Arabia

The realms

1. Ayyubid Yemen under al-Mu'izz Isma'ilIsma'il ibn Tughtekin ibn Ayyub, kunya Abu al-Fida

   The Ayyubid house has ruled the Tihama, the southern highlands and Aden since Turanshah's conquest of 569 (1173-74).

2. The Zaydi imamate of al-Mansur Abd Allah ibn HamzaAbd Allah ibn Hamza ibn Sulayman

   The Zaydis of the northern highlands had no recognised imam from the death of al-Mutawakkil Ahmad ibn Sulayman in 1171 until Abd Allah ibn Hamza, a learned sayyid of the Hamdan country, made his summons in al-Jawf in 583 (1187).

3. The Hamdanid sultans (Banu Hatim) of KawkabanAli ibn Hatim al-Yami al-HamdaniTribal sultanate

   The Banu Hatim, a house of the Yam of Hamdan and once patrons of the Ismaili mission, ruled Sana'a as sultans from 1099.

4. The Sulaymani sharifs of the Mikhlaf

   A Hasanid house of sharifs, expelled from Mecca in the eleventh century, made the northern Tihama their own, with Jazan as their centre from about 1020.

5. The emirate of Mecca under Mukthir ibn IsaMukthir

   Mecca is a sanctuary city with almost no farmland of its own, ruled by an old sharif whose power rests on his kinsmen, his household and armed slaves, the Bedouin he pays, and the money and grain that the pilgrimage and Egypt bring in.

6. The emirate of Medina under Salim ibn QasimSalim ibn Qasim ibn Muhanna al-HusayniSharifate

   Medina is a walled oasis city round the Prophet's Mosque and his tomb, ruled by Husaynid emirs who, like many of the townspeople, follow Twelver (Imami) Shi'ism while the mosque and the Sunni scholars depend on Sunni princes' endowments.

7. Qatada ibn Idris and the sharifs of Wadi YanbuQatada ibn Idris ibn Muta'in al-HasaniSharifate

   Qatada is a tough, ambitious sharif of the Hejaz countryside.

8. Hadramawt: the Al Rashid of Tarim and the tribesAbd Allah ibn Rashid ibn Shaj'ana al-QahtaniTribal sultanate

   Hadramawt is not one state.

9. Dhofar: the lords of Mirbat and ZafarMuhammad ibn Ahmad al-Akhal al-ManjawiSultanate

   Dhofar is the green coastal plain under the monsoon mountains at the eastern end of the incense coast, with the frankincense country behind the hills.

10. The MahraTribes

    The Mahra are the people of the long coast and plateau between Hadramawt and Dhofar.

11. Socotra, the Christian islandIsland

    A large mountainous island in the Arabian Sea off the Horn of Africa.

12. The Bedouin tribesFew named for 1199-1200 in the sources readDesert peoples

    Most of the peninsula outside the towns and the princes' valleys belongs to tribes that answer to no prince, drawn here in one pale colour with each tribe's range outlined in its own record.

Self-governing peoples and other lands

Records of this region that belong to no single realm page.

• al-Aflaj · town
• al-Hutayb · frontier town
• al-Kharj · town
• al-Yamama oases · other
• Hajr · town
• Kuria Muria islanders · other
• Manfuha · town
• Northern frontier
• Tayyibi da'i · Other lordship
• Wadi al-Dawasir · town

Primary sources for Arabia

• 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.
• History of Yemen, Umara al-Yamani (Umara ibn Ali al-Hakami) (1168 to 1174, at Cairo). The history of Yemen's dynasties to the eve of the Ayyubid conquest: the Ziyadids and Najahids of Zabid, the Sulayhids and their queen Arwa, the Zuray'ids of Aden, the Hamdanid sultans of San'a and the Mahdids of Zabid, with Umara's own career as a Yemeni envoy to Fatimid Cairo.
• 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.
• 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.
• Annals of Oman, from the Kashf al-ghumma, Sirhan ibn Sa'id ibn Sirhan (compiler), from earlier Ibadi chronicles (about 1728, from earlier Ibadi sources). The Ibadi imamate of Oman has no contemporary chronicle for 1200; the later Omani compilations (the Kashf al-ghumma and al-Salimi's Tuhfat al-a'yan) preserve a list of imams and the tradition of the Nabhani maliks who ruled the interior from the 12th century, with Hormuz and Kish pressing on the coast.
• Dictionary of Countries, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Aleppo). An alphabetical gazetteer of every place Yaqut had read of or seen: he travelled as a bookseller's agent through Syria, Iraq, Persia, Khurasan and Khwarazm (about 1213 to 1220) and settled in Aleppo.
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200.
• The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, Benjamin of Tudela (about 1173). A generation before 1200 but the only survey of its kind: the Jewish communities and their heads from Navarre through Provence, Italy, Constantinople and the Aegean, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, with notes on rulers, trades, the exilarch at Baghdad, the Assassins of Syria and Persia, and hearsay on India, Ceylon and China.
• The Cairo Geniza Documents (about 950 to 1250 for the bulk of the historical documents). Letters, court records, accounts and lists from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat that show the working of the trade that bound Egypt to Ifriqiya, Sicily, al-Andalus, Aden and India.
• The Complete History, Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (about 1200 to 1231, at Mosul). The widest Muslim narrative for the years 596 to 597 AH (1199 to 1201): al-Adil's entry into Cairo and his taking of the sultanate from his nephew al-Mansur Muhammad early in 1200, the quarrels of the Ayyubid princes at Damascus, Aleppo and Hama, the Nile failure and the great famine of Egypt, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah and the Jazira under Gokbori and the Artuqids, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, the Khwarazmshah Tekish's death in 1200 and Muhammad's accession, the Ghurid wars in Khurasan, the Eldiguzids and Georgia, the Almohads in the west, and the Seljuks of Rum in passing.
• The Dispeller of Anxieties, on the History of the Ayyubids, Jamal al-Din Ibn Wasil (about 1272 to 1285, at Hama). The fullest Ayyubid dynastic history, written at Hama with access to the family's own tradition and to Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Abi Tayy and Sibt ibn al-Jawzi.
• 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).
• 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.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.