The Christian Kingdom of Makuria — Dongola, Capital of the Middle Nile

After the collapse of the Kingdom of Kush in the fourth century AD, the Kingdom of Makuria arose along the Nile between the Third Cataract and Abu Hamad, and took Dongola as its capital — a city built inside a fortified citadel at the end of the fifth century AD, on the eastern bank of the Nile midway between the Third and Fourth Cataracts. In the mid-sixth century the kingdom embraced Christianity, beginning one of the longest Christian eras in African history, according to research by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

In the year 652 a Muslim army besieged Dongola, and the siege was repelled — one of the rare occasions on which an army of the Rashidun Caliphate failed to take a besieged city. The two sides then signed the "Baqt Treaty," which left the Nubians free of foreign domination for more than six centuries and guaranteed the kingdom a peaceful relationship with Egypt that lasted for successive centuries, as documented by the Coptic Encyclopedia and historical accounts.

Makuria reached its civilizational peak between the ninth and eleventh centuries: the royal Throne Hall in Dongola, the great Cruciform Church, and the Monastery of Bangnarti, with colorful murals depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary and the apostles, and pottery decorated with the utmost precision. The Nubian language expanded as a written language alongside Greek, Coptic and Arabic. In the tenth century the Fatimid ambassador Ibn Salim al-Aswani visited it and left a vivid description of its capital and system of government.

For 1,200 years Dongola remained an inhabited city, and it witnessed a historic moment of transformation in 1317, when the Throne Hall was converted into a mosque by order of Sayf al-Din Abdullah Barshanbo — and the foundation plaque still bears witness to that event at the site. Today, international excavations are revealing more than 200 hectares of the city: churches, monasteries, residential quarters with upper floors, and baths with hot water, testifying to a cosmopolitan African capital no less dazzling than its contemporaries.

📚 Sources: Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (University of Warsaw) — Old Dongola excavations; The Coptic Encyclopedia — entry on "DONGOLA" (Claremont Digital Library); Smithsonian Magazine — Ruins of Monumental Church Linked to Medieval Nubian Kingdom Found in Sudan — Editorial Team