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Abu al-Makarim: Tarikh al-Kana’is wa al-Adyirah
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Abu al-Makarim Saʿdullah ibn Jirjis ibn Mas’ud (d.1208) was a priest of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in the thirteenth century. Abu al-Makarim is known for his: History of Churches and Monasteries. This was written around 1200. His work is one of the most important sources on the Coptic Church's life during this period. The manuscript is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, ms. arabe 307. The English translation is only the first of two parts. As to East Africa he talks briefly about the Nile.
Taken from the translation by Evetts, Alfred Joshua Butler: Abu Salih: The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and Some Neighboring Countries
Full name: Al-Mu’taman Abu al-Makarim Sa’d Allah Jirjis ibn Mas’ud
From an18th century India-Arabic world map: detail of the mountains of the moon with Alexanders castle.
P92
Among
those who at any time have attacked the church there was a body of blacks, called the Juyushiyah, who grew insolent and violent, and
whose hands were stretched out until they
stopped the roads and seized the money of travellers, or shed
their blood. When the Ghuzz (1) and the Kurds obtained possession of Egypt, in Rabi (2) the second of the year 564 (AD1169), a
body of Armenian
Christians overcame the blacks, and drove them away and killed many of them….
P93
The Nile;
The learned are all agreed that there is not in the world a river of greater length than the Nile. For its course through the land of the Muslims amounts to more than a month’s journey; and its
course through Nubia to two months journey; and for a journey of four months it flows through uninhabited deserts, until the source is reached in the mountains of the Moon, south of the
equator.
P100
Mahomet also said emphatically : God is among the protected people (3), the people of the desert, the blacks, the men with curly hair. They are related (to the Arabs) and akin to them, in
distinction from all the other protected peoples (3).
P276
It is said that the mountain Djabal al Qamar, from where the water of the Nile comes,
is red of color and that it is situated in the land of the al-Karoubis (4). The soil of that mountain is burned and does not allow any vegetable or animal live.
(1) The Oghuz or Ghuzz Turks were a western Turkic people that spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in Central Asia. The name Oghuz is a Common Turkic word for "tribe".
(2) Rabi: Rabiʽ al-Awwal is the third month in the Islamic calendar.
(3) Dhimah: dhimma; the people of the book; the Jews and Christians. The people of the covenant or Mu'ahid is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection.
(4) maybe from Arabic kharrub; locust bean pod. A tree which grows in hot dry climates.