Zeila

Who rules

Name

Not known. No source names a ruler of Zeila between al-Yaqubi (late ninth century) and the Walashma sultans of Ifat, who held it by the fourteenth century (later).

Title

The rulers of Zeila (title and family not known)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Not known. The town was probably run by its own shaykhs, judge and leading merchant families; Somali tradition makes it an old town of the Dir (the Issa) with families claiming Harla or Arab descent (later traditions).

Confidence

low

Wikipedia (English, French: Zeila, Zeilah): al-Yaqubi (late ninth century) knew Muslims on the northern Somali coast and Zeila; al-Mas'udi (about 935), Ibn Hawqal (988) and al-Idrisi (1154) mention it; Benjamin of Tudela (travelling about 1165-1173) puts Zeila in the land of Havilah; Ibn Sa'id (mid-thirteenth century) calls it a large and wealthy city, wholly Muslim, serving a wider country than Berbera. The English article's claim that Zeila was the capital of an 'Adal kingdom' from the ninth century rests on later identifications and is not followed here.

Overlord

None known. The town's sea trade runs to Aden (Ayyubid Yemen under al-Mu'izz Isma'il) and its caravans to the Muslim towns of the Harar plateau and the Makhzumi sultanate of Shewa; neither is its overlord as far as is known. The later rule of Ifat (the Walashma, from 1285 at the earliest) is later.

What the realm holds

• The walled or partly walled town of Zeila on its spit, with its harbour, mosques and markets (the walls described in later sources are not dated for 1200)
• The coastal plain and wells round the town, and the offshore islets used by its boats
• The town's share in the caravan road to the Harar plateau and Shewa, by agreement with the herders (not a holding of land)

How it was acquired

An ancient port (the Avalites of the first-century Periplus in the usual identification), Muslim from an early date; how its rulers of 1200 came to rule is not known.

Allies and rivals

Aden and the Ayyubid governors of Yemen across the gulf; the Muslim trading town of Harlaa on the plateau and the Makhzumi sultanate of Shewa beyond the Awash (eth sheet), its partners on the caravan road; the herders of its hinterland (the Dir and the Afar), whose goodwill keeps the road open; the Dahlak islands, a rival outlet for the highland trade; the Christian Zagwe kingdom, whose southern trade later shifts to Zeila (mid-thirteenth century, later).

The realm that morning

Zeila trades with Aden and the interior; no war, siege or overlord is recorded. Its own district is the town and the coastal plain round it. West of it the Gulf of Tadjoura's north shore is Afar country, south and east the plains and the Awdal hills are the grazing of Somali clans (the Dir in tradition), and up on the plateau stands the Harla trading town of Harlaa.

Wealth

Customs and market dues on the slave, ivory, hide and aromatics trade; brokerage and the supply of caravans; boats to Aden; fishing. No mint is known.

Military

No figures. Townsmen and the escorts of the caravans; the herders of the hinterland are the real military power round the town.

Threats

• The herders of the hinterland, on whom the caravans depend
• The rise of Ifat on the Shewan plateau and its later hold on Zeila (late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, later)

Places of note

• Zeila town and harbour: The port
• Masjid al-Qiblatayn: The mosque with two prayer niches, held by tradition to be of the first Islamic century
• The road inland: the Awdal hills: The caravans climb from the coastal plain through the hills of the Dir herders (the exact line of the road in 1200 is not recorded)
• The road inland: Harlaa: The Harla trading town on the edge of the Harar plateau, the first known market on the road
• The road inland: the Awash crossing: Where the road from the Harar plateau crosses the Awash towards Shewa (approximate; Afar country)

Where the sources disagree

• The Avalites of the Periplus is usually put at Zeila, but some place it at Assab or elsewhere; it does not matter for 1200.
• Ibn Sa'id's dates are 1213-1286; his description belongs to the mid-thirteenth century, not to 1200, and the English Wikipedia's '1214-17' for him is a slip.
• The French Wikipedia stresses a trade in 'Bantu' slaves; the slaves sold at Zeila in this period came mainly from the Ethiopian interior, as later sources show; the ethnic label is modern and not followed.

Evidence: Arab geographers mention Zeila in passing (late ninth century to mid-thirteenth); no ruler, chronicle or inscription of the period is known, and the town has not been excavated.

On the map: A small district round the town; the caravan road inland is the herders' country and is not drawn as Zeila's.

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
• Records of Foreign Peoples: the entries on the African coast and Egypt, Zhao Rugua (1225, at Quanzhou). A Song customs inspector's handbook, written from merchants' reports, that reaches the African coast within a generation of 1200: Bipaluo (Berbera) with its ostriches and giraffes, Zhongli (the Somali coast), Cengba (Zanzibar and the Zanj coast) with its ivory and ambergris and its trade with the Arabs, Kunlun Cengqi (perhaps Madagascar or Pemba), and Wusili (Egypt) with Alexandria's lighthouse. 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 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 Travels of Ibn Battuta: Egypt, the Horn, the Swahili coast and Mali, Ibn Battuta (dictated to Ibn Juzayy) (1355, at Fez). A century and a half late, but the first eyewitness of places that in 1200 are known only from hearsay: Zeila and its stench, Mogadishu with its sultan, qadi and merchant hosts, Mombasa, and Kilwa under the Mahdali sultan Abu'l-Muzaffar al-Hasan, raiding the Zanj of the mainland; and the Sahara road from Sijilmasa through Taghaza and Walata to the court of Mali under Mansa Sulayman, then Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda among the veiled Berbers. Read online
• The East African Coast: Select Documents, Various (edited and translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville) (the collection published 1962; second edition 1975). The standard English collection for the coast, and the one place to read together everything written about the Swahili towns near 1200: al-Masudi and Buzurg ibn Shahriyar (tenth century), al-Idrisi (1154), Yaqut (1220s), Ibn al-Mujawir (1220s), Ibn Said, the Chinese notices of Duan Chengshi and Zhao Rugua (1225), Ibn Battuta's visit of 1331, the Kilwa Chronicle in both versions, and the Portuguese.