Massawa

Who holds it

Name

Deputy not named

Title

Held by the sultan of Dahlak through a deputy

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

The sultan of Dahlak, through a deputy whose name and title (na'ib is probably anachronistic) are not recorded.

How things stand that morning

A Dahlak dependency; no war recorded.

Charter

None (no charters in this world).

Council

Not recorded.

Communities

Muslim townsmen; Beja and Saho herders come in to trade; Christian highland traders.

Fairs and markets

Not recorded.

Militia

None recorded.

Walls and castle

None recorded.

Trade and crafts

Transit of highland goods (ivory, slaves, hides, civet, gold) and of imports to the highlands; fishing.

Where the sources disagree

• Pankhurst identified Massawa with the early medieval port of Badi; most scholars put Badi on Er Rih island in the Sudan (nil sheet).

Evidence: Encyclopaedia summaries only; nothing contemporary describes Massawa about 1200.

On the map: A point.

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