Q: Was Umbar the Only Haven Sauron Controlled?
ANSWER: There are a few passages that mention or refer to unnamed Numenorean havens (or strongholds or colonies) that were established farther south than Umbar during the Second Age. There are also a couple of passages that refer to fleets from “Umbar and the Harad”. When Frodo and Sam await the outcome of Faramir’s ambush on the Haradrim, Damrod the Ranger of Ithilien tells them:
‘Tis said that there were dealings of old between Gondor and the kingdoms of the Harad in the Far South; though there was never friendship. In those days our bounds were away south beyond the mouths of Anduin, and Umbar, the nearest of their realms, acknowledged our sway.
It is thus apparent that after the Downfall of Numenor that Umbar was only the northernmost of the former Numenorean colonies along the coast to survive into the Third Age. However, because Umbar’s history was so closely tied to Gondor’s that was the only land that Tolkien wrote about.
It is reasonable to infer there must have been at least one other haven, loyal to Sauron, that sent a fleet north to attack Gondor. For example, in Third Age year 2758 three fleets of corsairs attacked Gondor, coming up “from Umbar and the Harad”. When Legolas recounted the story of Aragorn’s journey from the Paths of the Dead to Pelargir, he said of the battle at Linhir: “And there men of Lamedon contested the fords with fell folk of Umbar and Harad who had sailed up the river.”
Some people might feel that “Umbar and the Harad” is redundant but it is difficult to find stylistic redundancies in Tolkien’s narrative. When he refers to “X and Y” he usually means there are two distinctive elements. That there were at some time in the Second Age other cities beyond Umbar is not to be doubted. The reader is free to infer whether those cities really survived. There is, however, one other passage which may resolve the issue for some who remain in doubt. When Frodo puts on the One Ring and he sits in the High Seat at Amon Hen, he beholds a vision of events passing in Middle-earth:
Horsemen were galloping on the grass of Rohan; wolves poured from Isengard. From the havens of Harad ships of war put out to sea; and out of the East Men were moving endlessly: swordsmen, spearmen, bowmen upon horses, chariots of chieftains and laden wains. All the power of the Dark Lord was in motion….
Here it seems that Frodo sees more than one haven for southern fleets. Whether they were all at Umbar or scattered along the coasts of southern Middle-earth (Harad) the text does not say, but I think Tolkien meant for the reader to infer that Umbar was not the only sea-faring nation in Harad.
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Thanks for this research Michael, showing that there was more than one haven in Harad, besides Umbar.
The Corsairs of Umbar are evocative of either:
A) the Barbary Corsairs in their entirety (including Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco)
B) the Corsairs of only the Kingdom of Tripoli.
In the case of option A, then the other havens would be located along the coast of Umbar—those havens just aren’t shown on the map.
In the case of option B, then there are equivalents of Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco further south, along the coast of Harad, off the edge of the map.
Option B fits with the references to “Umbar and Harad”. This would be like saying: “The Corsairs of the Haven of Umbar, and of the other Havens in Harad”. The real-world equivalent would be “The Corsairs of Tripoli, and of the other corsair ports of Africa”.
I suggest that, like Umbar, the other Havens are culturally equivalent to Arab-Berber corsairs of the Barbary Coast. I know of no real-world medieval or renaissance precedent for Sub-Saharan “Black African” corsair nations.
From a phonoaesthetic perspective, I think it’s curious that both “BAR-ka” (the eastern half of Libya) and the “BAR-BAR-y” states have a similar wordshape as “um-BAR”.
The Barka Plateau is visible on this map:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/europe_w_asia_n_africa.jpg
I used this map for my own re-imagining of the Red Book’s map, so that it more closely matches Europe: https://sites.google.com/site/endorenya/home
On my map, I align the location of Umbar with the Barka Plateau. I’m saying that Umbar would be culturally equivalent to the city of Tripoli, but would be geographically located where Barca is in later ages.
Taking Michael’s research, I suggest that there are four other Corsair kingdoms south of Umbar, along the coast, off the edge of Christopher Tolkien’s map. They are probably each a similar size as Umbar.
Beyond that is probably a barren coastal area, and then the kingdoms of Black Men of Far Harad.
Two additions or corrections:
1) Having looked again at how far Christopher Tolkien’s (& Pauline Baynes’s) map extends to the South, the other Corsair kingdoms might actually be located on that map, between the Haven of Umbar and the large promontory at the bottom of the map. Far Harad (as labeled in Bayne’s map) would then begin at the promontory, perhaps on the far side.
2) The word “corsair” is associated with the 1400s to 1700s, but this is a different era than the cultures of the West-lands in the late Third Age, which (except for the Shire and Bree) are based on real-world cultures from the time of the peak of the Norse culture. JRRT says, in his Sigurd & Gudrun, that this period was from 850 to 1050 AD. If Harad were to be consistent with this time frame, then the Corsair havens would actually be like 850-1050-era Arab “Saracen” states (such as Idrisids, Zirinids, Aghlabids, and Fatamids), instead of Ottoman vassal states.