al-Safra

Who holds it

Name

Qatada ibn Idris

Title

Sharif of Wadi Yanbu

Since

not pinned (before 1200)

Born

about 1132 or 1150

Family

Dhawu Muta'in

Confidence

medium

see Qatada

Lord in 1200

Qatada ibn Idris

How things stand that morning

In Qatada's hands.

Council

not recorded

Fairs and markets

not recorded

Walls and castle

not described

Trade and crafts

Dates and road traffic.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Ibn Fahd, Ibn Khaldun and al-Qalqashandi (undated conquest).

Primary sources for Qatada

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 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
• The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Jubayr (Abu'l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad) (1185, from a diary kept 1183 to 1185). The best eyewitness of the Mediterranean world fifteen years before 1200, by a secretary of the Almohad governor of Granada: the Almohad port of Ceuta and its Genoese ships, Alexandria and Cairo under Saladin with their customs houses, the pilgrim traffic from the Maghreb, Mecca under its emir and Medina, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, Damascus and Mosul, the Frankish ports of Acre and Tyre with Muslims living under Frankish rule, and Sicily under William II with its Muslim subjects and Arabic-speaking court. Read online