The sultanate of Dahlak

Who rules

Name

Not pinned. The line founded by Mubarak, whose tombstone gives his death in 1093, apparently still rules: Margariti (2009) carries it to about 1230, van Donzel and Kon (2005) to 1249. No tombstone of a ruling sultan who died close to 1200 is named in the sources read.

Title

Sultan of Dahlak (sultan; the Seyuma Bahr, 'prefect of the sea', of later Ethiopian usage)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

The house of Mubarak (the Mubarakids). Ibn Sa'id, writing in the mid-thirteenth century, calls the king of Dahlak an Abyssinian Muslim, that is a man of the African shore, not an Arab or a Yemeni appointee. Wives, heirs and kin are not known.

Confidence

low

Wikipedia (English, French, Italian: Sultanate of Dahlak), after van Donzel and Kon (Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, 2005) and Margariti (Thieves or Sultans?, 2009); the tombstones of Dahlak Kebir (more than 260 found, ninth to sixteenth century); Ibn Sa'id through the African History Extra summary. The stones of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries name merchants who styled themselves sultans in imitation of the Najahids of Zabid, so a 'sultan' on a stone is not always the island ruler.

Overlord

None. Across the sea Ayyubid Yemen (al-Mu'izz Isma'il, holding Zabid and Aden) is a trading partner and a possible master, but Ibn Sa'id says the king of Dahlak kept his independence from the ruler of Yemen. Whose name is read in the Friday sermon (khutba) in 1200 is not recorded; presumably the Abbasid caliph, as in the Sunni ports round the Red Sea (not pinned).

What the realm holds

• The island of Dahlak Kebir with its town, mosques, cisterns, harbour and necropolis
• The other islands of the archipelago (Nora, Dahret, Harat and the rest) with their fishing villages and pearl banks
• Massawa on its island, the mainland landing for the highland trade (held from the twelfth century in the encyclopaedias' account; its governor or deputy is not named)
• Other landings on the shore of Semhar and the Gulf of Zula at times (not pinned)

How it was acquired

The islands were a place of exile for the Umayyads (from 702) and the early Abbasids. In the tenth century they paid tribute to Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, the Ziyadid ruler of Zabid; in 1061 the sons of Najah fled there from Zabid and fought from the islands until the Najahids recovered Zabid in 1086, the archipelago's richest period. A local line of sultans appears with Mubarak (died 1093), whose successors minted their own coins.

Allies and rivals

Ayyubid Yemen across the sea, under al-Mu'izz Isma'il: the merchants of Aden and Zabid are partners, the ruler a possible master. The Ayyubid sultan of Egypt (the boy al-Mansur under his uncle al-Afdal that winter; al-Adil from February 1200), whose ports of Aydhab and Qus serve the same India trade. Suakin and the Beja coast (Suakin men traded and died on Dahlak). The Zagwe king Lalibela, whose highland trade passes through Massawa; the Muslim communities of the Tigray highlands, where Dahlak families appear among the Muslim tombstones of Bilet near Kwiha.

The herders of the shore: the Beja north of Massawa, the Saho and the Afar south of it. Foreign merchants: Geniza letters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries show the island rulers both protecting and despoiling Jewish and Muslim traders, so that Margariti could ask whether they were 'thieves or sultans'.

The realm that morning

Quiet. The sultan holds the islands and Massawa and no war is recorded. The town is at or near its height: tombstones of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries are numerous. North of Massawa the shore is Beja country (nil sheet); south of it the escarpment and coast are Saho and Afar country; behind them the Eritrean plateau acknowledges the Zagwe king. Across the water lie Ayyubid Yemen and the Farasan islands (arb sheet).

Wealth

Customs and salvage dues on ships and goods; pearls, mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell; the export of highland goods through Massawa (ivory, slaves, gold, civet, hides are the usual Ethiopian exports of the period; Dahlak's own share is not itemised); its own gold coinage from the late eleventh century; fish; Egyptian cloth and storax among the imports.

Military

No figures. A sea power of small ships, the sultan's household and the townsmen; the islands and their reefs are the defence. No fortress of the period is described.

Threats

• Ayyubid Yemen, and later the Rasulids, whose pressure Ibn Sa'id records in the mid-thirteenth century (later)
• The opening of a southern highland route to Zeila under the later Zagwe kings, which cost Dahlak its monopoly (mid-thirteenth century, later)
• Drought: the town depends on its cisterns

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. January and early February 1200Al-Adil invades Egypt, routs al-Afdal near Bilbeis and takes Cairo after an eight-day siege; Egypt's Red Sea ports (Qus, Aydhab) change master but not their trade.Depends on: The Ayyubid family war (Latin East sheet). Stopped by: An Egyptian victory over al-Adil.
2. Summer and autumn 1200, famine from October 1200 into 1202The Nile flood fails and Egypt suffers famine and plague. Grain prices round the Red Sea rise; a likely effect on Dahlak's trade, not recorded.Depends on: The flood (natural). Stopped by: Nothing in play.

Places of note

• Dahlak Kebir town, cisterns and necropolis: The sultan's town on the west side of the main island
• Massawa: The mainland landing held by the sultans

Where the sources disagree

• Wikipedia says the sultans held Massawa from the twelfth century through a deputy called na'ib; the Massawa article says the na'ib title belongs to the Ottoman period. Treat the title as anachronistic for 1200; the deputy is not named.
• The end of the Mubarakid line is put at about 1230 (Margariti 2009) or 1249 (van Donzel and Kon 2005); either way it rules in 1200.
• The Ethiopian title Seyuma Bahr for the island ruler comes from later tradition and is given for orientation only.
• Pankhurst identified Massawa with the early medieval port of Badi; most place Badi on Er Rih island in the Sudan (nil sheet).

Evidence: Tombstones (more than 260, eleventh to sixteenth century), Geniza letters and Ibn Sa'id give a fair picture of the town and its trade; no chronicle names the sultan of 1200.

On the map: The islands are drawn whole; on the mainland only Massawa and its shore are drawn, since the sultan's hold beyond it is not known.

Primary sources for this realm

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