes in the desert edge.

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).