Christian kingdoms
Although the Roman army only penetrated once in 25 and 24 BC. To the interior of Sudan until it reached Napata, the campaign did not yield lasting results. Dodekaschoinos (the twelfth province), which means Lower Nubia between Aswan and Muharraq, was the Roman Empire’s deepest province to the south. The Romans kept it because it constituted a border region to protect the administrative center in the First Cataract from attacks by the Nubians.[1] This region had, throughout its history, a close relationship with Egypt, a relationship that may sometimes amount to The degree of dependence and dependency, and it seems to be a relationship that was similar in many cases to the other side of the border region of the Roman Empire between the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus. Just as that region was eventually evacuated to the northern barbarians, Dodekaschoinos was also occupied at the end of the third century AD by the Blemmyes who settled there, and who were originally nomads living in the eastern desert. Aswan (Philae) eventually became the southern border of Roman authority. Lower Nubia became a settlement for the Blemmyes, and its borders started from Primis (Ibrim) in the south to Telelios (Aswan Cataract) in the north, but shortly before the middle of the sixth century AD, the Blemmyes were pushed out of Lower Nubia at the hands of a king called Silku, who called himself in the Kalabsha inscription the title of King of the Nobadians and all of Ethiopia, meaning that the region included at least the Nile Valley in the south up to the Second Cataract. Around that time, shortly after the Blemmyes were evacuated, the pagan temple at Philae was closed in the period between 536 and 543 AD. Then the process of Nubia's conversion to Christianity began. There is no evidence indicating that King Silko was a Christian, but it is a strong possibility that it was his campaigns that led Nubia to convert to Christianity. There is no doubt that the specific frequency of events is not completely clear, and therefore it was necessary to compile the history of the sixth century and the centuries that followed, by collecting the various pieces of evidence for which success in determining the exact date based on confirmation is rare.
Whatever the circumstances, Christianity, which is the official religion of the Roman Empire, was able to reach Nubia and Abyssinia via the north, where the route through Egypt was still open, and it was able to establish itself there with some solidity. This solidity can be seen in the century that passed before Islam successfully spread in the West and after the conquest of Egypt by the Muslim Arabs and their entry into it in the year 640 AD. Likewise, after the split of the Christian world into two parts, Christianity in Nubia remained rooted in peace, so that the occasional campaigns coming from the north did not produce a permanent result, because the mere distance, which is usual in history, formed a traditional, protective ally of Sudan.
The campaigns escalated in the years 651 and 652 when the Muslims arrived in Dongola, whose church was hit by missile fire. One of the results of this campaign was that an annual exchange treaty of goods was concluded, called the baqt. Muslim historians have argued that the baqt was a type of tribute extracted from a defeated enemy, but the matter was not entirely like that, as the baqt was - as the name itself indicates - a commercial agreement. He was caught between two equal forces, each of which had sovereignty and autonomy. As a result of this treaty, the political borders were fixed in Aswan.
Professor de Villard argues that in that period (650) there were two independent kingdoms of the Nobadis and the Makurians and that these two states did not unite until fifty years later. De Villard believes that the union arose between the years 690-693 AD, when the king of Mauritania (whom he identified with the Nobadis) was not at peace with the king of Makuria, and the Makurians were established in the year 710 AD. From an inscription in Taifa in the Northern Kingdom, de Villard inferred the fact that the king of Dongola (Maquria) subjected the Nobadias to his rule, and thus Nobadia became, from that date, subordinate to Maqura, with affairs being governed by a parish. In addition to this unified state, to the south there was the Kingdom of Alwa, with its capital, Soba, located near Khartoum.
It may be very difficult for this interpretation to be consistent with what was stated in the treaties of 651 and 652 AD. Which was concluded with “the Great of Nubia and all the people of his kingdom from the border of the land of Aswan to the border of the land of Alwa.” The agreement was immediately followed by the submission of the King of Dongola Galdron, who was inevitably the supreme king of the two kingdoms. For this reason, I find myself standing within the scope of Kirwan’s point of view, which states that the union arose between the year 580 AD. When the two kingdoms were independent and the year 652 AD. When Dongola became the capital of the two kingdoms, there is no doubt that the emergence of this union came as a result of hostile pressure coming from the north, which made the city deeper in the south seem safer. There is another additional difficulty that arises from our acceptance of this interpretation, which is a difficulty related to the identification of Mauritania, which Kirwan believes is merely a clerical error, with the Northern Kingdom. *
Nobadia was also called Al-Maris, and it was divided into two parts. The upper part was called the High Country, which can be identified with the Dodekaschoinos (the twelfth region), while the southern part was called the Mountain Country and could be identified with the Triakontaschoinos (the thirteenth region). Its southern borders can also be placed on reliable geographical foundations at Akasha, where there was a customs center and a hot water spring mentioned by Abu Salih[2]. Fars was the capital of the mountainous country and the seat of its ruler known as the Sahib al-Jabal. During the time of Abu Salih (1200), the Sahib al-Jabal had two other headquarters in each of Ibrim and Basuqa. The last location is still unknown, but it was close to the gold mine, and from here it was mostly close to the mouth of Wadi Allaqi.
As for the northern borders of Makuria, according to Al-Yaqubi’s testimony, it was located in a place called Mawa. De Villard believes that the name should be written Mawa, as he matched it with the name of the place mentioned by Rubini. However, while I accept the correction, I prefer to place Mama in Mount Farka, the place that early nineteenth-century travelers called Mount Mama[3]. It seems that this mountain was adopted as a symbol of the northern borders of Sukkot, and it is also possible that it was a symbol of the northern borders of the Kingdom of Makuria. As for the southern border of Nobadia, it was placed at a point fourteen miles north of Mama, a fact that should not bother us, because the customs center is usually located in the village closest to the border, as is the case today in Europe. Moshu (Moshi) considered the Dongola customs center a symbol of the northern border, despite it being located ten miles south of the border line.
Nobadia, then, represented that part of the Nile Valley located between the First Cataract and Okasha, followed to the south by the Kingdom of Makuria, which is often known by the name of its capital, the Kingdom of Dongola, a name translated by Griffiths, and followed by De Villard, which is that “Du-en-Kol” means Upper Do, similar to an area in Lower Nubia called “Du-Tao”, meaning Lower Do.
Our only reference in the geography of Makuria is Ibn Salim al-Aswany (975-996 AD), whose text Al-Maqrizi preserved for us, in which the southern borders of Makuria were in later times at the Kingdom of Al-Abwab[4] which can be matched in layout with the Shendi Governorate, and a document dating back to the ninth century AD[5] gives us an extension of the Kingdom of King John (before 822 AD) starting from Philae and Aswan until Telemawara, a place that has not yet been identified, and there seems to be a temptation to link the first part of the poison to Bartul, Jebel Dil, as well as to Tuli, which Pliny mentions and which was in the same area.[6] In any case, Telemawara could be somewhere near the Sabluqa gondola or the Al-Matimir pass, since the two sites are strong enough for one of them to be the southern border of the Bayuda Desert.
The northern part of Al-Maqarah was divided into states or districts called Saqlouda, Bakun, and Safd Bakl or Baql. Ibn Salim Al-Aswany mentions that Saqlouda means the seven governors, and the second part of the word undoubtedly contains the word kolodo, which means seven in the language of Nubian treasures[7] While the first part of the word, which is “Sa,” is common in the names of places in the Abu Hamad and Berber region, and it seems that Saqlouda is similar in layout to the Al-Sukkut area, Baqun is similar to the Al-Mahas area, and Safd Baqal is similar to Dar Al-Jawabra, i.e. the northern part of Dongola.
The topography of the southern Kingdom of Alwa represents more complex forms. The capital was in Soba, which is located twelve miles south of Khartoum. Here the name can be linked - according to what was reported by de Villard - to the two words Subi in the language of Al-Mahas and Sabi in the language of treasures, which mean wall. However, I prefer translating them on the basis that they include the meaning of “old walls” or “ruins” more than just city walls, as Soba was an ancient Meroe site, and the same word has been used for several ancient sites located on the Blue Nile near Roseiris.
There is a document dating back to the year 1286 AD. We find that it mentions the name of Adur (possibly Dhathur of Meroe), and after him it mentions the king of Al-Abwab, and the princes of Bara, Al-Taka, Kadru, Dango, Ari, Baqal, Al-Anj, and Karsa. What is meant by taka here is not Kassala, which is far away, but rather the village of Jbeil, which is close to Al-Matimir, i.e. Ataki, which Roubini cites. Kadru may be the old name for the hill facing Shendi[8]. It may also be Laqal, in my belief, which is the small city built of brick (on a stone foundation) that Burckhardt noticed between Shendi and Meroe at the mouth of Wadi Baqleel[9]. As for Karsa, based on what was reported by Al-Aswany, it refers to the name of a tribe that lived between the White and Blue Nile[10]. As for the other sites mentioned in the document, their locations have not been determined yet. It is worth noting here that these names date back to a very late stage in the history of Alwa, which is approximately parallel to the year 1786 AD. In the history of the Funj Kingdom, that is, the time when the Alwa Kingdom was going through a state of disintegration and dissolution.
We do not know anything about the southern and western borders of the Kingdom of Alwa, which probably extended south to the Abyssinian border. There is no evidence to indicate that Alwa or parts of it were politically affiliated with Abyssinia at any time.[11] As for the west, it is possible that Kordofan may have belonged to Alwa at some point in time, and if that was the case, it would be natural for relations and quarrels to arise with the people of the West.[12]
As was the case in medieval Europe, the church played an important role in civil administration, and therefore kings had religious functions based on bishops supervising religious rituals. There is an icon on the walls of the Abdel-Qadir Church near Wadi Halfa that shows the archbishop of Nobadia holding in his hand a model of a church - as the founders of the churches are depicted here - and this indicates that the officials were closely interested in religious affairs, and it is natural for there to be bishops in the Kingdom of Makuria. A list of their headquarters was given[13], which was called Marako. There were bishops in Kurta, Ibrim, Pachoras, Doncala, Sai, Thermos, and Sinkor.
As for Kurta, it is present-day Qorta, which is seventy miles south of Aswan, and Bakhoras is Faras [14] which is located down the Nile from Wadi Halfa, and Doncala is Dongola, and Thermos is Kalabsha, which is ancient Talmis, which Abu Salih called Dermis. Thermos was important in the fifteenth century, as it was made clear in the Catalan Plansfer. It is the only place between Swan (Aswan) and the island of Meroe[15]. It is possible that Setkur is the area of Shankir mentioned by Al-Maqrizi, which is located near the great bend of the Nile between Berber and Meroe. It has not been observed that this name is still preserved in the valley of Singir (Songir by Kayo, and Arab Sumgar by Bruce), which flows into the Nile at the Island of Usher at the eastern end of Beida, passing from Meroe through Sani and Jura. This definition completely matches Al-Aswany’s statement that the road to Suakin starts from the Shangur area. It is possible that the Shankha mine, located in the same area, is the place currently known as Shamkhiya, which is mentioned in the Sudanese Survey Authority’s quarter-million map 45B and C. In the southern part, at the foot of Mount Qorqurib, Kayo shows square ruins. Jackson also recorded the ruins of a village made of stones and a castle with stone walls (SNR No. 9, 25). *
There are two other bishoprics located in Merca and Kalama, which were mentioned in other sources, but neither of them has been identified now[16]. Based on what was stated by Vanslip, the bishoprics of Alwa are Bora, Jagra, Martin, Arodias, Panazzi, and Menkisa[17]. In de Villard’s reading, we find Allodias instead of Arodias, which according to him is equivalent to Allodia or Alwa. In my opinion, the name Martin is unlikely to be found in this region. Perhaps it was written by defacement. As for the rest of the places that Vanslip mentioned her but she was not identified.
We find in Vanslip another addition, which is that the territory of Akzamites (Axum) included the bishoprics of Super, which is the royal city, and Kushharin (not Kushrim as it is usually printed), Takshi, and Aman Kul, which are places in Abyssinia but have not yet been identified. As for Marquart[18], he links Zubar (Super) to Sahart or Zarvata mentioned by Al-Maqrizi, which is also called Ashsum, where the Negus resides. Marquart suggests that Zarvata be changed to Zuvarta. Likewise, Zubur was linked to the Zuboridi mentioned by Ptolemy, which Rosini matched with the Zuburidi mentioned in the text of Taqri. The Tuqri were ancestors of the Habbab, and are most often interpreted as a Semitic group whose origins go back to the south of the Arabian Peninsula. Rosini translates the word to mean “endowed with many wells.” As for Ptolemy, he links Zuburidi with the Axumians, and it is clear that the identification of Zuburidi with Zubar Zovarta and Zapor are generally accepted by the general public.
The Christian kingdoms occupied the Nile Valley and part of the extensions to the east and south-east of the Nile, or in other words, these kingdoms occupied all the areas located between Aswan in the north, and the Red Sea and Abyssinia in the east and south. If we look at the northern part of these kingdoms, we find that its areas were purely Nilotic, as they consisted of the narrow strip of the Nile Valley itself. However, to the south of Berber, where the rain lands were, the area of the areas was It expands over a vast expanse on both banks of the Nile, while the vast areas of the eastern desert and plains were home to Bedouins, and it is an area that we will study later in the fifth chapter of this book.
If we have finished studying the political geography of the Christian kingdom, this prompts us to move on to discussing how that political geography was modified as a result of the rule of the Funj, and this is not an easy matter, as the late history of the southern kingdom is almost always completely empty. In addition, although little is known about the northern kingdom, the northern part of it, which is located between the third cataract and Aswan, became part of Islamic Egypt, and was never among the lands under the control of the kingdom. The Funj, and therefore this part does not concern us in this chapter, but I mentioned it only in my previous presentation because the two kingdoms in it formed a complete cultural and religious unit in the Middle Ages.
Traditionally, the end of Christianity and the disappearance of the Northern Kingdom was determined in 1323 AD. This is when its kings from that date became followers of the religion of Islam, and then the region was subject to the Muslim Arabs who flocked to the country. As for Dongola, until the end of the fourteenth century AD, it remained immersed in constant turmoil, meaning that despite its submission to Islam, it continued to maintain remnants of its Christianity. We have no reliable record of the events that occurred in Sudan, as that period was full of chaos, especially when the only government in it became based on the authority of junior sheikhs. Likewise, it is difficult to believe that the Soba government, too, succeeded in weathering the storm. Rather, reality shows minor signs, all of which indicate that it did not succeed. Absolutely.
A writer who lived in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries AD mentions that the king of Alwa had settled in a place called Kushah, a place whose location remains in doubt, as it was also called Kus or Kush al-Wajila. It was located a six-day journey from the city of Nawabia (Jabal Harraza),[19] which was the only place for the Nubian Funj, and was at such a distance from the Nile that it was difficult to obtain water except from wells, and this area had previously been subject to a king. The Nubia, whose hereditary name was Kayamil, whose capital was in Dongola.
I have not studied the problem of the length of Al-Idrisi’s journey in days, which may differ [20] from what is usual with us, but if we take four days from Nawabia, which is Mount Harraza, to the nearest point to the Nile - which is a distance of no less than twenty-one hundred miles - then we will get a daily average of thirty miles. If Kusha is located at a distance of six days, this means that it is eighty and one hundred miles away from Mount Harraza. Now it is sixty-one hundred miles away from Mount Harraza. Harazah is a mountain called Habal Umm Kusa, and another not far from it is called Mount Umm Khusus, and both of them are not far from Wadi al-Malik. It is an area that mostly contains huge amounts of groundwater, and the Kawahila currently live in it, but there are some groups of Nuba living in the areas adjacent to them. Did the king of Alwa settle in this place? This place may seem unlikely[21], yet it is possible that this king was forced to settle there under pressure from the conquering Arabs[22]. If this possibility is true, then another question will arise: What happened regarding Soba? Did the city abandon the capital at the beginning of the fourteenth century? Perhaps it would be fair to say this regardless of whether the city continued to exist and remained commercially prosperous long after it ceased to be a center of government.
All we know for sure about Soba is that it was destroyed before Rubini visited it in 1523 AD. Where he found a few tabernacles that the people of Sudan call Al-Rawakib. Suba was a wonderful city when Al-Aswany visited it. We highlight its splendor through the words he described with it. He said in it, “It has beautiful buildings and spacious homes, churches abounding in gold, and orchards. It has a city in which there is a group of Muslims. Alwa possesses more wealth than the owner of Al-Maqra and has a greater army, and he has more horses than Al-Maqri does... and their books are in Romans, and they interpret them in their own language.” ".[23] Abu Saleh adds that it had a large church called Manbali[24] and there were four hundred churches in the surrounding areas, and from here one would expect that the city of Soba extended in its construction like it did in the past, like Omdurman today, and is located over a wide area. Because this part of Africa has abundant spaces that allow for such a degree of expansion, it can be said that to this day we find that the impression that Khartoum, Suba’s granddaughter, leaves on the visitor’s soul is the feeling of spaciousness and breadth[25], and the expansive views that dissolve in the desert. With the exception of Arbagi, which is a smaller city than Soba, Soba is the southernmost city in the Nile Valley, representing an important center of urban culture, viewed with reverence and reverence by the peasants of the south and the people of the desert. To the non-local Bedouins, Soba was a tempting place for plunder, and this is what they succeeded in achieving in the end. The fall of Soba must have constituted a terrible catastrophe, a catastrophe whose echo continues to resonate in popular lore to this day, as its fall and devastation became an example of the comprehensive devastation of all Ammar[26]. The memory of Soba remains tinged with a tragic ring, especially when we see the people of Roseires, who are likely descendants of those who fled from it, swearing in the name of Soba, the homeland of the ancestors.
Soba today consists of a series of enormous mounds covered with broken red bricks, different in size from other Christian brick sites on the Blue Nile. The scattered piles form separate units, separated by empty spaces in which sometimes the remains of walls appear. The height of the piles does not exceed six or eight feet. The best groups of these piles are located near the head of a shallow creek. They contain pottery remains of a type known as the “Abu Qili complex.” These remains appear on the surface sometimes, and in other places they are covered with a layer of gray soil that does not exceed a foot or two in thickness. There is a column that has not been removed. It stands from granite, representing the remains of a Christian church that had been uncovered by Badah, who did not leave any documentation of the looting that he carried out[27]. There are capitals for two granite columns lying on the ground, and a third with an inscription of a cross (Plate 2-B) was removed from its place, and currently lies in the lobby of the Anglican Church in Khartoum near a statue of a ram that was also taken from Soba.
The site is full of sherds of undecorated pottery. So far, no pottery dating back to the Funj era has been uncovered, nor has anything that is Meroitic or older been uncovered, even though the city of the Meroitic era had arisen in this place.
Ancient Christianity, whose roots extend to the classical world of Byzantium and Rome, stagnated until the sixth century AD, when it was preserved in the Christian religion, which the bishops of Soba preserved with their Roman (Coptic) books and their interpretations. These bishops continued to maintain their social position, just like their righteous successors, whose life history was recorded in the books of the classes. There were Christians in the days of Al-Farz (1520-1527 AD). Among the Nubians, that is, in the Kingdom of Sennar, where Alvarez himself saw them in the court of the King of Abyssinia, when six of them came there as envoys to ask the king to provide them with bishops and monks, as they had been cut off from Rome, and had lost their clergy and Christianity, as a result of the Moroccan war with Rome.
Al-Farez mentions that he met in Abyssinia John the Syrian, a citizen of Tripoli the Levant who was in the Kingdom of the Nubians, and he informed him that the kingdom still had one hundred and fifty churches with crosses and a picture of the Virgin Mary, and other pictures on its walls, and the churches were in ancient castles. He also informed him that the country was the country of a king, but there were leaders who lived in their castles[28].
The conditions of the Kingdom of Sennar, as described by Al-Farez and John Al-Suri, were confirmed by some references contained in Islamic sources. Christianity survived despite its rapid decline until the Funj era, and schools for learning and reading the Qur’an did not flourish there[29]. The call to Islam before the Age of Ajeeb was merely a formal call. However, with the beginning of the Age of Ajeeb, the first generation of scholars arrived in the country who began to spread preaching and education.[30]
As for the political aspect, the leaders continued to take shelter in their castles without a supreme leader who imposed his authority and power on everyone. During the time of Roubini, the chaos reached its end, with the establishment of the strong rule of Amara Dungus. The chaos that Amara Dengus ended was a natural result of the rift of the central government, and the stability that the Funj Kingdom witnessed during its prosperity eventually led to another chaos, at the end of the Funj rule, as Bruce described the situation at that time, With words to the effect that Senara was ruled by a weak king, that Arbagi was a shelter for the deposed sheikh, and that villages were a fortress for looters, and that Shendi was the headquarters of our six, and that after Shendi, there was no protection except from heaven.
Perhaps it is useful to mention that when Roubini passed through Soba in 1525 - and many do not know that Roubini represents a link between two historical phases - he found it in ruins, with its people living in wooden huts that resembled huts, with ruins that were an image of those ruins left behind by the bombing of Suakin. But despite this condition that Roubini found in Soba, we believe that it was not... It was completely abandoned, because we are fully aware that life remains more or less intact in the great, ruined cities. If it were not for this, Rubeni would never have stopped in Soba, as he was known to not care about the ruins.
Whatever the case, the glories witnessed by Soba faded when a new kingdom began to emerge, and a different culture emerged from the ruins to replace the old Christian culture that lasted for nearly a thousand years, but did not surpass it in any way.
Footnotes
[1] Monier de Villard, op. cit. This part relies primarily on his book, which can be considered a reliable reference in establishing the facts unless otherwise stated. An article briefly presenting the book appeared in Antiquity magazine, issue twenty-one (March 1947), and I used it while writing this chapter.
* Monneret de Villard,Storia,79-83 ; Kirwan,L.P., Topography of the Christian Nubian Kingdoms,J.E.A.,XXI,1935,61-2
[2] For a modern description of this hot spring, see Lepsius, Letters, 1853, 267-8. A rectangular tower was built over the spring, which was called the bath of our master Solomon, who was the engineer. It is a spring whose water contains a high degree of sulfur and has a temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit.
[3] See p. And drawing 21 in this book
[4] This name has been interpreted as referring to a place at the crossroads of caravan routes. Two other possible explanations. One matches it with the Al-Metamir crossing between Jubail and the river. A comparison can be made with the name Biban given to Mount Ahmed Agha (Davawang) in the White Nile and with the passes of Bab al-Mandab. Al-Bab is the name of a narrow region of the Nile that extends half way beyond Dendera (Sonnini III, 151). Lepsius (Letters, 253) mentions a castle in Hillat al-Bib directly below the fourth cataract. The second interpretation holds that the word represents a description of gate-like ruins, in this case those at Meroe, the ruins of the Egyptian temple at Sadanga locally called Al-Biban (Hoskins, 255). Biban is the plural of kasra for the singular chapter. The first interpretation is the closest to the correct one, because Khordhabah, while talking about the fortified sites in Muscat and Al-Bab and Al-Bab, says that the name Bab is used for castles that control the mountain passes.
[5] F.LI. Griffith,”Christian documents from Nubia” Proc. Brit. Acad. XIV, 16
[6] Tilly appears to be a word of Meroe origin that corresponds to the Meroeian Tiro, which is replaced with Tilo, which means “king” (Sayce, Meroe, 54). In Nubian documents from the Christian era, τιλλ means “god” or “majesty,” and is also used for saints, for example, Michael of Tella (Griffith, Nubian Texts, 119). The word still survives in the language spoken in Mount Medob in the form of Tili or Dili, meaning "god." It is used there to refer to some sacred rocks on which sacrifices are made annually (MacMichael, Part I, 63-64). The word has been discussed at length by de Villard Monneret de Villard Il culto del Sole a Meroe, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, annoII,1942,137-9 published in Rome by La libreria dello Stato
De Villard cites Seligman and Evans-Pritchard regarding a recent use of remains of the same word in the regions of Boran, Maban, and Inqasna, where the word (tel and ta) means both sun and god. In Mount Tapi, the sun is worshiped in the name of Tel (Seventh Issue SNR). According to Beke (Report of the Brit.Ass.for 1847,6), Fen Tolu means mountain in the Galla language. The second part of the word can be matched with Marwat, which is the Egyptian name for the Meroe region (Badjan, the second part). McMichael points out the Sudanese Arab custom of inverting the syllables of words. Sais promised Marwa a local name. Telemawara therefore likely means lord of the Meroë region. The present-day village of Maqawir near Meroe can attest to the connection between the two names. However, the interpretation of the second part of the word is less reliable than the first part.
[7] Burckhardt, Travels,156
[8] I propose Al-Matma starting from Mount Kadra, which faces Al-Matma from the northeast. There is also a village called Kadro to the north of Khartoum, but it is not known that it was an important commercial and political center, as was Al-Matma.
[9] Burkhardt, 362 and also at the bottom of page 102
[10] Ibn Hawqqal mentions “the land of Kursi on the Nile” as the southern border of the Kingdom of Alwa.
[11] This is if we exclude Ezana’s previous campaign and his subjugation of the country for only a temporary period
[12] On this complex topic, one can refer to de Villard, pages 198 et seq
[13] By Vanslip Histoire de l'eglise d'Alexandrie...ėcrite au Caire měme,en 1672 et 1673; Paris1677, pages29-30(Brit.Mus.857g8)
Cited from this source by Monnier de Villard, p. 162, who, like others who cite the list, incorrectly spells Cincour as Swincour, but rightly points out that the correct name may be Cencour. Vanslip's original manuscript has disappeared, so his actual sources are unknown. Comparison with the manuscript of his other published works revealed numerous typographical errors, especially regarding place names. We hope that a scholar will be able to rediscover the original sources that may be found in the archives of the Coptic Church in Cairo.
[14] See: Griffith, JEA, XI,259-68
* The celestial sphere is a map of one or more celestial hemispheres with a tool that indicates the visible part of it at a specific time (translator)
[15] De la Ronciėre, Dėcouverte de l'Afrique au moyen âge,I, 1924,Plate 10
[16] Monier de Villard, op. cit., 164-5
[17] I expect here a geographical error to occur if there is confusion with the Al-Bansa Oasis, which is the name that Abu Saleh mentioned for the Bahariya Oasis. See map of Everts.
[18] Benin-Sammlung,1913,p.cccv.
[19] Al-Idrisi says “eight short days” and also six days. The site was also mentioned around the middle of the tenth century, with a longitude of 50 and a latitude of 12, and it was called Kush Dadjila (The Brothers of Safa). Kush marked the Wajila with the same lines on the map of Al-Hawazmi (975-991 AD).
[20] This was discussed in Cooly, The Negroland of the Arabs, 1841, 48.
[21] After I wrote this, I came across information that confirms this definition. At Mount Zenka in Kaja Suruç Newbold records a burnt brick building, a stone wall along the foot of the mountain, a large pile of bones of various animals (including a horse), much pottery, and numerous other remains. All of this is what one would expect to find in late Christian sites. See Newbold in SNR,xxvi,1945,231-2. Penn gives a more detailed description of the site (called Zankor). See: Penn,SNR,xiv,1931,179-84.
[22] Monier de Villard, op. cit., 220; But it is not clear from his text whether this was taken from Al-Dimashqi or whether it was a conclusion on his own.
[23] Al-Maqrizi, Al-Khattat, p. 193
[24] The word means a church in Abyssinia
[25] I wrote this out of the feeling I had upon my first visit to Khartoum in 1913, but it is far from the truth for Khartoum of 1950 – a poor collection of hastily constructed buildings completely devoid of any architectural features.
[26] Newwbold’s File,II,328 (Amarar Tribal History)
[27] With the exception of a 28-line paragraph in his history (Part I, 324-5). He describes them as the ruins of an ancient temple that was reused as a Christian church, but he does not provide evidence for this statement. In the church, rectangular clay terraces 3 feet high were uncovered, in two of which human skeletons were found that had not been excavated. Then he studied the remains of a stone gate, which did not appear to be as old as the temple. This portal cannot be viewed now. Somers Clark, who visited the site in 1910, was unable to see the temple, but he made a map of the columns, drew the capitals and bases of the columns, and excavated, seeking to uncover the remains of the walls without success. Christian Antiquities in the Nile Valley, 1912, 34-8, PlateIII
[28] Narrative, 352
[29] SNR,vi,204, Introduction to the Tabaqat.
[30] Hillelson in SNR,vi, 204
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