A town near the mouth of Wadi Hali which the classical geographers took as the boundary between the Hejaz and Yemen; it had its own petty lords in the tenth century (the Banu Ya'qub, whence its name).
Who holds it on 1 January 1200 is not recorded: it lies north of the Mikhlaf of the Sulaymani sharifs (Ayyubid vassals since 1173-1174, centred on Jazan) and south of the emir of Mecca's reach.
Who holds it
- Title
- not known
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not pinned
- Family
- not pinned
- Confidence
- low
No holder named in the sources read.
How things stand that morning
No lord named; between the Sulaymani sharifs and the Meccan sphere.
Council
not recorded
Fairs and markets
not recorded
Walls and castle
not described
Trade and crafts
Tihama farming, the coastal road and small shipping.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Tenth-century geography; nothing for 1200.
On the map: Position approximate.
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
- al-Hamdani, Sifat Jazirat al-Arab (tenth century), the standard description of the tribes and places of the Sarat, Najd and the Hejaz, as used in the Wikipedia tribal articles cited here
- Ibn al-Mujawir, Tarikh al-mustabsir (about 1225-1230), trans. G. R. Smith, A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia (2008): the Tihama and Sarat routes between Yemen and Mecca
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.