# Early Zeila (Saylac) and the Qiblatayn mosque: the north coast before 1300 > Zeila (Saylac) before 1300: Avalites, the Arab geographers of the 900s, al-Idrisi, Yaqut and Ibn Sa'id, the Qiblatayn mosque and the 2001 excavations, and when Islam arrived. Source page: https://calankii.com/en/history/early-zeila-before-1300/ Last checked: 2026-11-12 Publisher: Calankii (https://calankii.com) ## In short Zeila (Somali *Saylac*) sits on a low coast in [Awdal](/en/regions/awdal/), about 80 miles from the strait of Bab el-Mandeb ([Schoff, *The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, 1912, notes p. 74](https://archive.org/details/cu31924030139236)). It was the nearest Somali port to Arabia and the sea gate for the trade routes into the Ethiopian highlands. This page covers what is recorded about Zeila before 1300. Ibn Battuta's visit in 1331 and later accounts are on [the Somali coast towns, 1331–1586](/en/history/somali-coast-towns-1331-1586/). The fullest modern study of early Zeila is a chapter by the French historians and archaeologists François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar, Bertrand Hirsch, Régis Bernard and Frédéric Champagne, who surveyed the town in 2001 and re-read every Arabic source on it from the 9th to the 15th century ([Fauvelle-Aymar et al., "Le port de Zeyla et son arrière-pays au Moyen Âge", in *Espaces musulmans de la Corne de l'Afrique au Moyen Âge*, Centre français des études éthiopiennes, 2011](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714); quotations from it are translated here from French). ## Avalites in the 1st century The *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea* names Avalites as the first of the "far-side" Berber market towns, the one with the shortest crossing from Arabia. It was "a small market-town… which must be reached by boats and rafts". It imported glass, grape juice, cloth "made for the Berbers", wheat, wine and tin, and exported "spices, a little ivory, tortoise-shell, and a very little myrrh, but better than the rest". Its people sometimes took goods across the strait on rafts to Ocelis and Muza in Arabia themselves ([Schoff 1912, §7, p. 25](https://archive.org/details/cu31924030139236)). Schoff identifies Avalites with Zeila and notes that "the ancient name is preserved by the village Abalit, on the north shore of the bay" (same source, notes p. 74). Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues write that "some authors" place Avalites at Zeila. A team led by Neville Chittick looked for the ancient site in 1975 and did not find it ([Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §§2, 6](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714)). See [the Somali ports in the Periplus](/en/history/periplus-somali-ports-1st-century/). ## The first Arabic mentions, late 800s and 900s - **Al-Ya'qubi, late 800s.** His *Kitab al-buldan* lists "Zayla' in the region of the Mandeb" among four places on the African shore opposite Yemen. This is the oldest known mention of the town by name. - **Al-Sayrafi, about 916.** The sea "touches Zayla', where ambergris and tortoise-shell are found". - **Al-Istakhri, 932–950, and Ibn Hawqal (died 988).** On the coast opposite Aden "there is a place called Zayla', a port for embarking to the Hijaz and Yemen". Frankincense, spotted hides and most of the skins tanned for shoes in Yemen come from there. Ibn Hawqal puts Zeila six days' sail from Dahlak. - **Al-Mas'udi, revised 956.** He calls the [Gulf of Aden](/en/relations/yemen/) *al-Khalij al-Barbari*, "the Berber gulf", 500 miles long. He lists Zeila, Dahlak and Badi' as coastal towns where "Muslims live, who are however tributaries of the local people", and says the region exports leopard skins, "the largest and most beautiful for saddles", and tortoise-shell for combs. - **Al-Muqaddasi (died 985)** writes that the eunuchs sold at Aden were "the Barbara". All of these are quoted and discussed in [Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §§53–62](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714). **Who says what about Zeila in the 900s.** - The Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini and the historian Joseph Cuoq read these texts as showing Zeila under the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia in the 10th and 11th centuries. J. S. Trimingham wrote that Ibn Hawqal says "Zaila' was in the possession of Abyssinian Christians". - Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues argue that this is a misreading. In their view the geographers use *Habasha* for the whole region, not for the Christian kingdom. They write that the port was most likely "independent of any Christian power". They compare it to the first Swahili towns: politically independent, with Muslim merchants living among a population that was not yet Muslim. They note that every export the 10th-century writers name is a local product of the coast or the near interior (§§63–74). ## Al-Idrisi, 1154, and the question of "Zalegh" Al-Idrisi wrote his world geography at the court of King Roger II of Sicily, finishing it in 1154. He did not travel to the Red Sea himself; Charles Guillain warned that Idrisi "had not travelled in the East beyond the shores of the Mediterranean" ([Guillain, *Documents sur l'histoire… de l'Afrique orientale*, part 1, 1856, p. 192](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_p43vUEwuZEoC)). From P. A. Jaubert's French translation of 1836 ([*Géographie d'Édrisi*, vol. 1, pp. 39–41](https://archive.org/details/gographiededrisi01idri)), translated here: > "Zalegh is on the shore of the salt sea, which joins the sea of Qulzum [the Red Sea]… From Zalegh to the coast of Yemen it is exactly 300 miles. Zalegh is a town of small size but very populous. Many foreign travellers are seen there, for most of the ships of Qulzum put in there with the various kinds of goods that suit Abyssinia. Exports consist of slaves and silver. As for gold, it is rare. The inhabitants… wear clothes of wool and cotton." Elsewhere in the same book Idrisi calls Zalegh a "town on the shore of the Red Sea" whose merchants traded inland at a town called Markata (same source, p. 37). **Who says what.** Since Conti Rossini, commentators have read Idrisi's Zalegh as Zeila. Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues point out that Idrisi names no other port on the African Red Sea coast between the strait and 'Aydhab, and links Zalegh to an inland capital that points to the northern Ethiopian highlands. They argue that the passage "cannot be taken as a verified description of the port of Zeila". It may describe a Red Sea port such as Massawa or Dahlak, or mix details from Zeila and from such a port. They suggest the old Aksumite port of Adulis, still called Zulla, as one candidate. They conclude that after the 10th century "the port of Zeila disappears from the horizon of the Arabic sources in the 11th and 12th centuries" ([Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §§75–78](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714)). ## Zeila in the 1200s: a Muslim port - **Abu Hamid al-Gharnati, about 1162**, calls the people of Zeila "the most virtuous of the [Sudan](/en/diaspora/sudan/)… they are Muslims, fast, pray, and make the pilgrimage to Mecca every year on foot". Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues treat this text as too fanciful to rely on (§79). - **Yaqut (died 1229)**, in his dictionary of places: Zeila is "a village on the seashore in the region of the land of the Abyssinians", and its people "are Muslims" (§80). - **Ibn Sa'id (13th century):** "Among the towns of the Abyssinians is Zayla', whose inhabitants are Muslims: they hire out boats to pilgrims and go to Aden and Zabid." It is a port "of landing and embarking", from which slaves are shipped (§81). - **Abu l-Fida (1273–1331)** describes a town "at the bottom of a bay, in a plain", very hot, with dirty well water and "neither gardens nor fruit", "a small town the size of 'Aydhab". "Some sheikhs judge the disputes that arise between the inhabitants. Merchants lodge with the sheikhs and receive hospitality from them; it is with them that they sell and buy" ([Reinaud's translation, 1848, quoted in Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §83](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714)). - **Al-Mufaddal**, a Coptic historian writing before 1358, about events of the 1270s: "The people of Zayla' and their tribes have no kings, but they are divided into seven tribes. These people are Muslims. Their imams say the Friday sermon in the name of their seven chiefs." When the king of Yemen sent stones from Aden to build a great mosque at Zeila, so that the sermon would be said in his own name, "a number of the Zayla' tribe seized the stones and threw them into the sea". The king seized their ship at Aden for a whole year in reprisal (§§84–85). Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues read these sources together as describing, by the late 1200s, a Muslim town that was independent and had no single ruler, governed by sheikhs and seven chiefs. It was strong enough to refuse Yemen's control and was not yet part of Ifat (§85). By about 1330 the Egyptian writer al-'Umari says the king of Ifat "reigns over Zayla'" (§91). ## When did Zeila become Muslim? Who says what - **Oral history in Zeila** holds that the Qiblatayn mosque is "one of the earliest or indeed the earliest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa", and that "the Prophet's family travelled through Saylac to Aksum" in the 7th century ([Mire 2015, *African Archaeological Review* 32](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-015-9184-9), citing Trimingham, *Islam in Ethiopia*, 1952, pp. 44–46). - **Abebe Kifleyesus (2006)** and many others write that Islam spread inland "from both the coasts of the Dahlak islands and Zäyla during the second half of the 7th century" (quoted in Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, note 104). - **Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues** conclude from the written sources that Zeila became Muslim "at the end of the 12th century at the earliest, or even the beginning of the 13th". They mention a tradition in Ibn al-Mujawir's *Ta'rikh al-Mustabsir*, written soon after 1229, that the [Banu Majid](/en/history/early-mogadishu-and-the-benadir-coast-before-1300/), driven out of Yemen in 1159, settled partly at Mogadishu and partly at Zeila (§86 and note 103, citing Trimingham 1975, p. 124). The faith side of how Islam reached the Somalis, including the first hijra to Aksum, is on [How Islam reached the Somalis](/en/society/how-islam-reached-the-somalis/). ## The Qiblatayn mosque and the 2001 excavations Zeila's ruins include the Masjid al-Qiblatayn, the "mosque of the two qiblas". Local people describe it as the oldest mosque in the town. The tradition holds that it had two mihrabs, one facing Mecca and one facing Jerusalem, toward which the earliest Muslims prayed ([Mire 2015](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-015-9184-9); [Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §13](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714)). In April 2001 the French team mapped the 50-hectare town, cleared the surface of the mosque and dug a test trench ([Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §§38–48](https://books.openedition.org/cfee/714)): - **The mosque.** Only the north (qibla) wall and its mihrab were standing. They found two building phases: a first prayer hall of coral limestone, and a later extension to the west with two rooms, a well and a water channel. The later floors rest on 1.2 metres of rubble from an older building, "which could be an earlier mosque". They did not find a second mihrab. They suggest that the town's memory of "two mihrabs" may come from two successive mosques on the site, and call this "only a hypothesis". - **The trench.** A 2.1-metre-deep trench 50 metres east of the mosque found earthen buildings in the lower levels, with only local red pottery. Imported pottery appears only in the upper levels. The oldest pieces were Yemeni "black-on-yellow" ware of the mid-13th to mid-14th century. The authors warn against reading too much into one small trench. - **Around Zeila.** The team visited Saad Din island, 8 km offshore, where Richard Burton and the British officer A. T. Curle had seen ruins, and a burial ground called Awdal about 20 km to the south-east. They were told of a ruined town called Ina Dini 3–4 km south of Zeila but could not visit it because the site was reported to be mined. **The mosque's condition.** Sada Mire, who headed [Somaliland](/en/states/somaliland-1991-to-2026/)'s Department of Archaeology, records that the site "has faced a lot of destruction through digging and exposure of foundations, without conservation or a conservation report". The first assessment was a 2007 report to UNESCO by the archaeologist George Abungu ([Mire 2015](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-015-9184-9)). The ruined town also holds the tomb of [Sheikh](/en/regions/sheikh/) Ibrahim Saylici, whom local tradition calls the founder of Zeila (same sources). ## "The country of Zeila" Al-'Umari, writing about 1330, says that "this is the country that is called in Egypt and Syria the country of Zayla'; yet it is only one of their towns on the sea… whose name has spread to the whole" (quoted in Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §91). A century later the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi used "the region of Zeila" for all the Muslim lands of the Horn. He writes that it "takes its name from the town of Zaila on a peninsula of the sea", stretched about two months' journey, and was divided into seven kingdoms: Awfat (Ifat), [Dawaro](/en/history/seven-muslim-kingdoms-tribute-trade-and-money/), Arababni, Hadiya, Sharkha, Bali and Dara ([al-Maqrizi, trans. Rinck, *Historia regum Islamiticorum in Abyssinia*, 1790, p. 10](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_NHGlbEm0h7kC)). See [the Sultanate of Shewa and the founding of Ifat](/en/history/sultanate-of-shewa-and-founding-of-ifat/). ## Zeila in the Chinese record The Song official Zhao Rugua wrote in 1225 that the country of Pi-p'a-lo, the Berbera coast, "contains four cities". His translators suggest these were probably Berbera, Zeila, Mogadishu and possibly [Barawa](/en/regions/barawa/) ([Hirth and Rockhill, *Chau Ju-kua*, 1911, pp. 128–129](https://archive.org/details/chaujukuahiswork00chauuoft)). See [Chinese records of the Somali coast](/en/history/chinese-records-of-the-somali-coast/). ## Related pages - [Before 1300: the ancient Somali lands](/en/history/ancient-somali-lands-before-1300/) - [Ruined towns of the Somali interior](/en/history/ruined-towns-of-the-somali-interior/) - [Medieval and early modern polities, 1300s–1700s](/en/history/medieval-and-early-modern-polities-1300s-1700s/) - [Zeila, Berbera and Mogadishu in the records of Rasulid Yemen, 1229–1454](/en/history/rasulid-yemen-and-somali-ports-1229-1454/) - [The death of Sultan Saʿd ad-Din at Zeila and his sons in Yemen](/en/history/saad-ad-din-death-at-zeila-and-sons-in-yemen/) - [Scholars from Zeila at al-Azhar and in Cairo, 1300–1500](/en/history/zeila-scholars-at-al-azhar-1300-1500/) - [Zeila and Berbera in João de Barros's Décadas da Ásia, 1513–1518](/en/history/zeila-and-berbera-in-joao-de-barros/) --- I want to help with this: email hello@calankii.com. 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