Berbera

Who holds it

Name

No ruler known for 1200

Title

Harbour of the herders of the coast

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

No lord recorded: the harbour is run by the clans who use it and the merchants who come to it (the later abbans, local patrons who took responsibility for foreign traders, may be old). Its later rulers (Ifat, Adal, the Isaaq) are later.

How things stand that morning

Quiet; no ruler or war recorded.

Council

Not recorded.

Communities

Somali herders and townsmen; Arab and other foreign merchants in the season.

Fairs and markets

In later centuries a great cool-season fair (October to April) with caravans from the interior and boats from Arabia and India; whether it ran on this scale in 1200 is not known.

Militia

The herders of the coast.

Walls and castle

None recorded.

Trade and crafts

Livestock, hides and skins, ghee, myrrh and frankincense, ambergris, ostrich feathers, ivory and slaves out; cloth, dates, rice and metal in.

Where the sources disagree

• The identification of Malao with Berbera is usual but not proven; the Chinese Bobali is generally but not certainly the Berbera coast.

Evidence: Classical, Chinese and Arab mentions; no archaeology of the medieval town read.

On the map: The tierra is the harbour and its wells.

Primary sources for Somali clans

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
• Records of Foreign Peoples: the entries on the African coast and Egypt, Zhao Rugua (1225, at Quanzhou). A Song customs inspector's handbook, written from merchants' reports, that reaches the African coast within a generation of 1200: Bipaluo (Berbera) with its ostriches and giraffes, Zhongli (the Somali coast), Cengba (Zanzibar and the Zanj coast) with its ivory and ambergris and its trade with the Arabs, Kunlun Cengqi (perhaps Madagascar or Pemba), and Wusili (Egypt) with Alexandria's lighthouse. 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 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 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
• The East African Coast: Select Documents, Various (edited and translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville) (the collection published 1962; second edition 1975). The standard English collection for the coast, and the one place to read together everything written about the Swahili towns near 1200: al-Masudi and Buzurg ibn Shahriyar (tenth century), al-Idrisi (1154), Yaqut (1220s), Ibn al-Mujawir (1220s), Ibn Said, the Chinese notices of Duan Chengshi and Zhao Rugua (1225), Ibn Battuta's visit of 1331, the Kilwa Chronicle in both versions, and the Portuguese.