Sur

Who holds it

Name

Not pinned (the townsmen and the tribes of Ja'lan; no lord attested)

Title

Not pinned

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

Not pinned. No hold of the Nabhanid kings of Bahla, or of the island lords of Kish who raid the Omani coast, is attested here.

How things stand that morning

Minor port; holder not pinned.

Charter

None known: southern Arabian towns had no charters; the lord or his deputy, the judge (qadi) and the notables answer for the town.

Council

Not recorded.

Communities

Arabs, Ibadi by the general rule al-Idrisi gives for Oman (not pinned for Sur).

Fairs and markets

No fair dates recorded for 1199-1200.

Militia

Not recorded for 1199-1200.

Trade and crafts

Fishing, pearling near by (al-Idrisi), coasting trade; ship-building later attested.

Where the sources disagree

• Omani history between the Nabhanid seizure of power (1154) and the fifteenth century survives only in thin, contradictory chronicles; no source we could check names a lord, governor or chief anywhere in southern Oman for 1199-1200. Following the regional brief, the realm id oman (the Nabhanid kings of Bahla, Persia map record Oman) is used only at the edge of their core (Adam, by anchor); everything else is given to its own tribes.

Evidence: One line in al-Idrisi; nothing dated to 1199-1200.

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