Kubrā: The True Inland Center of Post-Aksumite Power

TL;DR:

For much of medieval scholarship and popular retellings of Horn of Africa history, the geography of post-Aksumite power has been drawn too narrowly along the Red Sea coastline. This article argues that a sustained inland metropole—referred to in medieval Arabic sources as Kubrā (كبرى), “the Great City”—was the real administrative and religious cen…