Dahlak Kebir

Who holds it

Name

The sultan of the house of Mubarak, name not pinned

Title

Seat of the sultan of Dahlak

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

The sultan of Dahlak in person (name not pinned).

How things stand that morning

Prosperous and quiet under its sultan.

Charter

None: the sultan's town.

Council

The sultan, his household and officials; a judge (qadi) and the merchant notables. Names for 1200 not known.

Communities

Muslims of the islands and of many origins (Mecca, Suakin, Aden, Abyssinia, as the tombstones show); visiting Jewish merchants of the Geniza trade (Joseph Lebdi called at Dahlak on his way to India in 1097-98).

Fairs and markets

No fairs recorded; trade follows the Red Sea sailing seasons.

Militia

None recorded; the townsmen and the sultan's men.

Walls and castle

No walls or citadel recorded; the sea and the reefs protect it.

Trade and crafts

Customs and salvage; pearls, mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell; coral-stone building; the mint of the sultans' gold coins (from the late eleventh century); transshipment of highland goods and of Egyptian cloth, storax and other imports.

Where the sources disagree

• The tombstones are dated from AD 911-912 onwards (the Dahlak Kebir article says 'at least AD 912'); stones of 1188 (Abi Harami al-Makki) and 1210 (Salim al-Sawakini) are in the British Museum.

Evidence: Tombstones and a surface survey; no excavation report or description of 1200 read.

On the map: The tierra is the main island of Dahlak Kebir.

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