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. For the Almohad realm it describes the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb before the Banu Hilal and the Almohads, so differences between al-Bakri and the Istibsar (1191) or al-Idrisi show what had changed by 1200. He never left al-Andalus and worked from al-Warraq's lost tenth-century geography and from merchants' reports.
About this source
- Title
- Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik (the book on North Africa, the Sahara and the Sudan)
- Author
- al-Bakri (Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri)
- Author's dates
- about 1040 to 1094
- Written
- 1068, at Cordoba
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the Maghreb, the Sahara and the western Sudan as reported up to about 1068
- Kind
- Geography
The Africa section is the only part of the Masalik edited early; de Slane's 1913 revision was not found online in this search. The Halle record dated 1859 is catalogued under the same title as the Arabic text and should be checked to confirm it is the French translation; the Halle pages sit behind a JavaScript check. Levtzion and Hopkins give the Sahara and Sudan passages in English.
Where to read it
Editions
- W. MacGuckin de Slane (ed.), Description de l'Afrique septentrionale par Abou-Obeid-el-Bekri, texte arabe (Algiers, 1857)
- The same 1857 Arabic text, digitised by the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle
- A. P. van Leeuwen and A. Ferré (eds), Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik, 2 vols (Tunis, 1992), the complete Arabic text (not freely online)
Translations
- W. MacGuckin de Slane (tr.), Description de l'Afrique septentrionale (Paris and Algiers, 1859; first in the Journal asiatique 1858 to 1859), French
- W. MacGuckin de Slane (tr.), Description de l'Afrique septentrionale, revised edition (Algiers, 1911 to 1913; reprinted Paris, 1965), French, the version usually cited (not freely online)
Read it online
About the source
Realms this source covers in 1200
- The Almohad caliphate of Muhammad al-Nasir
- The Arab tribes: Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym
- The free Zenata: the Banu Marin and the steppe
- The Ibadi communities
- The oases of the northern Sahara
- The Fezzan
- The veiled Sanhaja of the western Sahara
- The veiled Berbers of the central Sahara (the later Tuareg)
- Ghana (Wagadu)
- The kingdom of Takrur
- Gao (Kawkaw): the Songhay kingdom
- Kanem: the Sayfawa mai