king of Tadmekka

Who he is

Title

king of Tadmekka (al-Bakri: 'their king')

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

not known for 1200; in the tenth century the kings were of the Banu Tanmak, a Sanhaja branch (Ibn Hawqal, as read by Lewicki)

Confidence

low

Al-Bakri (1068) describes the king's dress: a red turban, a yellow shirt and blue trousers. No king of Tadmekka is named in any source for the twelfth century.

What it holds

• the town of Tadmekka in its valley, with the island quarter and the cemetery
• the market and the stopping place of the caravans before and after the desert crossing
• the casting of gold blanks (al-Bakri's 'bald' dinars; coin moulds from the 2005 excavation, published 2011)
• dominion over the Saghmara herders north and north-east of the town (al-Bakri, 1068; not pinned for 1200)
• a salt mine called Tutak, six days away (al-Bakri; site not identified; not pinned for 1200)

How it was acquired

Hereditary kingship of the Banu Tanmak in the tenth century; how it passed down to 1200 is not known.

Allies and rivals

Gao (trade partner, nine days south); the Ibadi merchants of Ouargla, the Jarid and the Jabal Nafusa; Ghadames (forty days); Ghana fought Tadmekka with Almoravid help in 1083-4 (al-Zuhri).

How things stand that morning

Rules the town and its valley; the clans of the Adrar round it (realm tuareg, province Adrar Berbers) follow their own chiefs and may or may not still acknowledge him.

Wealth

Gold transit and gold casting; cloth, copper and salt; caravan services; herds.

Military

Camel-riding clansmen; the town in its narrow valley between rock ridges.

Threats

• the decline of the Tadmekka road as gold moves to Walata and Timbuktu
• drought

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1200No dated event is recorded.

Places of note

• Tadmekka town ruins: The town, about 2 km north-east of the modern village of Essouk.

Where the sources disagree

• Yaqut names the state Tadmak with a capital Zakran (read Akram or Agram by Lewicki), whose townsmen were Zanata Ibadis; this may describe the eleventh century rather than 1200.

Evidence: Al-Bakri (1068), al-Zuhri and Yaqut through UNESCO GHA III; archaeology (Nixon 2005). No source for the king in the twelfth century.

On the map: Only the town's valley is drawn; the clans' pastures are in Adrar Berbers.

Primary sources for Veiled Berbers (Tuareg)

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.

• History of the Sudan, Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi (about 1655, at Timbuktu). The Timbuktu tradition on the middle Niger four and a half centuries later, and the only narrative there is: the Za (Zuwa) kings of Gao and Kukiya, whose fifteenth king Za Kusoy is said to have accepted Islam in 1010 and whose successors ruled at Gao through the twelfth century; the foundation of Jenne and the conversion of its king Kunburu with his people towards the end of the sixth century of the Hijra, that is about 1200, with Jenne's early trade; and the position of Mali and Ghana as al-Sadi understood it. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• Medieval Arabic inscriptions of the Niger bend and the Adrar (dated epitaphs from 1013 (Essuk) and 1100 (Gao-Saney) onward). The only writing from the Sudan belt itself before the Timbuktu chronicles.
• The Book of Routes and Realms: the Description of North Africa, al-Bakri (Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri) (1068, at Cordoba). Old by 1200 but still the standard description of the Sahara and the Sudan that the Almohad-period writers copied: Ghana under Tunka Manin with its twin towns and its Muslim quarter, Awdaghust, Tadmakka, Kawkaw, Takrur and Sila, the gold trade and the routes from Sijilmasa and the Dar'a; the Ibadi towns of the Jarid and the Fezzan; the Berber peoples of 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
• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
• The Travels of Ibn Battuta: Egypt, the Horn, the Swahili coast and Mali, Ibn Battuta (dictated to Ibn Juzayy) (1355, at Fez). A century and a half late, but the first eyewitness of places that in 1200 are known only from hearsay: Zeila and its stench, Mogadishu with its sultan, qadi and merchant hosts, Mombasa, and Kilwa under the Mahdali sultan Abu'l-Muzaffar al-Hasan, raiding the Zanj of the mainland; and the Sahara road from Sijilmasa through Taghaza and Walata to the court of Mali under Mansa Sulayman, then Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda among the veiled Berbers. Read online
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Various (edited by N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins) (ninth to sixteenth centuries; the collection published 1981). The standard English collection of every Arabic passage on the western and central Sudan.