Badi

Bāḍiʿ was a medieval African port on the Red Sea. It was the first port established by the Arabs in the Bilād al-Sūdān and flourished between about 600 and 1100. It was a merchant settlement conducting trade between its hinterland and Arabia. It does not appear to have fallen under the authority of any established state. Timothy Insoll locates Bāḍiʿ south of the Gulf of ʿAqīq, just offshore on the island of Er Rih (al-Rīḥ) in what is now Sudan, near the border with Eritrea. The village of ʿAqīq, which gives its name to the gulf, lies some 15 miles (24 km) to the north of the site. Older authorities, such as The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Pilot, identify the ruins of Er Rih with ancient Ptolemais Theron, but J. W. Crowfoot argues that Ptolemais is ʿAqīq and the ruins of Er Rih medieval Bāḍiʿ. On the other hand, Richard Pankhurst identifies Badi with the Eritrean port of Massawa. The earliest source to mention the port of Bāḍiʿ is al-Ṭabarī, writing in the ninth century. He states that in 637 the Caliph ʿUmar exiled the poet Abū Miḥjan al-Thaqafī there, indicating that at this early date it was a mere penal colony or place of exile similar to the Dahlak Archipelago. Writing around the same time, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam mentions Bāḍiʿ as one of the places subject to the treaty made by the governor of Egypt, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ḥabḥāb (724–734), with the Beja. ʿAbd Allāh ibn Marwān, the secon

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).