Kubar also known as Ku'bar or Kuber is the name of the last capital of the

Kingdom of Aksum The Kingdom of Aksum, or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom in East Africa and South Arabia from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, based in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, and spanning present-day Djibouti and Sudan. Emerging ...

and the residence of the Ethiopian ruler mentioned in several medieval Arabic sources.

History

It is first mentioned by the 10th century geographer al-

Ya'qubi ʾAbū al-ʿAbbās ʾAḥmad bin ʾAbī Yaʿqūb bin Ǧaʿfar bin Wahb bin Waḍīḥ al-Yaʿqūbī (died 897/8), commonly referred to simply by his nisba al-Yaʿqūbī, was an Arab Muslim geographer. Life Ya'qubi was born in Baghdad to a fam ...

(fl. 872 A.D.), who gives the following short but valuable description; :"It is a spacious, important country. The capital of the kingdom is Kubar. The Arabs still go to it for trading and they (the Ethiopians) have mighty cities, and their coast is Dahlak. As to the kings in the land of al-Habasha they are under the control of the great king (the Najashi) to whom they show obedience and pay taxes. The Najashi is of the Jacobite Christian faith." The historian

al-Masudi al-Masʿūdī (full name , ), –956, was a historian, geographer and traveler. He is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotus of the Arabs". A polymath and prolific author of over twenty works on theology, history (Islamic and universal), geo ...

refers to Kubar in his ''

The Meadows of Gold ''Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems'' (, ') is a 10th century history book by an Abbasid scholar al-Masudi. Written in Arabic and encompassing the period from the beginning of the world (starting with Adam and Eve) through to the late Abbasid era ...

'', describing it as a "great city" and the "residence of the Najashi". In a similar context, in his ''Akhbar al-zaman'', the same al-Masudi calls the Ethiopian capital "Kufar" or "Kafer". In the Arabic works of the 13th and 14th century, Kubar is still mentioned as being the capital of Ethiopia. Arab historian

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 Hijri year, AH) was an Arabs, Arab Islamic scholar, historian, philosopher and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and cons ...

refers to it in his '' Kitab al-ibar''.

Location

Because of the lack of archeological data, hypothesis about the location of Kubar varies to a certain extent. Carlo Conti Rossini initially believed that it was located in modern

Ankober Ankober (), formerly known as Ankobar, is a town in central Ethiopia. Located in the North Shewa Zone (Amhara), North Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region, it's perched on the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian Highlands at an elevation of about . ...

, but discarded that theory based on chronological and linguistic grounds. Later, he proposed that Kubar was a corrupted spelling of the name

Aksum Axum, also spelled Aksum (), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire. Axum is located in the Central Zone of the Tigray Regi ...

. This theory was favored by J. Spencer Trimingham, Manfred Kropp and Ewald Wagner. However, Taddesse Tamrat locates Kubar in southern

Tigray The Tigray Region (or simply Tigray; officially the Tigray National Regional State) is the northernmost Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob people, Irob and Kunama people. I ...

or in Angot,whereas Enno Littmann believed that it was located in the province of

Begemder Begemder (; also known as Gondar or Gonder) was a province in northwest Ethiopia. The alternative names come from its capital during the 20th century, Gondar. Etymology A plausible source for the name ''Bega'' is that the word means "dry" in t ...

.Taddesse Tamrat, ''Church and State in Ethiopia'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 36.

References

{{reflist Kingdom of Aksum Capitals of former nations