King of Takrur

Who he is

Name

Not known. In the later Futa tradition the reigning house would be the Manna (remembered as Soninke of the Sumaare clan); no name or reign can be pinned to 1 January 1200

Title

King of Takrur (al-Takruri); a Muslim ruler of a line converted in the 1030s

Since

Not known

Born

Not known

Family

No wife, child or kinsman recorded. The last named kings are War Jabi (died 1040-41) and his son Labi (1056).

Confidence

low

Arabic sources stop naming Takrur's kings after al-Bakri (1068); al-Idrisi (1154) praises an unnamed ruler; the Futa chronicle (Sire Abbas Soh) names dynasties and some kings but without usable dates. The last Manna king of the tradition, Cengaan Sumaare, is placed in the thirteenth century and is not to be read back to 1200.

What it holds

• The royal town of Takrur (site not known)
• The river valley on both banks from about Dagana to the Soninke country below Bakel, with the Gorgol valley (as drawn for the realm)
• Silla, through a dependent ruler or a governor (not known)
• Barisa (al-Idrisi, 1154; site and 1200 status not known)
• The tolls and dues of the river trade (inferred; no source describes them)

How it was acquired

By inheritance in the royal line (not known which). The dynasty's hold on Silla dates from before 1154 (al-Idrisi).

Allies and rivals

See Takrur. No alliance or war is recorded for 1199-1200.

How things stand that morning

Rules the valley, so far as anything is known. Nothing places him at war on 1 January 1200.

Wealth

River trade in gold, slaves, salt and cloth; the harvest of the flood plain; herds. No figures.

Military

Slave soldiers and free warriors (al-Idrisi); canoes; horses. No numbers, no named commanders, no fortress known: the towns are of earth and the kingdom ruled without castles.

Threats

• See Takrur

Where the sources disagree

• The king of 1200 is sometimes given a Manna name in popular lists; we found no such name tied to 1200 in a source that dates it.

Evidence: The office is attested (al-Idrisi 1154, Ibn Sa'id after 1250); the person is not.

On the map: The whole valley is drawn as the king's because no governor is known; in reality there were surely district chiefs and village heads under him.

Primary sources for Takrur

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.

• The Book of Geography, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhri (about 1140 to 1150, at Granada). A short Andalusi geography fifty years before 1200 with notices on the Sahara and the Sudan that are independent of al-Bakri: the Lamtuna and the veiled Sanhaja, Sijilmasa and the gold road, and Ghana, which al-Zuhri says accepted Islam at the time of the Almoravid movement (he gives the year 469 of the Hijra, 1076 to 1077), the only source for that statement.
• 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 Book of Examination of the Wonders of the Cities (1191). The nearest geographical survey to 1200: a description of the Almohad lands written nine years earlier, town by town, from Alexandria and Barqa through Tripoli, Gabès, Mahdia, Tunis, Bougie, Tlemcen, Fez, Marrakesh and Sijilmasa, with a section on the Sahara routes and the Sudan (Ghana, Zafun, Kawkaw). Read online
• 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
• 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.