The Medieval Kingdoms Of Nubia

Nubia had a rich pagan heritage, stretching back thousands of years. During probably the 6th century AD various factors led to the adoption of Christianity. This book charts this huge cultural transition and its impact.

The first full-length study of the social and economic history of medieval Nubia, this book uses unpublished indigenous Old Nubian documentary sources to reveal a complex society that blended Greco-Roman legal traditions with African festive practices.

Medieval Christian Nubia is often a neglected period of medieval African history. Because meaning is determined largely by context this work traces the Greco-Roman, Meroitic and Jewish precursors. The regional, historical and theological schisms within Christianity are also a highlight. The dynamics of the three Nubian kingdoms of Nobatia, Mukurra, and Alwa are the centerpiece of this book that covers mural arts, architecture, and the names of the leading kings and bishops. Another strength of the book is the analysis of the 700-year baqt peace treaty between Christian Nubia and Islamic Egypt; this is considered to be the longest lasting treaty in diplomatic history. The complex transition from Christianity to Islam in the 14th century is analyzed in great personal, political, and military detail. Historical Dictionary of Medieval Christian Nubia contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture of the medieval Nubians. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Medieval Christian Nubia.

The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.

As one of the few surviving archaeological sites from the medieval Christian kingdom of Nubia, Qasr Ibrim is critically important in a number of ways. It is the only site in Lower Nubia that remained above water after the completion of the Aswan high dam. In addition, thanks to the aridity of the climate in the area, the site is marked by extraordinary preservation of organic material, especially textual material written on papyrus, leather, and paper. Particularly rich is the textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, written in Old Nubian, the region's indigenous language. As a result, Qasr Ibrim is probably the best documented ancient and medieval site in Africa outside of Egypt and the Maghreb. Medieval Nubia is the first book to make available this remarkable material, much of which is still unpublished. The evidence discovered reveals a more complicated picture of this community than originally thought. Previously, it was accepted that medieval Nubia had existed in relative isolation from the rest of the world, subsisting on a primitive economy. Legal documents, accounts, and letters, however, reveal a complex, monetized economy with exchange rates connected to those of the wider world. Furthermore, they reveal public festive practices, in which lavish feasting and food gifts reinforced the social prestige of the participants. These documents prove medieval Nubia to have been a society combining legal elements inherited from the Greco-Roman world with indigenous African social practices. In reconstructing the social and economic life of medieval Nubia based on the Old Nubian sources from the site, as well as other previously examined materials, Giovanni R. Ruffini corrects previous assumptions and provides a new picture of Nubia, one that links it to the wider Mediterranean economy and society of its time.

A variety of scholars examine different aspects of Coptic Christian civilization in the Aswan and Nubia regions of Egypt over the past centuries.

Numerous research projects have studied the Nubian cultures of Sudan and Egypt over the last thirty years, leading to significant new insights. The contributions to this handbook illuminate our current understanding of the cultural history of this fascinating region, including its interconnections to the natural world.

Includes a brief introduction to Nubia cultures and highlights of the Nubia gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, obtained from Nubian excavations.