Kingdom of Makuria — a Thousand Years of Christian Civilization on the Nile
After the fall of the Kingdom of Meroe in the fourth century CE, three Christian kingdoms emerged in the land of Nubia by the sixth century: Nobatia in the north, Makuria (Makuria) in the center, and Alodia in the south. Makuria took Old Dongola as its capital on the eastern bank of the Nile, between the Third and Fourth Cataracts, and its influence extended from the Third Cataract to between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, with control over trade routes, mines and oases to the east and west.
Makuria embraced Christianity in the middle of the sixth century CE at the hands of Byzantine missions, and by the end of the century the land of Nubia had become a Christian country encompassing the three kingdoms. According to the Polish mission of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (University of Warsaw), more than twelve churches and two monasteries were discovered at Old Dongola, including the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, whose walls preserved unique wall paintings from the eleventh and thirteenth centuries depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, and scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
In 651 CE/31 AH, the army of Abdallah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Sarh reached Dongola and the Nubians drove it back, then a peace was concluded known as the "Baqt" — a peace treaty that held for about six centuries until the thirteenth century. Makuria lived its golden age between approximately 750 and 1150 CE: a stable, prosperous state whose trade extended to Egypt, Byzantium and Ethiopia, which annexed its northern neighbor Nobatia in the reign of King Merkurios, and established diplomatic relations with Muslim Egypt, Byzantium and even the Holy Roman Empire.
From the thirteenth century, Mamluk aggression from Egypt escalated, coinciding with internal strife and Bedouin raids, and Muslim kings sat on the throne of Dongola in the second and third decades of the fourteenth century, then a civil war in 1365 CE tore the kingdom into a small statelet in which Dongola itself was lost, and the Funj Sultanate swallowed its lands south of the Third Cataract at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Old Dongola remained an inhabited city until the eighteenth century.
Makuria was rediscovered with UNESCO's campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia in 1960, before they were flooded by the waters of the High Dam, and the Polish mission has been digging at Old Dongola for decades — and the city, which extended over about 200 hectares, is still only partially explored. In 2020, researchers announced the discovery of a huge cathedral, and it is believed that a large dome near its apse is the tomb of one of the archbishops — and whole chapters of Makuria's history are still buried beneath the Sudanese sands.
📚 Sources: Smithsonian Magazine (2020 report on the cathedral discovery at Old Dongola); Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology — University of Warsaw (Old Dongola excavation project); Archaeopress (book "The Kingdom of Makuria and Its Civilization" — Ahmed Hussein Abdelrahman Adam, 2024). — Editorial Team