Town · The Bedouin tribes · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Ha'il

A wadi and village in the Aja range named by the geographers as Tayy country; not a town of note in 1200.

The two mountains, Aja and Salma, are held by the Tayy (Banu Lam and the Shammar in Hiyari's account of the late twelfth century).

Who holds it

Title
not known
Since
not pinned
Born
not pinned
Family
not pinned
Confidence
low

No holder named in the sources read.

Lord in 1200

None: Tayy country

How things stand that morning

Tayy country.

Council

not recorded

Fairs and markets

not recorded

Walls and castle

not described

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Hiyari's picture via Wikipedia.

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

  1. Tayy (English Wikipedia, citing Hiyari 1975, pp. 511-517, and Bosworth, 'Fayd', EI2)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.