SUAKIN, or Suwakim, more correctly Sawákin, the chief port of the Soudan on the Red Sea and the starting-place of caravans for Kassala and Berber, occupies a small island, placed in a deep bay in 19° 5' N. lat. The customhouse and Egyptian Government offices present a good frontage to the sea, and the principal houses are stately white structures, three stories high, not unlike those of Jiddah. With these, however, are intermingled shapeless huts, each with its courtyard walled in with mats. There are also the usual Greek drinking-shops, with their dirty loungers in coats and fez-caps, and a short street of coffeehouses and shops. The mosques are not remarkable. Passing through the bazaar and turning to the right past the tomb of Sheikh 'Ali, one comes to an open space at the head of the recent causeway which unites the island to the mainland town of Al-Kaff (Al-Keif). The main street of Al-Kaff is (or was before the recent war) the busy centre of life and movement, while the side streets are occupied by smiths, forging lance-heads and knives; leather workers, who drive a brisk trade in the amulets—passages of the Koran sewn up in leather cases—which the natives wear on their arms or round their necks; and hairdressers, greasing and powdering with the dust of a red wood the bushy locks of the Hadendoa dandies. Beyond the town is a suburb of straw huts with their simple furniture of a bedstead, a few dishes, and a rubbing stone for the millet which with milk forms the chief food of the natives. Here too are the booths of the silversmiths, who make bracelets, anklets, ear and nose rings, for the women. The Hadendoa, a tall stalwart race, picturesquely draped in huge wrappers, to which the women add a petticoat, are most numerous on the mainland. The population of ...the island is mixed, with a large infusion of Arab blood. The export trade of Suakin before the revolt of the Soudan yielded a customs revenue of £60,000 a year, the chief articles besides the ivory, which was a Government monopoly, being gum, cotton, sesame, senna, and hides. The total yearly trade was estimated at a million sterling.
The environs of Suakin, though not so absolutely desert as the opposite Arabian coast, are less wooded than some points (e.g., Sheikh Barghút) which lie as conveniently for the inland trade. The island is without water and the harbour indifferent; yet the settlement is ancient. Here as at Massowah traders were presumably attracted by the advantages of an island site which protected them from the nomads. The country inland from all this coast belonged in the Middle Ages to the Boja (Bejah), a rude pastoral race who appear to be identical with the Blemmyes of classical writers and of whom Hadendoa, Bishárín, and Abábdah are the modern representatives. The trading places seem to have been always in the hands of foreigners since Ptolemais Theron was established by Ptolemy Philadelphus for intercourse with the elephant hunters. After Islam many Arabs settled on the coast and mixed with the heathen Boja, whose rule of kinship and succession in the female line helped to give the children of mixed marriages a leading position (Makrízí, Khiṭaṭ, i. 194 sq. , translated in Burckhardt’s Travels in Nubia, App. iii.). Thus in 1330 Ibn Batuta found a son of the emir of Mecca reigning in Suakin over the Boja, who were his mother’s kin. Maḳrízí says that the chief inhabitants were nominal Moslems and were called Hadárib. The emir of the Ḥadarib was still sovereign of the mainland at the time of Burckhardt’s visit (1814), though the island had an aga appointed by the Turkish pasha of Jiddah. The place was settled by the Turks under Selim the Great, but Turkish (or Egyptian) control over the mainland was not effective till the Egyptian conquest of the Soudan. Till the suppression of the slave trade, Suakin was an important slave port; of late years slaves have been secretly run across the Red Sea from less frequented points on the coast. But legitimate commerce was rapidly growing before the revolt of the Soudan, and the port was visited by English, Egyptian, and Italian steamers.
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