Region · as at first light, 1 January 1200

The Maghreb and the Sahara

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 13 realms and principalities in The Maghreb and the Sahara, with 50 lords and officers, 201 towns, ports and sites, 0 church lands and religious houses and 67 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

  1. The Almohad caliphate of Muhammad al-NasirMuhammad al-NasirCaliphate

    On 1 January 1200 the Almohad caliphate is the greatest power of the Muslim West and still at the height reached by al-Mansur, the victor of Alarcos (1195).

  2. The veiled Sanhaja of the western SaharaDesert tribes

    The veiled Berber nomads of the western Sahara, the people who made the Almoravid empire.

  3. The Canary IslandersIsland peoples

    Seven islands peopled since the first millennium BC by settlers of North African Berber origin, cut off from the mainland since: the Majos of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, the Canarii of Gran Canaria, the Guanches of Tenerife, the Gomeros, the Benahoaritas of L

  4. The free Zenata: the Banu Marin and the steppeThe Banu Marin under Abd al-Haqq ibn MahyuBerber tribes

    On 1 January 1200 the Zenata of the central Maghreb are nomad and half-nomad camel and sheep tribes of the high plains between the Moulouya and the Hodna, with a foothold of villages and pastures in the Tell.

  5. The Ibadi communitiesSelf-governing communities

    The Ibadis are the last heirs of the Rustamid imamate of Tahert.

  6. The oases of the northern SaharaOasis communities

    South of the Atlas, the oases of the northern Sahara are a world of fortified villages (qsur), palm groves and underground water channels (foggara) under their own notables.

  7. The Banu Ghaniya, the last AlmoravidsYahya ibn Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn GhaniyaAmirate

    On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Banu Ghaniya, the last of the Almoravid royal house, are a family at war on two fronts.

  8. Qaraqush and his GhuzzSharaf al-Din Qaraqush al-Armani al-Muzaffari al-Nasiri,Turkish war band

    Qaraqush is the Armenian-born mamluk of Saladin's nephew Taqi al-Din who rode west from Egypt in 1172 with a few hundred Turkish horsemen and carved out a lordship in Libya and southern Tunisia: Awjila, the Fezzan (where he ended the Banu Khattab of Zawila), T

  9. Mahdia under the rebel al-RagragiMuhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-RagragiRebel lordship

    Since the summer of 1199 the old Fatimid capital of Mahdia, a walled peninsula with a fortified harbour, has been the lordship of a rebel Almohad soldier, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Ragragi.

  10. The Arab tribes: Banu Hilal and Banu SulaymThe shaykhs of the clansArab tribes

    From Barqa to the high plains of Constantine the open country belongs to the Arab tribes, the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, who came west a century and a half before and broke the old Zirid state.

  11. The FezzanOasis towns

    The Fezzan is a chain of oases in the sand and stone of the central Sahara: the Wadi al-Ajal with old Jarma, the Wadi al-Shati, the basin of Murzuq with Traghan, and Zawila, for three centuries the capital of the Ibadi Hawwara kings of the Banu Khattab and the

  12. The veiled Berbers of the central Sahara (the later Tuareg)none: each town, clan and confederation has its own chiefDesert confederations

    On 1 January 1200 the veiled Berbers hold the central Sahara between the Niger bend and the Fezzan in many separate groups with no common king.

  13. The Tubu of the Tibesti and BorkouNoneDesert clans

    The Tubu are the camel and goat herders of the eastern Sahara: the Teda of the Tibesti mountains and the oases of the north-west (Djado, the deserts round Kawar), and the Daza of the Borkou palm groves, the Bahr el Ghazal and the edges of Kanem.

Self-governing peoples and other lands

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

Primary sources for The Maghreb and the Sahara

  • 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.
  • History of the Affairs of Spain, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (completed 1243). The archbishop's history of the peninsula, written forty years on by a Navarrese who served Castile.
  • The Breath of Perfume from the Green Branch of al-Andalus, al-Maqqari (Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Maqqari al-Tilimsani) (1628 to 1630, at Cairo). A late compilation, but one that quotes at length from Andalusi historians now lost or fragmentary, with material on the Almohad caliphs, their governors in Seville and Cordoba, the frontier with Castile and León after Alarcos, and the Almohad-period men of letters.
  • The Book of Roger (the Pleasure of Him who Longs to Cross the Horizons), Muhammad al-Idrisi (completed 1154 at Palermo). The nearest Arabic geography in time to 1200 for the Indian Ocean.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • History of the Two Dynasties, the Almohad and the Hafsid, al-Zarkashi (Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Lu'lu'i al-Zarkashi) (about 1490 to 1495, at Tunis). A short Hafsid-era chronicle whose Almohad opening gives, in a few lines a reign, the succession of al-Mansur and al-Nasir, the Banu Ghaniya's seizure of Ifriqiya and its recovery, and the sending of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs to Tunis, which the Hafsids counted as the start of their house.
  • Memoirs of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart and the Beginnings of the Almohad State, Abu Bakr ibn Ali al-Sanhaji, called al-Baydhaq (about 1150 to 1165). Nothing for the year itself: al-Baydhaq's memoir ends in Abd al-Mu'min's early reign.
  • Official Letters of the Almohad Chancery (1140s to 1260s; the letters nearest 1200 are of the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir). Circular letters from the caliphs to governors, tribes and towns announcing victories, appointments and policy, preserved in later manuscript collections.
  • 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).
  • The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes.
  • 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.
  • The Complete History: the passages on the Maghreb and al-Andalus, Ibn al-Athir (about 1220 to 1231, at Mosul). The year entries for 595 to 597 of the Hijra (late 1198 to 1201) record the death of Yaqub al-Mansur, the accession of al-Nasir and the opening of Yahya ibn Ghaniya's war in Ifriqiya; the following years follow Yahya and the Ghuzz captain Qaraqush through Tripoli, Gabès and Mahdia to al-Nasir's reconquest in 1206, with the best eastern account of Qaraqush's career.
  • The Garden of Pages: a History of the Kings of the Maghreb and of the City of Fez, Ibn Abi Zar al-Fasi (completed in 1326 at Fez, for the Marinid sultan Abu Said Uthman). The Almohad chapters give a brisk dated narrative of al-Mansur's death and burial, al-Nasir's accession and the Banu Ghaniya troubles, with the kind of detail (coinage, public works at Fez and Rabat, prices, plagues) that a Fez compiler cared about, and the annals of Fez supply the city's governors and markets.
  • The Gift of the Imamate, Ibn Sahib al-Sala (Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad al-Baji) (late twelfth century; the surviving part covers 1159 to 1173). The only Almohad court chronicle written from inside the administration, by a chancery secretary who travelled with the caliphs Abd al-Mu'min and Abu Yaqub Yusuf.
  • The Journey of al-Tijani, Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Tijani (after 1309 and before 1318, at Tunis). A Hafsid chancery official's travel book, which at each town stops to tell its history, and so preserves accounts of the Banu Ghaniya war and of Qaraqush in southern Ifriqiya and Tripolitania around 1200 (Gabès, Djerba, Tripoli, the Jarid oases) from lost Almohad-period sources.
  • The Pleasant Book: a Summary of the History of the Maghreb, Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (completed in 1224, in the East, after the author left the Maghreb in 1217). Abd al-Wahid was a boy of fifteen at Fez and Marrakesh in 1200 and later moved in Almohad court circles, so his account of Yaqub al-Mansur (died January 1199) and of the first years of Muhammad al-Nasir is partly from memory and from men he knew: the character of the new caliph, the weakness that let the Banu Ghaniya overrun Ifriqiya, the Majorca expedition of 1203 and the Ifriqiya campaign of 1205 to 1206.
  • 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.
  • The Wondrous Account of the History of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi (about 1312, at Marrakesh). The Almohad section is the fullest year-by-year narrative of the caliphate around 1200: the last campaigns and the death of Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in January 1199, the accession of his son Muhammad al-Nasir, the renewed war of the Banu Ghaniya in Ifriqiya under Yahya ibn Ishaq and his ally Qaraqush, the Almohad losses of Mahdia and Tunis a few years later, and al-Nasir's reconquest of Ifriqiya in 1205 to 1206 followed by the appointment of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs as governor.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Medieval Arabic inscriptions of the Niger bend and the Adrar (dated epitaphs from 1013 (Essuk) and 1100 (Gao-Saney) onward). The only writing from the Sudan belt itself before the Timbuktu chronicles.
  • The Book of Geography, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhri (about 1140 to 1150, at Granada). A short Andalusi geography fifty years before 1200 with notices on the Sahara and the Sudan that are independent of al-Bakri: the Lamtuna and the veiled Sanhaja, Sijilmasa and the gold road, and Ghana, which al-Zuhri says accepted Islam at the time of the Almoravid movement (he gives the year 469 of the Hijra, 1076 to 1077), the only source for that statement.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.