Suakin

Suakin or Sawakin (, In 2008, Suakin had a population of 82,150 according to the census of the same year. Ferries run daily from Suakin to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

Etymology

The Beja name for Suakin is Oosook. This is possibly from the Arabic word suq, meaning market. In Beja, the locative case for this is isukib, whence Suakin might have derived. The spelling on Admiralty charts in the late 19th century was "Sauakin", but in the popular press "Suakim" was predominant.

History

Ancient

Suakin was likely Ptolemy's Port of Good Hope, Limen Evangelis, which is similarly described as lying on a circular island at the end of a long inlet.

Despite the town's formal submission to the Mamluks in 1317, O. G. S. Crawford believed that the city remained a center of Christianity into the 13th century. Muslim immigrants such as the Banu Kanz gradually transformed this: Ibn Battuta records that in 1332, there was a Muslim "sultan" of Suakin, al-Sharif Zaid ibn-Abi Numayy ibn-'Ajlan, who was the son of a Meccan sharif. Following the region's inheritance laws, he had inherited the local leadership from his Bejan maternal uncles. In the fifteenth century, Suakin was briefly part of the Adal Sultanate. Suakin was sieged by the Portuguese in 1513 and captured briefly in 1541.

Ottoman

left|thumb|1541 map of Suakin by [[João de Castro]]

Following the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, the Ottoman Empire became the major power in the Red Sea. After a brief period of Ottoman-Portuguese struggles in the Red Sea, Özdemir Pasha occupied Suakin in the early 1550s. Though it was only loosely controlled, until the Ottoman province of Habesh was established in 1555 with the residence of its pasha in Suakin. As the Portuguese explorers discovered and perfected the sea route around Africa and the Ottomans were unable to stop this trade, the local merchants began to abandon the town.

Some trade was kept up with the Sultanate of Sennar, but by the early 19th century, the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt found two-thirds of the homes in ruins.

After the defeat of the Mahdist State, the British preferred to develop the new Port Sudan, rather than engage in the extensive rebuilding and expansion that would have been necessary to make Suakin comparable. By 1922, the last of the British had left.

On 17 January 2018, as part of a rapprochement with Sudan, Turkey was granted a 99-year lease over Suakin island. Turkey plans to restore the ruined Ottoman port city on the island.

On 12 June 2022, some 15,000 sheep drowned in the sinking of the Badr 1 in the port of Suakin.

Buildings of Suakin

A detailed description of the buildings of Suakin, including measured plans and detailed sketches, can be found in The Coral Buildings of Suakin: Islamic Architecture, Planning, Design and Domestic Arrangements in a Red Sea Port by Jean-Pierre Greenlaw, Kegan Paul International, 1995, .

Climate

Suakin has a very hot desert climate (Köppen BWh) with brutally hot and humid, though dry, summers and very warm winters. Rainfall is minimal except from October to December, when easterly winds can give occasional downpours: in November 1965 as much as fell, but in the whole year from July 1981 to June 1982 no more than was recorded.

References

External links

Comparative Vocabularies of the Languages Spoken at Suakin: Arabic, Hadendoa, Beni-Amer
Pictures of Suakin on Atlas Obscura
Suakin: Time and Tide — on Saudi Aramco World
Suakin Island - A Virtual Experience A 3D reconstruction of the Island
https://observador.pt/2016/12/16/diogo-do-couto-o-portugues-da-india-ha-500-anos/