The Fezzan

Who rules

Name

Not known. The Banu Khattab of Zawila, Ibadi Hawwara kings of the Fezzan since about 918, ended when Qaraqush captured their last king, Muhammad ibn Khattab, and let him die under torture (572 AH, 1176-77)

Title

No dynasty: the notables of Zawila and the oasis towns

Since

1176-77

Born

Not applicable

Family

Not applicable

Confidence

low

Ibn Khaldun (vol. 2, p. 101) and TDV for the end of the Banu Khattab; nothing is recorded of the Fezzan's government between 1177 and the Kanem conquest of the 1220s-1240s.

Overlord

Claimed by Qaraqush by conquest (1176-77); in practice probably no one. Kanem's kings are drawing the Fezzan trade south along the Kawar road; their conquest under Dunama Dibalemi is later (1220s-1240s).

What the realm holds

• Zawila and its oasis (the old capital and slave market)
• Jarma (ancient Garama) and the oases of the Wadi al-Ajal
• Traghan and the villages of the Murzuq basin
• The Wadi al-Shati (Brak, Idri) and the Sabha oasis
• The road south to Qatrun, Tummo and the Kawar

How it was acquired

The Banu Khattab ruled from Zawila from about 918; their state ended with Qaraqush's conquest of 1176-77.

Allies and rivals

Qaraqush (claimant, at Waddan); the Tubu of the Tibesti and the Kawar traders; Kanem, whose trade and later conquest come up the Kawar road; the Ajjer Berbers round Ghat.

The realm that morning

Self-governing oasis towns under their notables, with Qaraqush's claim from the north and Kanem's pull from the south. Who sits in Zawila is not known.

Wealth

The slave trade from Kanem and the Kawar, dates, alum and natron of the oases, and the caravan dues of the Zawila road.

Military

Walled oasis towns and castles (Zawila's walls are described by the geographers); no field army known.

Threats

• Qaraqush's raids from Waddan
• Kanem's expansion (later)
• Tubu raiders

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. 1220s-1240s; outside 1200Kanem under Dunama Dibalemi takes the Fezzan and sets a governor at Traghan.Depends on: Kanem's growth. Stopped by: A strong power in the Fezzan.

Places of note

• Zawila, old capital of the Fezzan: Seat of the Banu Khattab until 1176-77.

Where the sources disagree

• Wikipedia dates the end of the Banu Khattab 1172-1177; TDV places Qaraqush's conquest of the Fezzan in 572 (1176-77). We follow TDV.

Evidence: The end of the Banu Khattab is attested; the Fezzan's government in 1200 is not recorded at all.

On the map: The oases are narrow strips in a vast desert; the outline joins them through the sand and stone between.

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 Diwan of the Sultans of Bornu (the Sayfawa king list) (kept and extended to the nineteenth century; Lange argues its core was first written down in the thirteenth century). A list of the Sayfawa mais with reign lengths, parentage, mothers' names and burial places, and the odd event.
• 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
• 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
• 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 Picture of the Earth, Ibn Hawqal (about 977, revised to about 988). Two centuries old by 1200 but the only early geographer who had crossed the Sahara himself: he was at Sijilmasa and Awdaghust in 951, saw the gold trade and the famous cheque for 42,000 dinars, and described the king of Ghana as the richest on earth, with notes on the veiled Sanhaja, the Ibadi towns, the Fezzan, Nubia and Alodia, and the Zanj. 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.