A string of palm villages fed by springs and channels in Wadi Yanbu, some 40 to 50 km inland from the Red Sea, home of Hasanid sharifian clans living as country people.
Qatada, born and raised on the Alqamiyya channel, made himself master of the valley and kept a fortress at Yanbu. The anchorage on the coast (the later Yanbu al-Bahr) serves the valley; the old port of Medina was al-Jar, further south.
Who holds it
- Name
- Qatada ibn Idris
- Title
- Sharif of Wadi Yanbu
- Since
- not pinned (before 1200)
- Born
- about 1132 or 1150
- Family
- Dhawu Muta'in of the Banu Hasan
- Confidence
- medium
see Qatada
Lord in 1200
Qatada ibn Idris (Qatada)
What the town holds
- the springs and palm villages (al-Alqamiyya, al-Suwayq and others)
How things stand that morning
Qatada's seat.
Council
Sharifian clan heads under Qatada.
Communities
Hasanid sharifs (Dhawu Muta'in, Banu Ahmad, Banu Ibrahim and the defeated clans), Juhayna Bedouin of the surrounding mountains.
Fairs and markets
A weekly market at al-Suwayq is recorded in modern times; nothing is recorded for 1200.
Walls and castle
Qatada's fortress at Yanbu (its exact site not pinned).
Trade and crafts
Dates and farming on the springs; dues on traffic between the coast, Medina and the pilgrim road; Egyptian grain landed on the coast.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Qatada's home is attested; the description of the valley is from modern accounts and later sources.
On the map: Village positions approximate.
Primary sources for Qatada
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
- 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
Sources and studies
- Qatada ibn Idris (English Wikipedia, citing Ibn Fahd, Ibn Khaldun, al-Qalqashandi, Ibn al-Athir trans. Richards, Peters)
- Qatada ibn Idris (Arabic Wikipedia)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.