Chapter 4
The next ruler in line was Malik Hiba. He came to the throne as a young lad of 13 in 1072 AD. Information about his rule is known from a second version of the Maliknama, this time written by local historians. It is not known what caused Mansur Ali to leave Fezzan after the death of Malik Thakiya and embark upon his now famous exploration of Hindoostan. However, it is safe to assume that his Maliknama inspired later versions of the same.
Malik Hiba's reign is filled with constant rebellions, droughts but also conquests. His reign was dominated by Malikaa Daura.
Badra and Hiba had always been close allies in Thakiya's court. The former had found no love and had no child from the old Malik, while the latter found no love from his mother Siddiqua due to his several other siblings. Immediately after his coronation, Badra appointed herself as Hiba's tutor. She appears to be a brilliant woman because a few months after Hiba's coronation, in February 1073 she uncovered a plot to separate Bilma hatched by Chief Hummay of Bilma. Now to understand the circumstances of Hummay's rebellion, we first have to understand the method of conquest and subjugation in this part of the world.
After the Banu Khattab had conquered Bilma oasis from the Kanemis, they had not killed off all the locals.In fact, the locals hadn't even supported their Kanemi overlords in the war, why would they ? They had nothing to gain by doing so. After the battle had been won, the local tribe had simply sworn fealty to Malik Thakiya and lived and traded peacefully for some time. The local tribe here was not Berber but black. The chief himself was a pagan who had converted to Sunni Islam through the teachings of some slave trader.
Upon hearing of Thakiya's death, the local tribe had assumed that his successor won't even bother crossing the desert paths to take back this small oasis.
They were wrong.
After all, this was the desert, there was always some opportunistic camel rider willing to make a quick buck via treason. It appears that someone alerted Badra of this fact and she then uncovered the plot. However it was too late. The tribes of Bilma had already rebelled and killed the one Ibadi Inam kept by the Malik Thakiya there as a sort of Viceroy. This happened in late February 1073. The rebellion was however short lived. Badra skillfully gathered all the loyalists among the tribe and sent a small force of slave traders to take back Bilma with the promise that all the slaves that they would capture would be theirs with no taxes attached. By the end of March, the Chief Hummay was defeated, captured and brought at the Malik's feet. Badra had intended to have him cut open there and then, but the Malik was more kind-hearted according to the Maliknama. He agreed to free Hummay if he converted to the Ibadi sect of Islam which he did. It hardly would have mattered to Hummay anyway, people like him adopted Islam to have an easier time dealing with the Trans-Saharan traders.
The next two years went by peacefully and the skillfull Badra managed to make trade routes safer again and crush all opposition part by part. The Malik was indebted to her. But perhaps he also felt something else. Maybe his love for her hadn't been motherly all along. The regency ended in 1075 .
Just a few weeks later, the Malik Hiba married Badra, his second mother and his true love. In any other part of the Islamic world, this would have been a death sentence for both of them, but here in the Sahara, nobody really cared. That same year, the chief Hummay, now a defeated old man tried to rebel again, but his own tribe betrayed him, they were tired of the constant unrest in Bilma which was disrupting the primitive life in the oasis and he was captured and sent to Murzuk where he would rot in a hole covered with iron bars, open to the blazing hot Sahara sun, yet kept alive with regular meals of food and water.
Right from birth, the Malik Hiba had been a very studious individual according to the Maliknama. He must indeed have been so because he actually knew the history of the Roman empire or atleast the Byzantine empire. In 1076, he invited a Christian man of unknown origin and held a discourse with him. After the meeting, the Malik paid him 25 healthy slaves and money too. From then on, the Malik embarked on an epic quest. The quest to fly.
But just as he was about to make his dream of flying like a bird come true, he got some interesting news from the Malikaa Badra. She had been told by her brother in the Awellimid tribe that there had been huge droughts, rebellions and unrest in the tribe and the local chief Jibril was sick with an unknown disease. What better moment to invade ?
She promptly relayed the news to her husband. But he refused at first. Now his refusal must have been correct. Conquest in any other part of the world gave someone security, prestige, power or atleast money. But what could one get by attacking a desert oasis, even smaller than Murzuk and populated by no more than a thousand people ?
But according to the Maliknama, the Malik changed his mind when an Arab caravan trader advised him to conquer the Awellimid oasis of Fachi which could be an ideal strongpoint to influence the wild Hausa tribes to the south and force them to lower the prices of slaves. So on 22 November 1076, the Malik declared war on the Awellimid and demanded the oasis of Fachi.
Unfortunately, there was a major problem, the Malik didn't know the exact location of Fachi. Badra too couldn't pinpoint it because being a woman, she had always lived behind the veil in the Awellimid tribe. Finding an unknown oasis in a desert full of mirages was almost impossible. Fortunately, his Berber mercenaries headed by a man called Arabi knew the location because they had once raided it.
A Sahara Desert Mirage.
The Banu Khattab and their allies easily marched to Fachi after that and occupied it. The locals put up no resistance because more than half the population had left the oasis due to drought.
Then another problem came up. Out of the blue, the Arabi chief suddenly betrayed and left the Banu Khattab in the middle of the desert on account of failure of payment. He was never heard from again.
That was no problem however and the rest of the war was simply a question of killing scattered bands of Awellimid Berbers and massacring desert caravans loyal to that tribe. On 31 January 1078, the Awellimids surrendered.
After one and a half year of war, the Malik could finally return to his beloved Badra having conquered her homeland. The drough in Fachi however continued and the oasis was all but abonded a few months later leaving only some vagabonds and old date planters there.
Then in February 1080, the love between the Malik and his mother cum wife was finally proved. A healthy son Abdullah was born to them. The first of many.
Now with all worldy matters resolved, the Malik turned to the otherworldy.
Now the Maliknama provides some explicit details about the Malik's crazy ideas about flying like a bird. In September 1080, he defied many Islamic laws and actually built a strange bird like contraption from camel hide and wool. Then, against the wishes of his inams, he ordered a poor cook to fly in it promising 10 gold coins as a reward for success.
But the contraption failed miserably and all the Malik achieved was another crash in the desert sands. The cook fortunately was spared by Allah and he returned to his duties.
But not the Malik, this time, he decided to test out his camel hair wings himself. Against the wishes of Malikaa Badra and hundreds of his subjects among the tribe, he tried flying in his machine again, this time plummenting off a steep cliff.
It proved to be a disaster, the Malik was fortunately not injured due to the soft Waadi sand, but a piece of rock embedded in his right eye which the local Mullahs and physicians could not remove. Nevertheless, the Malik came out of the experience a learned man and thereafter he became a more devout Ibadi accepting the traditions and rules set up by his ancestors. He never tried crazy ideas again. He also sent 20 gold coins to Mecca as retribution for his act.
In November 1082, the Chief Suleiman of Bilma, the son of Hummay(Who died parched and shrunken by the desert sun in his prison) enslaved some Arab slave traders in Bilma and demanded a ransom. It was paid, but the Arabs asked the Malik to punish Suleiman. The latter reacted by declaring war, but once again, a distant uncle of Suleiman betryaed him and just 5 days later, Suleiman was already on his way to Murzuk bound in chains and destined for the same fate as his traitorous father.
The next four years were the high point of Malik Hiba's reign. He stabilized finally the realm that had destabilized so much in his regency, all the tribes were happy and even the Fachi drought did not return. The Fachi Oasis was now filled by an increasing number of Ibadi Berbers from Murzuk, an early form of Colonization. A second son, Wahab was born to the couple in 1086.
In March 1087, the good time ended, the piece of stone that embedded in the Malik's right eye 6 years before finally gave way and became septic. The court Physician Zigza tried many cures, but none had the desired effect. Finally, the Malik's right eye had to be cut out to avoid further infection and death. The Malik agreed to this and his eye was gouged out after the which the infection apparently stopped. But this new change made the Malik more over-excited and hungry for power.
In late 1087, the Berbers had a major quarrel with the Hausas of Daura over ownership of a grazing savannah. The Malik, who had been rational in his youth reacted irrationally, he declared war on the entire Daura tribe. This plunged him and the Banu Khattab into an year long war with the Hausas. Hausaland took shape as a political and cultural region during the first millennium CE as a result of the westward expansion of Hausa peoples. They arrived to Hausaland when the terrain was converting from woodlands to savannah. They started cultivating grains, which led to a denser peasant population. They had a common language, laws, and customs. The Hausa were known for fishing, hunting, agriculture, salt-mining, and blacksmithing.
Now the Daura, the Gobir, the Katsina and the other chiefdoms were just bands of wild black tribes who built small villages in the savannahs south of the Sahara desert and near Lake Chad.According to the Girgam papers, the Daura tribe was established in 2000 BC and had survived as one of the wildest and bravest of Hausa chiefdoms for several centuries.
The only known picture of Daura.
The fact that they were brave and loyal was undoubtely true because despite being ruled by a small girl, they managed to unify as a single entity and attack Fachi and Bilma in a surprising show of offense.
The Hausas under their child queen.
But by 1087, the Banu Khattab were too strong and more importantly.....................rich. The Malik not only banded together his own soldiers, but also as many slave traders and landless Berber tribes that he could find as a mercenary force.
The Malik's forces clashed with them, first in Bilma and then in Fachi.
The Hausas fought different from the Kanemis, they were much more hardened fighters and they also used better tactics. However, they were too outnumbered and were killed to almost the last man.
On 6 May, 1088, after more than a year of Desert and Savnnah fighting, the young queen of the Hausas surrendered. She was allowed to rule Daura in the Malik's name.
Map after the Hausa war.
Then, in August 1088, a whole storm of good news rained upon the Malik. Another son was born to him and Badra called Thakiya after his father. He also received a surprising marraige proposal from the Zirid Sultan !
He proposed that his eldest daughter Setara be married to the Malik. The Malik must have been surprised. The real reason however must have been that the Zirid sultan had observed how the Banu Khattab had virtually became masters of the whole trade route and he must have wanted to be friendly with them. Badra approved of this strategic marraige knowing well that there would be no love between her husband and his second wife. The Malik however did not live to love Settera at all. Less than a month after her arrival at court, his empty right eye socket began to suddenly bleed one day. Before the doctors could be called, he suddenly ceased breathing.
His craziness with flying had finally killed him.