Between the late 5th/11th and the early 7th/13th century, a series of funerary stelae from the big island (Dahlak Kebir) of the Dahlak archipelago in the southern Red Sea testify that local potentates had assumed grand titles. At the same time, Yemeni and Egyptian texts, including merchants’ letters and other documents from the Cairo Geniza, as well as an extensive and only partially explored archaeological site on Dahlak Kebir testify to the important role of the archipelago in regional and transregional networks of trade, shipping, and even political power. The subsequent disappearance of the royal titles from the record roughly coincides with the takeover of Yemen first by the Ayyubids and subsequently by the Rasulids by the middle 600s, as there was perhaps no room for other sultans in the area dominated by the latter dynasty. Some kind of polity did persist on Dahlak Kebir, however, and occasionally a ruler of Dahlak or the island's trade goods make furtive appearances in the textual sources of Mamluk Egypt and Rasulid Yemen. As if to reinforce the possibility of this polity’s longevity, the funerary epigraphic corpus of Dahlak produces evidence for the assumption of the title of “sultan” by two successive strongmen on the island in the first half of the 10th/16th century, when Portuguese forces attempt to exert control over the southern Red Sea. This paper will examine the data on the Dahlakis' continued participation in Red Sea networks during Rasulid/Mamluk times from, among other things, the more recently published Rasulid (mostly administrative) documents, and assess them against the island's historical record as established long ago by Madeleine Schneider.