The Nouba had already paid this tribute to Amr Ibn el Aas, before the rupture of the peace, and had presented him moreover with a present of forty head of slaves; but this he refused to accept, and returned the present to the chief (collector) of the Bakt, called Samkous, who purchased for them wine and provisions to the same value, which he sent to them.i[127] Aly Sarh fulfilled his promise to the Nouba, and sent them corn and barley, lentils, clothes, and horses. This remained afterwards a regular custom. The Nouba received the amount of it every year, when they paid their tribute, and the number of forty slaves who had been offered to Amr Ibn el Aas were now yearly taken by the governors of Egypt. Aly Kheleyfa Homeyd Ibn Hesham el Baheyry relates, that the stipulated conditions of peace with the Nouba consisted of three hundred and sixty head of slaves to the Shade of the Moslims,i[128] (في المسلمين) and forty to the governor of Egypt, and that they should receive in return one thousand Erdeybs of wheat, and their delegates three hundred Erdeybs of it; the same quantity of barley was to be given, and further, one thousand Kanyr of wine to the king, and three hundred Kanyr of wine to the delegates, together with two mares of the best kind, fit for princes.i[129] Farther, of the different stuffs of linen cloth one hundred pieces, and of the kind called Kobaty four pieces to the king and three to the envoys, of the kind called Baktery eight pieces, and of the Malam five pieces, and moreover a fine Djebbei[130] to the king. Of the shirts called Aly Baktar, ten pieces, and of the first quality of shirts likewise ten, every one of which is equal to three of the common sort.
The Nouba regularly paid their Bakt every year, and received in return the above menmentioned articles, until the times of the Emir of the true Believers, El Motassem b’illah Aly Is-hak, the son of Er-rasheid, when Zakarya Ibn Bahnasi[131] was their king. At that period the Nouba having perhaps been tardy in paying the Bakt, and the Moslim governors of the frontier provinces having treated them harshly, and withheld from them the supply of provisions, Feyrakey the son of Zakarya refused his father to submit in obedience to foreigners, and reproached him with weakness in paying the tribute. His father then asked him what his advice was, and he replied, to revolt against the Moslims, and make war with them. Our forefathers, answered Zakarya, thought this a just measure; I am afraid that the worst of the business will devolve upon you. We shall prepare for this war against the Moslims, but I will send you to their king as an envoy: you will know the state of their affairs and your own. If you think that we are a match for them, we shall go to war, and trust to God; if not, you will ask the king for presents. Feyraky then set out for Bagdad; he passed through the towns, and the country appeared to him very fine. In coming down, he was joined by the king of the Bedja and his retinue. They met El Motasem, and they were astonished to see in the Irak, besides what they had already witnessed on the road; the quantity of soldiers, and the flourishing state of the country. El Motasem received Feyraky with politeness and kindness, and treated him with great generosity. He accepted his presents, and returned them two-fold, and told him to demand any favour he liked. Upon which he begged that the prisonersi[132] might be set free, which was granted to him. Feyraky rose high in the opinion of Motasem; who made him a present of the house at which he had alighted in the Irak, and gave orders to purchase in every town on his way a house for the accommodations of the messengers he might send, and wherein no other travellers should be permitted to lodge. At Cairo two houses were purchased for him; one at Djyze and another at Beni Wayl,i[133] and they received from the treasury of Cairo seven hundred Dinars, a mare, a saddle, a bridle, a gilt sword, a rich habit, a silk turban, a cloke, and a shirt of the finest sort, and pieces of stuff for his delegates, which were not accounted for in the returns of the tribute. They had further to receive two loads,i[134] and from the collector of the Bakt a suit of clothes, and had, in their turn, to give to the latter, and to those who accompanied him, certain articles. Whatever might be given to them (beyond these fixed things) should be considered as presents, which they would return in the same manner. Upon enquiry El Motasem found that what was given to the Noubas by the Moslims exceeded the value of the Bakt; he therefore refused to give them any more wine, or to send them (the full amount of) the corn and the stuffs above mentioned; and he re-established the Bakt to be sent at intervals of every three years; and wrote to them a letter on that subject, which remained in their hands. The king of the Noubas demanded justice from some of the inhabitants of Assouan, who had purchased landed property from his slaves.i[135] El Motasem ordered inquiry to be made into it at Assouan, where the tribunal of the judge was. But the slaves being questioned, said, “We are his subjects, not his slaves,” and thus his suit was rejected. He then demanded among other things, that the military post at the Kaszer, which was situated within his territory, should be removed to the frontier; but this request was not granted. These stipulations continued to subsist between the Noubas and Egypt, and the Bakt was paid, and the returns given as Motasem had regulated them, until the Fatimites arrived in Egypt.—Thus far goes the relation of the Nubian historian.
Abou Hassan el Masoudyi[136] relates:—The Bakt is the annual tribute of slaves which has been imposed upon the Noubas, and is received from them and carried to Egypt. It consists in three hundred and sixty five head of slaves to the public treasury, according to the tenour of the articles of peace between the Noubas and the Moslims. Besides these, the governor of Egypt receives forty head; his representative, who resides at Assouan, and collects the Bakt, twenty head; the governor of Assouan, who, together with him, is present at the collecting of the Bakt, five head, and the twelve trusty witnesses of the people of Assouan, who are to accompany the governor on this business, twelve head; the whole, according to the stipulations of the Bakt, when the Moslims and Noubas first concluded their treaty.
El Beladiry, in his work entitled El Tetouhat,i[137] says: “the amount of the renewed tribute of the Noubas is four hundred slaves, for which they take in return victuals, that is to say, grain. The Emir of the true Believers, El Mohdy Mohammed Ibn Aly Djafar el Mansour,i[138] obliged them to pay three hundred and sixty head of slaves, and a Giraffa. The mischievous and troublesome behaviour of Daoud (David) the king of the Noubas, was principally manifested in the year of the Hejira 674. After he had committed great excesses at Aidab, he came with his army nearly as far as Assouan, and there burnt many water wheels. The governor of Kous marched against Daoud, but not meeting with him, laid hold of the Lord of the Mountain, and numbers of Noubas, whom he carried before the Sultan Daher Bybars el Bondokdary, at the Castle of Cairo, where their bodies were severed in two. Shekendy,i[139] the son of the King of Nouba’s sister, then came to implore assistance against the injustice which he had experienced from his uncle Daoud. The Sultan ordered the Emir Shams-eddyn Ak Soukor el Farekany, the intendant of his household,i[140] with the Emir Djandar Emir Oz-eddyn Aybek el Afram,i[141] to march together with Shekendy against Daoud, with a large army composed of the provincial horsemen,i[142] and of the Arabs of southern Egypt, and of lancers, bowmen, and fire-men.i[143] They left Cairo on the first of the month of Sheban. Upon their arrival in Nouba the enemy met them, mounted upon camels, armed with lances, and covered with black Dekadek.i[144] Both parties fought bravely, and the Noubas fled. El Afram now fell upon Kallat Addo,i[145] where he killed and took prisoners many of them. El Farakany penetrated into the interior of Nouba by land and by the river, killing or enslaving every body. He took an innumerable quantity of cattle, and alighted at the island of Mykayl, at the top of the cataracts;i[146] from whence he obliged the Nouba ships to retreat, while the Nouba themselves fled to the islands. He then wrote a promise of safe conduct to Kamr el Doula,i[147] the lieutenant of Daoud, who swore allegiance to the Shekendy, and brought back all the people of Merys, and the fugitives; after which El Afram crossed over a shallow part of the river, to a tower built in the water, which he besieged until he took it. Two hundred men were killed there, and a brother of Daoud was taken prisoner; Daoud fled, and was closely pursued for three days by the soldiers, who killed and took prisoners a great number on the road, until the people submitted. The mother and sister of Daoud were taken, but he himself escaped. Shekendy was now confirmed in his stead, and agreed to pay an annual personal tribute of three elephants, three giraffas, five female Fahed, one hundred camels of good race, and four hundred chosen cows,i[148] and that the soil of Nouba should thenceforward be divided into two parts;i[149] one half for the Sultan, and the other to be appropriated to the fertilizing and guarding of the country; excepting the territory of the cataracts, which was to belong entirely to the Sultan, on account of its vicinity to Assouan: this alone was about one-fourth of Nouba.i[150] Farther, that the dates and the cotton of this part, as well as the ancient customary duties, should be carried off, and that as long as they should remain Christians, they should pay the Djezye, or annual Om Dinar in cash, for every grown up person.i[151] There was a form of oath written out concerning these articles, by which Shekendy bound himself, and there was another by which his subjects swore. The two commanders destroyed the churches of Nouba,i[152] and carried away whatever they found in them. They seized about twenty of the chiefs of Nouba, and liberated the Moslims of Assouan and Aidab, who were captives in the hands of the Noubas. Shekendy was crowned, and seated on the throne of his kingdom, after he had taken his oath. He was obliged to send the property of Daoud, and that of all those who were killed or taken captives, whether money or cattle, to the Sultan, together with the usual Bakt. This consisted in an annual payment of a giraffa and of four hundred slaves, of whom three hundred and sixty were for the Khalif, and forty for his lieutenant at Cairo, with the condition that he should send them in return, upon the full receipt of the Bakt, one thousand Erdeybs of wheat to the king of Nouba, and three hundred to his delegates.i[153]
Description of the Town of Assouan.i[154]
It begins with some remarks on the etymology of the word Assouan, which is said to mean a person in grief. Assouan lies on the extremity of the territories of Sayd. It is one of the harbours of this province, and divides Nouba from the country of Egypt. In former times a great plenty of wheat, grain, fruits, vegetables, and pot herbs, was found here, together with abundance of camels, cows, and sheep, whose flesh is of peculiar good flavour and fatness. The prices of provisions were always very low. Goods and articles of trade were found here, that were transported to the country of Nouba. To the east there is not any Moslim country bordering on Assouan: to the south there is a mountain, in which are the mines of emeralds, in an insulated barren country. At fifteen days journey from Assouan are the gold mines.i[155] To the westward are the Oases. From Assouan a road leads to Aidab, from whence is the passage to the Hedjaz, and Yemen, and India. Masoudy relates: Assouan is inhabited by people of the Arabs Kahtan, Nezar Ibn Rabya, Modher, and Arabs of Koreysh, most of them transplanted from the Hedjaz.i[156] The town has abundance of date trees; it is fertile and rich. The date stone is put into the ground, and the tree grows out of it, and after (a certain number of) years they eat the fruit.i[157] The people of Assouan possess many villages within the confines of Nouba, the duties on which they pay to the king of Nouba. These villages were bought from the Noubas in the time of the Islam, during the reign of Beni Omeya and Beni Abbas. When El Mamoun arrived in Egypt, the king of Nouba asked for his protection against these people of Assouan, by means of emissaries whom he dispatched to Fostat. They complained to El Mamoun, that some villages of Nouba had been sold to their neighbours of Assouan; that these villages belonged to the king of Nouba, and that those who sold them were the king’s slaves, who possessed no property, and whose only business it was to take care of the cultivation. Mamoun referred them to the governor of Assouan, to the learned men, and Shikhs of that town. The people of Assouan who had bought the villages, perceiving that they were in danger of losing them, had recourse to a stratagem against the king of Nouba. They proposed to the Noubas who had sold the villages, when they appeared before the governor, to deny that they were slaves of the king, and to say, “the same relation exists between us and our king, O Moslims, as between you and your king. We owe him only submission, and are bound only not to contravene his orders. If you, therefore, are the slaves, and the property of your king, then we are the same.” They spoke other similar things, to which they had been prompted, and thus the sale was confirmed, and so it has remained until our times. The possession of these villages, in the territory of Merys in the country of Nouba, was transmitted by inheritance, and the Noubas, the subjects of the king, now became divided into two classes; the one, as we have stated, freemen, not slaves, and the other part slaves.i[158] The latter were those who did not dwell in this territory of Merys, which is in the neighbourhood of Assouan.
Masoudy relates,i[159] that the Noubas were divided into two branches. The one dwelt on the two banks of the Nile; their territory bordered upon the territory of the Copts of Upper Egypt, and extended far up the river; they built, as the seat of their government, the large city of Dóngola. The other race of the Noubas is called Aloa, and they have built the large town of Serfeta.i[160] The country of Nouba, the territory of which borders upon the soil of Assouan, is called Merys, from which the Merysan wind takes its name.i[161]
On the east side of Upper Egypt is a large mountain of marble, from whence the ancients cut columns, and pedestals, and capitals, which the Egyptians call Assouanye, (the same name they also give to the mill-stones). The ancients wrought these things many hundred years before the appearance of Christianity, and among them are to be reckoned the columns of Alexandria.
In the month of Zol Hadj, in the year 344, the king of Nouba attacked Assouan, and killed many Moslims. In the month of Moharran 345, marched against him Mohammed Ibn Abdallah, the treasurer of the Egyptian army of El Wodjour, Ibn el Ak Shedy (king of Egypt), by land and by sea.i[162] He sent back many prisoners of the Noubas, who were beheaded at Cairo, after the king of Nouba had likewise met with his fate. He continued his march until he conquered Ibrim, and reduced its inhabitants to captivity, and he returned to Cairo with 150 prisoners, and many heads, in the middle of the month of Djomad el Awal, 345.i[163]
The Kadhy el Fadhel states, that in the year 585, the income of the port of Assouan was 25,000 Dinars.i[164] Djaafar el Edfouy relates:i[165] at Assouan are 80 officers of the tribunal of justice, and Assouan produced in one year 30,000 Erdeybs of dates. Somebody informed me that he had met with a writing that contained the names of 40 Sherifs of the purest race (of Assouan) and another in which there were 60, besides the rest. And (El Edfouy) says: “I have met with a writing, dated in the year 620, that mentioned the names of 40 authors of Assouan.”