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The Nubian Christian Kingdoms. The Nubian Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia (c. AD 543-1517) ruled the middle Nile for almost a millennium and formed one of the great African civilizations of the Middle Ages. After the collapse of Kush, three kingdoms emerged along the river: Nobatia in the north with its capital at Faras, Makuria centered on Dongola, and Alodia far to the south at Soba, near modern Khartoum. In the sixth century, missionaries sent with the support of the Byzantine empress Theodora and her rivals converted all three courts to Christianity.
The kingdoms grew wealthy on the Nile trade and on diplomacy. Around 700 Makuria absorbed Nobatia, creating a powerful united kingdom that stretched from near Aswan deep into Sudan. Makuria's kings had already shown their strength in 651, when Nubian archers repelled the Arab army of Egypt at the Battle of Dongola; the peace treaty that followed, known as the Baqt, regulated relations between Christian Nubia and Muslim Egypt for some six centuries, one of the longest-lasting agreements in medieval history. Nubian churches and monasteries filled with painted decoration, and towns such as Faras and Old Dongola became centers of art, literacy, and royal ceremony.
The kingdoms faced mounting pressure from the twelfth century onward. Saladin's brother led an Egyptian expedition into Nubia in the 1170s, Bedouin Arab tribes settled ever deeper in the riverlands, and the Mamluk sultans of Egypt intervened repeatedly in Makurian succession disputes, at one point capturing Dongola and installing a Muslim vassal king. Alodia held out longer in the south but gradually broke apart as well, its capital Soba falling around 1500 to Arab nomads and the rising Funj.
By about 1517 the Christian Nubian kingdoms had vanished, replaced by Muslim sultanates, though Christian communities lingered for generations. Their rediscovery has been one of the triumphs of modern archaeology: Polish excavations at Faras uncovered a cathedral full of remarkable wall paintings now in Warsaw and Khartoum, and work at Old Dongola continues to reveal the splendor of a Christian African civilization that stood for a thousand years between medieval Egypt and the Sudanic world.
Smarthistory: Medieval Nubian Kingdoms
Nubian Monasteries (University of Warsaw): Nubian Kingdoms
National Museum in Poznan: The Christian Period
Open Book Publishers: The Christian Kingdoms of Nubia