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. He also describes Takrur and its king, the Muslim kings of Ghana now under the Sosso and then Mali, Kawkaw, the Berbers of the desert, Zeila and the Horn, Mogadishu and the Barbar coast, and the Zanj towns. The latitudes and longitudes are schematic and much is second hand, but for Kanem around 1200 he is the key text.
About this source
- Title
- Kitab al-jughrafiya (also Kitab bast al-ard fi al-tul wa-l-ard)
- Author
- Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said)
- Author's dates
- 1213 to 1286
- Written
- about 1250 to 1275
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the inhabited world by climates, with the Sudan and the Sahara in the first climate
- Kind
- Geography
The Shamela text does not state which printed edition it follows. The work was used wholesale by Abu'l-Fida, whose Taqwim al-buldan (1321) repeats much of it.
Where to read it
Editions
- I. al-Arabi (ed.), Kitab al-jughrafiya (Beirut, 1970), Arabic (not freely online)
- J. Vernet Ginés (ed.), Kitab bast al-ard fi tuliha wa-l-ard (Tetuan, 1958), Arabic (not freely online)
Translations
- English extracts in Levtzion and Hopkins (West Africa) and Freeman-Grenville (East Africa) (not freely online)
Read it online
About the source
Realms this source covers in 1200
- Kanem: the Sayfawa mai
- The Sao towns
- The kingdom of Takrur
- Ghana (Wagadu)
- The Sosso kingdom of the Kante
- The Mande chiefdoms (Manden)
- Gao (Kawkaw): the Songhay kingdom
- The Tubu of the Tibesti and Borkou
- The veiled Berbers of the central Sahara (the later Tuareg)
- The Fezzan
- The Daju of Darfur
- Zeila
- The Somali clans
- Mogadishu and its elders
- The Swahili towns