Sultan of Dahlak

Who he is

Name

Not pinned: a sultan of the house of Mubarak (founder died 1093; the line lasts to about 1230 or 1249)

Title

Sultan of Dahlak

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

The Mubarakids, Muslims of the African shore ('Abyssinian' in Ibn Sa'id); wives and children not known.

Confidence

low

See the realm record Dahlak. The tombstones read so far in the secondary literature name merchants (Abi Harami al-Makki, died 1188; Salim al-Sawakini, died 1210; Rizqallah al-Habashi, died 1214) but no ruler for these years.

Overlord

None (see Dahlak).

What it holds

• Dahlak Kebir town and island
• The other islands and the pearl banks
• Massawa and its landing

How it was acquired

By descent in the house of Mubarak.

Allies and rivals

See Dahlak: Ayyubid Yemen, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, Suakin, the Zagwe king and the highland Muslims, the herders of the shore.

How things stand that morning

Rules the islands and Massawa in peace.

Wealth

Customs, salvage, pearls, coinage, the highland trade.

Military

Small ships and the household; no figures.

Threats

• Yemeni ambitions over the islands (pressing only under the Rasulids, later)

Places of note

• Dahlak Kebir: Seat

Where the sources disagree

• The title na'ib for his deputy at Massawa is probably anachronistic (see Dahlak).

Evidence: The office is well attested; the man of 1200 is not.

On the map: As the realm record.

Primary sources for Dahlak

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 History of the Observant Traveller: the pages on Zeila, Berbera, Mogadishu and Dahlak, Ibn al-Mujawir (Yusuf ibn Yaqub ibn al-Mujawir) (about 1221 to 1230). The closest description of the Horn's ports to 1200, written about twenty-five years later by a trader and official who worked the Aden trade: Zeila and its traffic in slaves, ivory and the goods of the Ethiopian interior; the Barbar (Somali) coast with Berbera and Mogadishu, and the sea route from Aden to Mogadishu and on to Kilwa with its sailing seasons; the Dahlak islands with their own sultan and his dues; Socotra; and the customs and prices of Aden under the Ayyubids of Yemen. 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
• History of the Observant Traveller (A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia), Ibn al-Mujawir (Jamal al-Din Yusuf ibn Ya'qub) (about 1226 to 1232). A merchant-traveller's description of western and southern Arabia a generation after 1200: Mecca and the Hijaz ports, the Red Sea crossing, Zabid and the Tihama, Aden with its customs and tariffs, the Hadramawt coast, Dhofar and Oman, Socotra, and the opposite African shore at Zeila and the Dahlak islands. Read online