Takrur

Who holds it

Name

The king of Takrur (name not known)

Title

Royal town of the king of Takrur

Since

Not known

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

The king of Takrur, who resides here (al-Idrisi, 1154: 'the seat of his residence and his capital').

How things stand that morning

The king's residence, so far as can be said; no source of 1200.

Council

Not recorded. A Muslim court with judges is likely; no headman, judge or family is named.

Communities

The people of the valley (ancestors of the Haalpulaaren: Fulbe and settled Fulfulde speakers, with Soninke and Serer elements in the tradition); visiting Maghrebi and Sanhaja merchants; Muslim clerics.

Fairs and markets

A permanent market for the Maghrebi trade (al-Idrisi); the caravan season from the desert falls in the cool dry months, roughly November to March, when the Sanhaja caravans move; days not recorded.

Militia

Not recorded; the king's slave soldiers (al-Idrisi).

Walls and castle

Not recorded; no fortress is known. Al-Idrisi describes Barisa as unwalled but says nothing of Takrur's walls.

Trade and crafts

Gold and slaves out; wool, copper, beads in (al-Idrisi). Cotton weaving; fishing; ironworking (the Dya'ogo kings are remembered as smiths). Salt from Awlil.

Where the sources disagree

• The site is unknown; do not treat the stand-in point as a location.

Evidence: Al-Bakri (1068), al-Idrisi (1154), Ibn Sa'id (after 1250) describe the town; no excavated site is identified with it.

On the map: The town's near land is drawn round a stand-in point; the real site may be anywhere between the Gorgol and the Ile a Morphil, or near Matam.

Primary sources for Takrur

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 Book of Geography, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhri (about 1140 to 1150, at Granada). A short Andalusi geography fifty years before 1200 with notices on the Sahara and the Sudan that are independent of al-Bakri: the Lamtuna and the veiled Sanhaja, Sijilmasa and the gold road, and Ghana, which al-Zuhri says accepted Islam at the time of the Almoravid movement (he gives the year 469 of the Hijra, 1076 to 1077), the only source for that statement.
• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
• The Book of Examination of the Wonders of the Cities (1191). The nearest geographical survey to 1200: a description of the Almohad lands written nine years earlier, town by town, from Alexandria and Barqa through Tripoli, Gabès, Mahdia, Tunis, Bougie, Tlemcen, Fez, Marrakesh and Sijilmasa, with a section on the Sahara routes and the Sudan (Ghana, Zafun, Kawkaw). Read online
• The Book of Routes and Realms: the Description of North Africa, al-Bakri (Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri) (1068, at Cordoba). Old by 1200 but still the standard description of the Sahara and the Sudan that the Almohad-period writers copied: Ghana under Tunka Manin with its twin towns and its Muslim quarter, Awdaghust, Tadmakka, Kawkaw, Takrur and Sila, the gold trade and the routes from Sijilmasa and the Dar'a; the Ibadi towns of the Jarid and the Fezzan; the Berber peoples of the Maghreb. Read online
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Various (edited by N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins) (ninth to sixteenth centuries; the collection published 1981). The standard English collection of every Arabic passage on the western and central Sudan.