Collateral Roles in Pilgrimage

chapter 22 Collateral Roles in Pilgrimage

Jacke S. Phillips

For millennia, the Red Sea and its port cities have played a central role in the history of navigation, trade and communication between inland Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Asia, Mediterranean, Europe and the East African (“Swahili”) coast. They are linked both to their hinterlands and to the world overseas. They act as intermediaries between regional and international trade networks, and so as nodes of short- and long-distance communication. I focus here on the strategically located island-port-city of Suakin, one of the major later mediaeval to modern ports on the African coast of the Red Sea, and its under- appreciated role as a central hub in the collateral movement of people, goods and ideas, beyond the commercial and political – in the physical act of pilgrimage, especially but not exclusively to Mecca.1

1 Much of this paper draws on the results of The Suakin Project. Ongoing since 2002, the project is a major fieldwork focus of the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), a multidimensional investigation of its history, archaeology and architec- ture, and a building restoration and heritage study programme. Recent preliminary publica- tions include M. Mallinson, “Suakin 2003/4”, Sudan and Nubia 8 (2004): 90–94; M. Mallinson et al., Ottoman “Suakin 1541–1865: Lost and Found”, in The Frontiers of the Ottoman World: Proceedings of the British Academy 156, ed. A. Peacock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 469–492; C. Breen et al., “Excavations at the Medieval Red Sea Port of Suakin, Sudan”, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 46 (2011): 205–220; D. Rhodes, “The Nineteenth-Century Colonial Archaeology of Suakin, Sudan”, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 15 (2011): 162–189 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10761- 010-0132-8#page-1); S. Taha, “Suakin’s Sacred Landscape: Shrine Visitation”, in Sharing Cultures 2011: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Intangible Heritage, Tommar, Portugal 3–6 July, ed. S. Lira, R. Amodéda and C. Pinherio (Barcelos: Green Lines Institute, 2011), pp. 590–604; M. Mallinson, “Suakin: Paradigm of a Port”, in Navigated Spaces, Connected Places: Proceedings of the Red Sea Project V Held at the University of Exeter, September 2010, ed. D. Agius et al. [British Foundation for the Study of Arabia 12/BAR International Series S2346] (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012), pp. 159–172, http://www.academia.edu/2632570/ Archaeological_and_historical_evidence_for_the_trade_of_Suakin_Sudan_15th-19th_cen- tury_AD_in_Navigated_Spaces_Connected_Places._Proceedings_of_Red_Sea_Project_V_ held_at_the_University_of_Exeter_September_2010; Jacke Phillips, “Beit Khorshid Effendi: A ‘Trader’s’ House at Suakin”, in Agius et al., Navigated Spaces, pp. 189–199; L. Smith et al., “Archaeology and the Archaeological and Historical Evidence for the Trade of Suakin, Sudan”, in Agius et al., Navigated Spaces, pp. 159–199; C. Breen, “Towards an Archaeology of Early Islamic Ports on the Western Red Sea Coast”, Journal of Maritime Archaeology 8 (2013):

Suakin is located on the Red Sea coast of modern Sudan, and has functioned as a port for over a millennium, with undoubted antecedents extending back to antiquity. Interconnecting relationships at Suakin through trade and pilgrimage connect the African hinterland, interior and coast with Arabia, Europe, India and the Far East. The port comprises the original island town of Suakin, its mainland extension (“the Geyf ’”) and nearby Condenser Island, all within a lagoon at the western end of a long channel penetrating through a thick coral reef along the coastline of the Red Sea, constituting an ideal natural harbour well protected from the sea itself.2

1 The Background: Trading Relationships and Connections

Recorded in Arab texts as early as the fourth/tenth century, the history of Suakin over most of the past millennium has been a very complicated series of foreign power struggles, occupations and political alliances, as each power attempted to control the port for its commercial and strategic importance.3 Muslim writers indicate Suakin was involved in trade with the Christian king- doms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alwa along the Nile Valley from as early as the third/ninth century (Figure 22.1). Major caravan routes also extended well beyond these Christian territories, north through the Eastern Desert to Cairo, south to Abyssinia4 and beyond, and far into West Africa to present-day Nigeria, and even into Mali. Central assembly and distribution hubs at strategic locations inland, often run by resi- dent trading family members, linked the entire network together. Ibn Selim al-Aswani (fourth/tenth century), for example, already records that Soba, the

311–323; S. Taha, Attachment to Abandoned Heritage: The Case of Suakin [BAR International Series S2477] (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013); S. Taha, “Still a Place to Call Home? Development and the Changing Character of Place”, The Historic Environment 5 (2014): 17–35, http://www .maneyonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1179/1756750513Z.00000000033. For a history of the site using Arabic and Ottoman documentary sources, with earlier references, see also A. Peacock, “Suakin: A Northeast African Port in the Ottoman Empire”, Northeast African Studies 12 (2012a): 29–50. My thanks to Shadia Taha for allowing me to cite from her unpublished in- terview notes. 2 For a developmental description of the Red Sea ports, see C. Le Quesne, “Hajj Ports of the Red Sea: A Historical and Archaeological Overview”, in The Hajj: Collected Essays, ed. V. Porter and L. Saif (London: British Museum Press, 2013), pp. 74–83. 3 See A. Peacock, “The Ottomans and the Funj Sultanate in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 75 (2012b): 87–111; Peacock 2012a. 4 I use this older term to include both Eritrea and Ethiopia, now two independent countries.