Aidhab

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Aidhab (Egypt)
Aidhab
Aidhab
Aidhab in the Hala'ib triangle

Aidhab (also Aydhab ; Arabic عيذاب, DMG ʿAiḏāb ) was a port city on the Red Sea in the Middle Ages .

location

The place was east of Aswan , on today's Egyptian - Sudanese border, 20 kilometers north of today's village of Halaib , which lies in the disputed area of ​​the Hala'ib triangle . The outlines of the residential town are known to a certain extent from satellite photos; the remains of port facilities cannot be seen in these photos. The settlement covered about 1.5 square kilometers between low hills on the coral coast. A district with houses made of coral limestone near the port could be distinguished from a settlement area with simpler houses from settled nomads. The stone buildings surrounded inner courtyards, as in the other port towns of Badi and Dhalak Kebir. The cemeteries in the north and south of the town were larger than local needs would have led one to expect.

history

A bishop Nabis can be traced in literary sources for Aidhab or the old port of Berenike, a few kilometers to the north, for the 5th century . Christianity would have gained a foothold here a century earlier than in the interior of Lower Nubia . In the Middle Ages, Aidhab was one of the main ports for African pilgrims on their way to Mecca thanks to its convenient location across from Jeddah . Another port a little further south was Badi, whose heyday was between the middle of the 7th and the middle of the 12th century. Aidhab was the end point of a caravan route and served as a port for trade with Yemen , India and the Far East. The small town experienced an upswing from the second half of the 11th century when the crusaders made the land routes to Mecca increasingly unsafe and they occupied Sinai . Export goods were cotton, dates, sugar and glass. Spices, pearls and Chinese porcelain were imported from the east. Aidhab is said to have been looted several times.

Around 1180 Ibn Jubair (1145–1217) describes Aidhab in his diary as a place where everything has to be introduced, even the water. The living conditions are tough. "We lived in an air that melted the body and drank water that distracted the stomach from the appetite". Staying in this city is the worst test on the way to Mecca. Although the people in Aidhab enjoy a lot of comforts from the Mecca pilgrims , they behave extremely unfairly towards them. She knows no religion other than lip service to the unity of God. "They are an immoral people, and it is not a sin to be cursed upon them."

The city was prosperous in the 12th century from the gold mines of the nearby Wadi Allaqi, trade, and pilgrimage. Ibn Jubair described the Bedscha residents as "black people who inhabit the mountains" who travel with camels on waterless routes and steal old art treasures. In the 13th century the gold reserves were almost exhausted, it was the time of fighting between different Arab ethnic groups.

The Moroccan pilgrim al-Qasim ibn Yusuf at-Tugibi as-Sabti († 1329), who went with his tour group from Cairo by ship up the Nile to Qus , crossed the desert to the Red Sea, gave another description of the "immoral" conditions 1297 Aidhab used it as a port for the crossing to Yemen. This route was abandoned after 1360 in favor of the sea route along the Red Sea. Al-Qasim found the area around the small town barren, and poor drinking water was fetched from a single cistern. The residents are unclothed except for a piece of blue cloth. There was a governor appointed by the Egyptian Mamluks and a second appointed by the rulers of Sawakin . Both shared the tribute payments of the travelers.

Aidhab was described by Ibn Battuta (1304–1368 / 1377) as tall and well supplied with food. In contrast to Ibn Jubair, it is said that Aidhab is inhabited by the Bujah, a black-skinned people who would wrap themselves in yellow shawls and wear headbands, with one third of the city divided between the Sultan of Egypt and two thirds with the Bedjah king be. A little later, the Egyptian historian al-Maqrīzī († 1442) described the red-hot place with disgust and equated the inhabitants with wild animals.

The place lost its position as an important port to Sawakin in the course of the 14th century. On the one hand, the sea voyage on the Red Sea was rated as less dangerous than before and was less arduous than the desert crossing mentioned, on the other hand, the Bedscha-controlled Sawakin was preferred because it was outside the Mamluk area of ​​influence. The lack of sufficiently clean drinking water in the area may have been another reason. In 1426 the place was destroyed by Sultan Barsbay . It was revenge for attacks by the inhabitants on the Mamluks' caravan routes, as Ibn Battuta had already described.

literature

  • David Peacock and Andrew Peacock: The Enigma of 'Aydhab: a Medieval Islamic Port on the Red Sea Coast. International Journal of Nautican Archeology, Vol. 37, 1, pp. 32-48, November 2007

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Richter: Studies on the Christianization of Nubia. Reichert, Wiesbaden 2002, p. 143, ISBN 3-89500-311-5
  2. ↑ Mohi El-Din Abdalla Zarroug: The Kingdom of Alwa: The Present State of the Question. University of Calgary Press, 1991, p. 86
  3. ↑ Timothy Insoll: The Archeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, pp. 94–101 Trial excavations in the 1970s brought glazed ceramics from Morocco or Muslim Andalusia to light.
  4. ^ GW Murray: Geographical Journal, Vol. 68, No. 3, September 1926, pp. 235-240
  5. ↑ Ibn Jubair: Diary of a Mecca Pilgrim. Page 47 ff.
  6. ↑ January Záhořík: The Islamization of the Beja until the 19th century. Contributions to the 1st Cologne Conference on Africa Studies (KANT I)
  7. ↑ Ulrich Haarmann and Bettina Zantana: Between Suez and Aden - pilgrims and long-distance traders in the Red Sea from the 10th to the 16th century. In: Stephan Conermann (ed.): The Indian Ocean in historical perspective. EB-Verlag, Hamburg 1998, pp. 109–142 (description by Aidhab: pp. 130–134) (PDF; 3.7 MB)
  8. ↑ Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354. Medieval Sourcebook

Coordinates: 22 ° 20 ′  N , 36 ° 29 ′  E