The emirate of Medina under Salim ibn Qasim

Who rules

Name

Salim ibn Qasim ibn Muhanna al-Husayni

Title

Emir (amir) of Medina, sharif of the Husaynid house of the Banu Muhanna

Since

By Jumada II 590 (May-June 1194) at the latest: Ibn al-Athir then calls his brother Hashim 'brother of the emir of Medina'; succession date from his father not pinned

Born

not pinned

Family

Banu Muhanna, descendants of al-Husayn ibn Ali. Father: al-Qasim ibn Muhanna, emir from about the 1170s, friend and confidant of Saladin (Mortel), who held Mecca for three days in 1176; his death date is not pinned but falls before mid-1194. Brother: Hashim ibn Qasim, killed in Jumada II 590 (May-June 1194) fighting the Bedouin of Zu'b who had attacked Medina while the emir was away in Syria. Another brother, Jammaz, is the father of the later emir Qasim ibn Jammaz (1215-1227). Salim's children are not named in the sources read.

Confidence

medium

Wikipedia (Sharifate of Medina, from Mortel 1991); Arif Abd al-Ghani's history of the emirs of Medina quoting Ibn al-Athir for 590.

Overlord

Khutba for the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir; the emirs court the Ayyubids, and Salim travels to the Ayyubid princes in Syria (he was there in 1194, and dies in 612 on his way back from al-Mu'azzam at Damascus).

What the realm holds

• Medina inside its walls, with the Prophet's Mosque and the tomb
• the palm gardens and wells of the oasis: Quba, the Awali, al-Aqiq and the foot of Uhud
• the volcanic fields (harras) round the oasis and the Bedouin who use them, so far as they obey
• a reach towards Khaybar and Wadi al-Qura, which later emirs dispute with Mecca (not pinned for 1200)

How it was acquired

Hereditary among the Husaynid emirs of Medina; Salim succeeded his father al-Qasim ibn Muhanna before mid-1194.

Allies and rivals

Friend of the Ayyubids, especially in Syria; rival of the sharifs of Mecca (his father held Mecca briefly in 1176) and, after 1200, the great enemy of Qatada ibn Idris, whom he will fight at Medina in 1205 and besiege in Mecca. The Bedouin of the harras (the Zu'b and others) are dangerous neighbours.

The realm that morning

Salim ibn Qasim holds Medina on 1 January 1200. No fighting is dated to that winter. His father's death date is not pinned, but Salim was emir by June 1194 at the latest.

Wealth

Dates and grain of the oasis; the gifts and endowments for the Prophet's Mosque from Baghdad, Egypt and Syria; the pilgrims' visit (ziyara) before or after the hajj and their spending; grain from Egypt through the Red Sea ports.

Military

The emir's kinsmen and household, the townsmen behind the walls rebuilt by the Zengid vizier al-Jawad al-Isfahani (about 540 AH) and enlarged by Nur al-Din (558 AH, 1162-1163), and hired Bedouin.

Threats

• Qatada ibn Idris, whose reach runs from Wadi Yanbu up Wadi al-Safra towards Medina
• the Bedouin of the harras (the Zu'b, who killed the emir's brother in 1194)
• the failure of Egyptian grain with the famine of 1200-1202
• quarrels inside the Husaynid house (the sons of Jammaz)

Family and household

The emir's brothers and nephews (the sons of Jammaz among them); deputies who govern while he travels; the servants of the Prophet's tomb, a corps of eunuchs whose institution later tradition credits to Saladin (not verified for 1200).

Great families

The Husaynid sharifs (Banu Muhanna and their cousins); the Sunni scholars, judges and preachers of the Prophet's Mosque; the guardians of the tomb; the date-garden owners of the Awali (upper Medina) and Quba.

Religion

The emirs are Twelver Shi'is (Mortel); the mosque's preachers and the visiting scholars are Sunni; the khutba is for the Abbasid caliph.

Coinage and khutba

Khutba for the caliph al-Nasir. No Medina coinage is known for 1200.

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. Dhu al-Hijja 596 and Muharram 597 (September-October 1200)Pilgrims visit Medina before or after the hajj; the Syrian caravan comes by Tabuk and Wadi al-Qura.Depends on: Open roads. Stopped by: Bedouin closing the roads; war in Syria.
2. 1205 (602 AH) and after, outside 1200Salim fights Qatada at the edge of Medina, drives him back and besieges him in Mecca, then withdraws when Qatada buys over his commanders (Ibn al-Athir).Depends on: Qatada having taken Mecca. Stopped by: Qatada failing to take Mecca.

Places of note

• The Prophet's Mosque and tomb: The shrine that makes the town; endowed by the caliphs and the Zengid and Ayyubid princes.
• Quba: The first mosque and the southern palm gardens of the oasis.

Where the sources disagree

• Al-Sakhawi's line of succession (al-Tuhfa al-latifa) has al-Qasim ibn Muhanna succeeded by his son Jammaz and then by Jammaz's son Qasim, skipping Salim; Ibn al-Athir's notice for 590 and the modern lists (Mortel) put Salim between them. We follow the latter.
• The modern list gives the change from al-Qasim to Salim only as 'about 1190/1200'; the 590 notice puts it before June 1194.

Evidence: Salim's rule is firm from 1194 to 1215; the start date is inferred from Ibn al-Athir's wording for 590 AH.

On the map: Khaybar, Fadak and Wadi al-Qura are left to their own records; the emir's control there in 1200 is not pinned.

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 Mirror of Time, on the History of Notables, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (Shams al-Din Yusuf) (about 1240 to 1256, at Damascus). A Damascene preacher's year-by-year chronicle with obituaries, written by a grandson of the Baghdad scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, so it carries both the Baghdad view (the caliph al-Nasir and his court) and the Damascus view (al-Adil's court, the famine refugees of 1200, prices, the plague of 1201). Read online
• The Road to Knowledge of the Dynasties of Kings, Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (about 1400 to 1440, at Cairo). A late compilation, but for Ayyubid Egypt it keeps lost material: for 596 to 598 AH it records al-Adil's entry into Cairo, the removal of the boy al-Mansur Muhammad, the oath to al-Kamil as heir, the appointments at Cairo, the low Niles of 1199 and 1200 and the famine and plague of 1200 to 1202 with grain prices, the reports of cannibalism and the death tolls, together with Yemen, the Hijaz and the Mecca emirate. 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
• 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