Towards an Archaeology of Early Islamic Ports on the Western Red Sea Coast
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Towards an Archaeology of Early Islamic Ports on the Western Red Sea Coast Colin Breen
Published online: 22 October 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract Against a background of developing research on Red Sea ports, a hypothetical model of the morphology of port towns during the early Islamic period is presented here. These places went through constant cycles of change as economic and political frameworks fluctuated. While their physical shape and form was strongly influenced by architectural features of the Islamic world their functionality was more aligned to commercial interaction. These were dynamic spaces where the daily life of their inhabitants was guided by trade, religion, weather and politics. The ports were intrinsically tied to the trade networks that connected Africa with Arabia and the broader Indian Ocean world. Keywords
Red Sea Sudan Port Islamic
Introduction There is a growing body of research on the archaeology of ports and trade in the Red Sea during the classical period. However, historical and archaeological understandings of coastal settlements, communication and trade during the Islamic period have been less studied. This imbalance has largely been related to the research interests of researchers and a past overt emphasis on classical archaeology across the region. During the opening centuries of the first millennium AD a number of dominant regional ports had emerged including Adulis in Eritrea, Ptolemais Theron in Sudan and Berenike, Myos Hormos and Clysma in Egypt (Peacock and Peacock 2008: 32). For a variety of reasons including geopolitical manoeuvrings and processes of environmental change these ports were either abandoned or had decreased dramatically in size and importance by the opening centuries of the second millennium. Following the emergence of Islam and subsequent Arab expansion from the ninth century onwards, a new port network emerged on the western
C. Breen (&) School of Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland, UK e-mail: [email protected]
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J Mari Arch (2013) 8:311–323
coast of the Red Sea. A number of specific drivers lay behind this expansion. The facilitation of trade from the western Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean was one of the primary functions of these ports and the emerging markets of the Arabian Peninsula stimulated further growth. Further factors included the facilitation of the growing pilgrim traffic associated with the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, the fifth pillar of Islam. An expansion of the slave trade from the ninth and tenth centuries is also evident while a ‘gold rush’ or period of mining activity took place in the same period. ‘Aydhab is mentioned as an export port for gold mined from the Red Sea Hills and for ivory by the late ninth century and as a primary port providing access to the Arabian Peninsula (Peacock and Peacock 2008: 34). The tenth-century geographer al-Mas’udi referred to its population as belonging to the el Hassa Beja tribe and recorded that they w
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