The great oasis of the northern desert, with the old stone fort of Marid and the mosque attributed to the caliph Umar, at the southern end of the Wadi Sirhan, the depression that leads up to the Azraq oasis and Syria.
Once the seat of the Kalb, it is by the thirteenth century in the range of the Tayy (the Al Ali branch of the Al Fadl run from the Ghuta to Tayma and al-Jawf, Hiyari). No lord is named for 1200.
Who holds it
- Title
- not known
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not pinned
- Family
- not pinned
- Confidence
- low
No source read names a lord of Dumat for the twelfth century.
Lord in 1200
Not known: an oasis of the Tayy Bedouin's range (the Al Ali of the Banu Rabi'a in later sources)
How things stand that morning
Not known; probably under Bedouin protection.
Council
Not recorded.
Communities
Oasis townsmen and Tayy Bedouin.
Fairs and markets
Not recorded; the pre-Islamic fair of Dumat is long gone.
Walls and castle
Qasr Marid, the old stone fort on its hill.
Trade and crafts
Dates and wells; a halt on the desert route between Syria, Iraq and Najd.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: No medieval source for 1200 read; the Tayy range is from Hiyari's thirteenth-fourteenth century picture.
Primary sources for The Bedouin
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
Sources and studies
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.