A low coastal town, most of its houses of reed with a few stone and mud inns, behind a reef-strewn harbour where the sewn boats from Aydhab land the Egyptian and Maghribi pilgrims and the ships from Yemen bring Indian goods (Ibn Jubayr, 1183).
The emir's men collect customs on merchants' goods; Saladin abolished the toll on pilgrims here and at Aydhab and compensated the emir from Egypt. Ibn Jubayr was shown an old domed building said to be where Eve stayed; the 'tomb of Eve' is the later form of the tradition.
Who holds it
- Title
- Governor (wali) for the emir of Mecca
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not pinned
- Family
- not pinned
- Confidence
- low
Ibn Jubayr (1183) describes the emir's officers at Jeddah.
Lord in 1200
The emir Mukthir ibn Isa, through his governor (name not pinned)
What the town holds
- the harbour and customs house
How things stand that morning
Under the emir of Mecca.
Council
The emir's governor and customs officers; no town council recorded.
Communities
Hejazi townsmen, many of them of sharifian families (Ibn Jubayr), Yemeni, Egyptian and Indian merchants, pilgrims in transit.
Fairs and markets
The pilgrim season (summer and autumn 1200) and the arrival of the monsoon ships from Yemen.
Walls and castle
No wall described for 1200 (the town wall is a sixteenth-century Mamluk work).
Trade and crafts
Customs and transit trade of the Red Sea: Indian pepper and spices, cloth, Yemeni goods; Egyptian grain for Mecca; pilgrims' passage; fishing.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Ibn Jubayr's description of 1183.
Primary sources for Mecca
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 Mirror of Time, on the History of Notables, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (Shams al-Din Yusuf) (about 1240 to 1256, at Damascus). A Damascene preacher's year-by-year chronicle with obituaries, written by a grandson of the Baghdad scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, so it carries both the Baghdad view (the caliph al-Nasir and his court) and the Damascus view (al-Adil's court, the famine refugees of 1200, prices, the plague of 1201). Read online
- The Road to Knowledge of the Dynasties of Kings, Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (about 1400 to 1440, at Cairo). A late compilation, but for Ayyubid Egypt it keeps lost material: for 596 to 598 AH it records al-Adil's entry into Cairo, the removal of the boy al-Mansur Muhammad, the oath to al-Kamil as heir, the appointments at Cairo, the low Niles of 1199 and 1200 and the famine and plague of 1200 to 1202 with grain prices, the reports of cannibalism and the death tolls, together with Yemen, the Hijaz and the Mecca emirate. 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
- The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Jubayr (Abu'l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad) (1185, from a diary kept 1183 to 1185). The best eyewitness of the Mediterranean world fifteen years before 1200, by a secretary of the Almohad governor of Granada: the Almohad port of Ceuta and its Genoese ships, Alexandria and Cairo under Saladin with their customs houses, the pilgrim traffic from the Maghreb, Mecca under its emir and Medina, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, Damascus and Mosul, the Frankish ports of Acre and Tyre with Muslims living under Frankish rule, and Sicily under William II with its Muslim subjects and Arabic-speaking court. Read online
- Dictionary of Countries, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Aleppo). An alphabetical gazetteer of every place Yaqut had read of or seen: he travelled as a bookseller's agent through Syria, Iraq, Persia, Khurasan and Khwarazm (about 1213 to 1220) and settled in Aleppo. Read online
Sources and studies
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.