Badi

Bāḍi 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 Bāḍi south of the Gulf of Aqīq, just offshore on the island of Er Rih (al-Rīḥ) in what is now Sudan, near the border with Eritrea. The village of Aqīq, 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 Aqīq and the ruins of Er Rih medieval Bāḍi. On the other hand, Richard Pankhurst identifies Badi with the Eritrean port of Massawa. The earliest source to mention the port of Bāḍi is al-Ṭabarī, writing in the ninth century. He states that in 637 the Caliph Umar 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 Abd al-Ḥakam mentions Bāḍi as one of the places subject to the treaty made by the governor of Egypt, Ubayd Allāh ibn Ḥabḥāb (724–734), with the Beja. Abd Allāh ibn Marwān, the secon

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