Sawakin
Coordinates: 19 ° 6 ′ N , 37 ° 20 ′ E
Sawakin (also: Suakin ) ( Arabic سواكن, DMG Sawākin ) is a port city in the Sudanese state of al-Bahr al-ahmar and was the most important port on the African Red Sea coast from the 15th to the 19th centuries .
location
The city is located on the Red Sea, around 650 kilometers northeast of Khartoum and around 60 kilometers south of Port Sudan , the capital of the state of al-Bahr al-ahmar. Asphalt roads lead via Port Sudan to Atbara and Kassala . There is a ferry connection to Jeddah several times a week .
history
The legend goes back a long way and explains the name: "Sawakin" is said to come from sawajin, plural of sijn ("prison"), because the prophet Sulayman, who corresponds to the Old Testament King Solomon , condemned and locked all spirits ( jinn ) here should. A ship carrying Ethiopian virgins is said to have been drifted away to Sawakin in a storm en route to the Queen of Sheba . After driving on, they noticed that all of the jinn had made them pregnant.
From the 5th dynasty (2504 to 2347 BC) reports were made from Egypt about expeditions and boat trips in the Red Sea to the gold reserves of Punt on the eastern tip of Africa . The sheltered Bay of Sawakin must have been at least a stage destination or a trading port for the Egyptians.
During the Ptolemaic rule over Egypt (from the end of the 4th century BC) Sawakin was important as a trading port. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus mentioned in the 1st century BC The bad climate of Sawakin, the high humidity and heat, and calls the place Limen Evangelis, with Ptolemy (around 100-175) the place is called Evangelon Portus. The "harbor of good hope" is described as a circular island with a circumference of 1.5 kilometers at the end of a bay, where elephants were loaded alongside other animals.
In the Roman and Byzantine times during the 1st millennium, the Red Sea was the most important connection to the Indian Ocean. Except for Kosma's Indicopleustes around 550, however, there are no references to the Topographia Christiana . In the 10th century Sawakin was mentioned as an old port by the South Arab scholar al-Hamdani . In the course of the Islamic expansion , there were Arab trading establishments on the Red Sea from the 8th century, including Sawakin Aidhab in the north and the newly founded port of Baadi (plains of Gash Barka in today's Eritrea ). The latter was soon given up due to the unfavorable location. Aidhab was under direct Egyptian control and was the busiest port on the African side of the Red Sea from the middle of the 11th century to around 1300, but then gave its importance to Sawakin. Sawakin was and remained a port under the rule of the Bedscha , some of whom settled around the city as nomads.
For Ethiopian Christians and Christians of the Nubian Kingdom of Alwa until its conquest and Islamization by the Funj , Sawakin was the starting port for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem . The Arab historian Yakut found Sawakin was inhabited by Christians from Alwa in 1213. Crusaders invaded the Red Sea in the 12th century . Renaud de Châtillon (around 1125-1187) wanted to conquer Mecca and Medina , he and his team plundered the port cities on the way, which were the scene of various battles against forces sent by Saladin . In the 14th and 15th centuries, some Venetian traders had settled in the port cities of Sawakin and Massaua .
At the time of the Ayyubid dynasty, Sawakin came under direct Egyptian control for the first time through an expedition sent by the sultan in 1215, and the subsequent Mamluks also strived for dominance over the northern Sudanese trade routes. To secure this, Sultan Baibars I arranged a punitive expedition against the Emir of Sawakin, Ala al-Din al-Asbaani, who had appropriated assets from deceased merchants and had already ignored one last warning. The attack was led by the governor of Qus and his general and supported by 50 ships from Aidhab. After al-Asbaani fled, a Mamluk representative ruled the city, against whom al-Asbaani launched an unsuccessful attack. Shortly thereafter, he was accepted as a local ruler under Egyptian control by Baibars. The Emir of Sawakin, who duly paid taxes to the Sultan from 1266, subsequently worked with Egypt and in 1281 even successfully intervened in a Bedouin conflict in the Aidhab desert on behalf of the Mamluk Sultan .
Al-Asbaani was the descendant of traders from the Hejaz who had ties to Jeddah and Mecca. The explorer Ibn Battuta mentioned as sovereign, the Sharif Zaid ibn ibn Abi Numaiy, a son of the former Emir of Mecca Abu Numaiy I ibn Abi Sa'd. Ibn Battuta was returning from a pilgrimage around 1330 and was about to sail from Jeddah to Aidhab when his ship lost course in a storm and he had to seek refuge in the port of Ras Dawir. In his description, it is unclear whether he described Sawakin or a nearby island.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Sawakin fell for a short time to the newly established Sultanate of Sannar . With the governor of the port island in 1540, the commander of a Portuguese fleet, Stefano da Gama, got into a dispute. The Portuguese had traveled from Goa to attack Suez and did serious damage to the city's buildings in Sawakin.
With the conquest of Eritrea by Özdemir Pascha around 1550, Sawakin became Ottoman and, as the capital, part of the Habesch province . The city began to decline economically in the middle of the 17th century and some of the Arab traders emigrated. The port continued to be important for the Funj Sultanate, it was a transit point for black African slaves and for Mecca pilgrims . In December it was possible for merchant ships to sail along the African coast towards Mogadishu with the northeast wind. With the beginning of the summer monsoon (from April a partly stormy wind blows from the southwest), the traders from Sannar with gold and ivory set off on a ship trip across the Indian Ocean to the Arabian coastal countries, from where they returned with silk and spices in the winter months. Due to the European advance in the 17th and 18th centuries, this trade declined, the export of cattle, grain, hides and slaves via Jeddah remained significant. The decline in trade primarily affected the Arabs on the island, while the population of the bedjah who settled on the mainland increased relatively. At the beginning of the 19th century there were around 3,000 inhabitants on the island and 5,000 on the mainland.
After the dissolution of the Habesch province , Sawakin and the other port cities still in Ottoman ownership were subordinated to the Jeddah province. The Ottoman Empire was represented by a customs officer appointed by the Wālī of Jeddah Province. The bedjah on the mainland had their own sovereign. The Orient traveler Jean Louis Burckhardt came through Sawakin on his way to Mecca in 1814 and reported that two thirds of 600 houses were in ruins.
From 1843 to 1851 the Ottoman Empire leased Sawakin to its autonomous province of Egypt, which had recently conquered the surrounding country. Ismail Pascha , Wali of Egypt, bought the city for life in 1865, but a year later Sawakin was finally given over to Egypt and incorporated into the Egyptian province of Sudan . Until the outbreak of the Mahdi uprising , Sawakin experienced its greatest boom: new houses were built, existing houses were restored and enlarged. In 1869 the city had 8,000 inhabitants. The arriving camel caravans brought coffee from Ethiopia, ivory, gum arabic , ostrich feathers from Kordofan and further cattle and hides. In 1877 Charles Gordon became Governor General of Egyptian Sudan. On his way to Khartoum via Sawakin, he ordered the construction of a dam from the island to the mainland. In 1881 the Mahdi uprising began, led in the east by Osman Digna , who was previously a slave trader. In February 1884 he was able to defeat Baker Pasha's Anglo-Egyptian army in El-Teb near the coast south of Sawakin. That same month the British therefore sent 5,000 men under Gerald Graham to Sawakin to secure the coastline on the Red Sea. Graham, with his reinforcements, was able to drive Osman Digna back at El-Teb at the end of February and two weeks later in another battle near Tamai, but had to withdraw to Sawakin. Osman Digna set up his headquarters in Tokar , 160 kilometers to the south , and Sawakin was the only point in Sudan held by the British against the Mahdists for around 10 years - besides the Wadi Halfa base in the Egyptian border area. From 1886 to 1888 Horatio Herbert Kitchener (who ten years later defeated the Mahdists in Omdurman ) was governor of the region around Sawakin. On his order, the previous earth wall was replaced by defensive walls made of brick with bastions and entrance gates. The walls had to withstand an attack by Osman Digna's bedscha army in 1888. With the help of Egyptian troops sent for liberation, the Mahdists were defeated in December 1888 in a tough battle outside the city walls. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was founded on the territory of the former Egyptian province of Sudan by the Condominium Agreement of January 1, 1899 . Sawakin, however, remained Egyptian and thus formed an enclave , but was incorporated into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by another agreement on July 10, 1899.
When the need arose for a larger port on the Red Sea, a new port was created with the establishment of Port Sudan in 1904. In Sawakin there was a lack of expansion opportunities and there was no adequate drinking water supply. Another obstacle were the many destroyed buildings that should have been cleared away. Nevertheless, in 1906 the railway built from Atbara to Port Sudan was extended to Sawakin, connecting a few kilometers of railway tracks laid in 1884. In 1905 there were 10,500 inhabitants. In 1910 the British provincial headquarters were transferred to Port Sudan. The city had lost its importance when the last public facilities were moved to Port Sudan in 1922. The railway line was shut down. In the 1950s a house plan could still be drawn up, and around 1960 some houses were still inhabited. There has been no intact building since then.
In December 2017, an agreement between the Turkish and Sudanese governments, which was made during a state visit by President Erdoğan , was made known, according to which Turkey would temporarily leave the ruined port area to build civil and military port facilities there.
population
For Sawakin 44,521 inhabitants are given (2010 calculation). Most of them belong to the Hadendoa , an ethnic group of the Bedscha.
| year | Residents |
|---|---|
| 1973 (census) | 5,895 |
| 1983 (census) | 18,030 |
| 2010 (calculation) | 44,521 |
The Egyptian traders on the island were followers of Sunni Islam, presented themselves as devoutly conservative and felt superior to the bedscha on the mainland. In fact, alcohol and prostitution were common on the island in the 19th century. 1829 was the leader of the Majdhubiya called Sufi Order Muhammad al-Majdhub as-Sughayir (1796-1833) of Ed Damer , the center of this order, according Sawakin and began to proselytize population under the Beja. He won influential supporters and numerous followers among the Bedscha by preaching a very rigid Islam that was legitimized by moral claims. The Majdhubiya later fought on the side of the Madhi against the Egyptians and English.
Cityscape
The former district of the Arab traders is located on a circular island at the end of a 2.5 kilometer long bay, which is protected by offshore coral reefs. A narrow channel allows only small ships to pass through and was ideal for Arab dhows ; the modern ferry port is located on the southern side at the exit of the bay into the Red Sea. The smaller Condenser Island in the bay was once a cemetery and is only recognizable as a flat sandbank. Opposite the city island, on the south-western mainland, is the inhabited district of El Geyf, surrounded in a semicircle by recognizable remains of the old city wall, which was reinforced with six bastions. The railway line ran around the city wall in a large arc to the east side of the lagoon, where the construction of a modern city was planned until around 1900. On the north side of the canal, near the sea, there was a quarantine station for Mecca pilgrims with barracks that were still waiting for thousands of people in the 1950s.
island
The city was comparable to other rich Arab trading cities on the Red Sea: Massaua, Jeddah, Hodeida or Mocha . All of them owned multi-story, white-plastered houses, the facades of which were structured with ornate wooden windows or balconies. The houses in Sawakin were built of white shell limestone, which was extracted when the canal was excavated or from a quarry on the south side of the bay. In addition to these two to three-story townhouses, there were also some houses with inner courtyards and a representative reception area ( Iwan ). All houses had a separate women's wing in the back or on the upper floors. On the first floor there was usually a shop or warehouse, the roofs or balconies were used for sleeping.
As a special feature, the houses had window grilles made from Java teak wood ( mashrabiya ) to provide shade and lavishly decorated wooden bay windows ( Roshan ) up to 2.40 meters wide . Based on the wood applications, two architectural styles can be distinguished. At the time of Egyptian rule in the 19th century, only roofed balconies were installed instead of the earlier "Turkish" bay windows, which were closed on three sides with folding shutters. By the 19th century there were about 200 houses on the island, including three or four large buildings. In the middle of the island stood the oldest house from 1518, the Beit el Pascha, the residence of the first Turkish governor. It can no longer be made out in the rubble.
Access to the island leads through the Gordons Gate (the only building restored on the island) along the central market street to the Hanafi Mosque. A separate mosque was built for the two most important Sunni schools of law ( madhhab ), the Hanafis and the Shafiʿites . A few meters to the east are the remains of the Schafa'i mosque with partially preserved prayer niche ( mihrāb ) and the minbar next to it, which is covered by a canopy on stone pillars. The mosques have an inner courtyard, which is surrounded on all sides by a single-row hall made of round arched arcades (Sahn) . There are said to have been three other mosques on the island, of which no remains are recognizable. There were also six private rooms (Zawiya), the largest being the Musai Zawia with a central dome.
The representative buildings of the authorities were lined up by the water in the northern part of the island. The customs office, which can be recognized by the curved portal, and next to it the somewhat smaller rest house (Muhafsa), which was built in 1866 as a government palace, are partially preserved . To the west along the bank follow the telegraph office, a four-storey residential building and what was once the most beautiful of the older residential buildings, the house of Khorshid Effendi, which was built around a large inner courtyard and had a stately Ivan. In contrast to this, the newer building of the Egyptian National Bank to the south of it and with arcades directly on the waterfront was a rather strict, angular structure. The walls of the upper floor have been partially preserved.
Mainland
The dam commissioned by Gordon is about 50 meters long and extends the access road on the mainland from the Kitcheners Gate on the outer city wall, one kilometer away, to the smaller Gordons Gate on the island. The two-story buildings erected in the Bedscha suburb, the El Geyf district, in the 19th century are in a similar state of ruins as on the island or they are in urgent need of renovation, but have so far been used by the local administration and police. There are three mosques in use, the largest being the same shape as the Shafa'i Mosque on the island.
The Bedscha's accommodations consist of simple adobe houses in the Sudanese style, wooden booths or on the outskirts of the traditional boat-shaped round tents with wooden frames covered with wicker mats. The economic basis is the lively market, which serves to supply the local population with daily necessities, and fishing in small boats. In the north, a slum area has emerged in the area of the former city wall.
Others
In 1950, diving pioneer Hans Hass shot a large part of his film Adventure in the Red Sea in the ruins of Sawakin. Several photos of the city are depicted in his 1952 book Manta: Devils in the Red Sea . At Shaab Anbar, a diving area directly off the coast of Sawakin, Klaus Wissel was killed of Hass during the second Xarifa expedition in 1957 .
sons and daughters of the town
- Osman Digna (1836–1926), general in the Mahdiya army
literature
- Marisa Calia: Suakin. Memory of a City. In: Attilio Petruccioli (ed.): Trails to the East. Essays in Memory of Paolo Cuneo (= Environmental Design. Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Center. Vol. 18). Environmental Design, Como 2000, ISBN 88-86805-00-8 , pp. 192-201, online .
- Jean-Pierre Greenlaw: The Coral Buildings Of Suakin. Islamic Architecture, Planning, Design and Domestic Arrangements in a Red Sea Port. Kegan Paul, London 1995, ISBN 0-7103-0489-7 .
- Sawakin. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 9: San - Sze. Brill, Leiden u. a. 1997, ISBN 90-04-10422-4 , pp. 87-89.
- Bernhard Streck : Sudan. Stone graves and living cultures on the Nile. DuMont, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-7701-1232-6 , pp. 115-121.
Web links
- Robert Berg: Suakin. Time and tide. Saudi Aramco World, July / August 1993
- Suakin Coral Island Town. Durham University Sudan Archives (pictures and drawings of buildings in the old town)
Individual evidence
- ^ André Wink: Al-Hind. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume 3: Indo-Islamic Society. 14th – 15th Centuries. Brill, Leiden u. a. 2004, ISBN 90-04-13561-8 , pp. 170f.
- ^ Keiko Ota: "The Meccan Sharifate and its diplomatic relations in the Bahri Mamluk period" in AJAMES: Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies 17.1 (2002) 1-20. Here. P. 5.
- ↑ HAR Gibb (Ed.): Ibn Battuta. Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1929, p. 107, Online: Paul Halsall 2001 .
- ↑ Marisa Calia: Suakin. 2000, p. 194.
- ^ Bernhard Streck: Sudan. 1982, p. 118
- ^ The Geographer: Sudan - Egypt (United Arab Republic) Boundary (= International Boundary Study, No. 18). P. 2.
- ↑ Suakin . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 25 : Shuválov - Subliminal Self . London 1911, p. 1060 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
- ↑ Ali Kucukgocmen, Khalid Abdelaziz: Turkey to restore Sudanese Red Sea port and build naval dock. Reuters, December 26, 2017
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives:
- ↑ Albrecht Hofheinz: The Sheikh in the Super-Ego or Do Muslims Have a Conscience? In: Sigrid Faath, Hanspeter Mattes (Hrsg.): Sudan (= Wuqûf. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa 7/8). Wuqûf, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-924577-11-0 , pp. 461-481.