Region · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Nubia and the Horn of Africa

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 11 realms and principalities in Nubia and the Horn of Africa, with 23 lords and officers, 51 towns, ports and sites, 0 church lands and religious houses and 47 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

  1. Makuria (Dotawo) under King BasilBasilChristian kingdom

    The Christian kingdom of the middle Nile, called Dotawo in its own Old Nubian deeds, joining Makuria (the Dongola Reach, with its capital at Dongola) and the old kingdom of Nobadia in the north (the Arabs call the north al-Maris), which a royal governor, the e

  2. Alodia (Alwa)Christian kingdom

    The southern of the two Christian Nubian kingdoms, with its capital at Soba on the east bank of the Blue Nile about twenty kilometres above the meeting of the two Niles.

  3. The BejaNomad clans

    The Beja are camel, cattle and goat herders of the Red Sea hills and the plains to their west, speaking their own Cushitic language (To Bedawie), divided into clans led by chiefs, with inheritance through the mother.

  4. The Daju of Darfur

    The earliest known power of Darfur, a kingdom of the Daju centred in the southern Jebel Marra, with influence over the plains to the south and south-east.

  5. The Zagwe kingdom of LalibelaLalibelaChristian kingdom

    The Christian kingdom of the northern Ethiopian highlands under its Agaw dynasty.

  6. DamotKingdom

    A non-Christian kingdom on the plateau south of the great bend of the Abay (Blue Nile), west of the Muger, whose kings bore the title motalami.

  7. The Makhzumi sultanate of ShewaMuslim sultanate

    The first inland Muslim state of the Horn, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Shewan plateau, ruled since 896 (by its own chronicle) by a house claiming descent from the Makhzum of Quraysh.

  8. The sultanate of DahlakIsland sultanate

    A small Muslim sea state in the Dahlak archipelago off the Eritrean coast, ruled from the coral-stone town of Dahlak Kebir on the island of that name.

  9. ZeilaPort town

    Zeila is the old Muslim port at the western end of the Gulf of Aden, a short crossing from Aden and the sea end of the caravan road that climbs to the Harar plateau and runs on to the Awash and Shewa.

  10. The Somali clansClans

    On 1 January 1200 the people later called Somali are, to the Arab geographers, the Barbar of the Bilad al-Barbar, the 'Berber country' of the Gulf of Aden coast, distinct from the Abyssinians to the north-west and the Zanj to the south.

  11. The AfarClans

    The Afar hold the hot lowlands between the Ethiopian escarpment and the sea: the Danakil depression with its salt plain below sea level, the Red Sea coast from the Gulf of Zula to the Bab al-Mandab, the shores of the Gulf of Tadjoura, and the lower Awash with

Self-governing peoples and other lands

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

Primary sources for Nubia and the Horn of Africa

  • 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.
  • Exhortations and Reflections on the Quarters and Monuments: the chapters on Nubia and the Beja, al-Maqrizi (about 1417 to 1442, at Cairo). Two centuries late, but al-Maqrizi copied earlier books that are now lost, above all the account of Nubia by Ibn Salim al-Aswani, who went as Fatimid envoy to Dongola about 970 and described the Nubian king, his court, the eparch, the church and the land, which is the fullest description of Makuria ever written and still broadly valid in 1200; he also gives the Beja tribes, the oases, the baqt treaty and the Ayyubid campaigns against Nubia of 1173.
  • Old Nubian and Greek documents from Qasr Ibrim and the Nubian royal documents (the dated Qasr Ibrim land sales and letters run from the 1150s to the 1460s; the royal documents of the 1180s and 1190s are the nearest to 1200). The only documents from inside Nubia: land sales, letters and legal texts from Qasr Ibrim in Old Nubian, dated by the reigning king, his eparch and the local officials, which give the names and titles of the court of Dotawo (the Nubians' own name for the kingdom) in the generation around 1200.
  • Oriental Sources concerning Nubia, Various (collected and translated by Giovanni Vantini) (the collection published 1975). The standard collection, in English, of every eastern passage on Christian Nubia, and so the quickest way to all that was written about Makuria and Alodia near 1200: Abu al-Makarim, Ibn al-Athir on Turanshah's campaign of 1173, Ibn Jubayr and Yaqut, the History of the Patriarchs, Abu Shama, and the later Ibn Said, Abu'l-Fida, al-Nuwayri, Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi (who preserves the tenth-century Ibn Salim al-Aswani).
  • The Glory of the Kings, Yeshaq of Aksum (compiler) (1314 to 1322 in Ge'ez; the colophon claims an Arabic version of 1225). Nothing on events, but the ideology that unmade the Zagwe: the story that Ethiopia's rightful kings descend from Solomon and Menelik, compiled a century after 1200 to justify Yekuno Amlak's seizure of the throne in 1270 and to brand the Zagwe as usurpers.
  • The Golden Gospel of Dabra Libanos: Zagwe land grants (the acts were entered on the Gospel's blank leaves from the twelfth century onward; the Zagwe acts date from about 1150 to 1270). The only documents of the Zagwe state: grants of land and rights written into a Gospel book at Dabra Libanos of Ham in Eritrea, in the names of Zagwe kings (Tantawedem, Lalibela with his queen Masqal Kebra, Na'akueto La'ab) and their officers, with lists of estates and titles.
  • The History of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Abu al-Makarim (formerly attributed to Abu Salih the Armenian) (about 1177 to 1208; the core about 1200). The one Christian text written in Egypt around 1200 that looks south: it describes the kingdom of the Nubians with its king at Dongola, his churches, the eparch of Nobadia, the churches of Qasr Ibrim and the raid of Shams al-Dawla Turanshah in 1173, the kingdom of Alwa (Alodia) with its 400 churches and its capital Soba, and the Abyssinians with their king, their metropolitan sent from Alexandria, the church of Aksum and the Ark, as a Coptic churchman heard of them through the patriarchate.
  • 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.
  • The Life of Lalibela (probably the fifteenth century, from earlier material; the date is disputed). The only narrative about the Zagwe king who reigned in 1200: Lalibela's birth at Roha, the persecution by his brother King Harbay (Harbe), his exile and marriage to Masqal Kebra, his vision of Jerusalem, his accession, the building of the rock churches with angelic help, and his abdication in favour of his nephew Na'akueto La'ab.
  • History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrij and continuators (Various) (compiled in Arabic 1088 to 1094 from Coptic lives; continued for the patriarchs of 1102 to 1243 and later). The Coptic church's own record.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

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.