Kingdom of Makuria
The kingdom of Makuria was a kingdom located in today’s
northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Located along the Nile it
covered the area from the third to the fifth or sixth
cataract. It also had control over trade routes, mines and
oases to the east and west. Its capital was Dongola, and the
kingdom is sometimes known by that name. They converted to
Christianity in the sixth-century, but were cut off from the
rest of Christianity when the Arabs conquered Egypt in the
seventh-century. In 651 an Arab army attacked but they were
fought off and a treaty was signed which created stability
between the two sides until the thirteenth-century. During
this time the country was stable and prosperous in its golden
age. Increased aggression from Egypt, and internal discord,
led to the state’s collapse in the fourteenth-century.
The Nubians were a literate society and a fair number of
writings survive from the period. They were written in old
Nubian language in an uncial variety of the Greek alphabet,
extended with some Coptic symbols and some symbols unique to
Nubian.
The Aswan Dam, constructed in 1964, was going to
flood Makurian territory, and UNESCO tried to get as much
excavated as possible. Thousands of experts were brought in
from around the world, including Polish, British and Ghanaian
teams.
They were growing barley, millet and dates. Well irrigated
lands by the Nile river. Oxen-driven waterwheel, land was
divided into individual plots. Houses of sun-dried bricks.
Pottery, weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, baskets, mats and
sandals from palm fibre. There was no currency and trade was
in barter.
Imported luxury goods from Egypt and exported
slaves which they captured west and south of Makuria itself.
Was officially Coptic by 710 CE. They first wrote in Greek.
They defeated the Rashidun caliphate at the First battle of
Dongola, 642, and Second Battle of Dongola, 652. The Arabs
were particularly impressed with their archers.
This
standoff led to the unique agreement known as the bakt or
baqt. This treaty guaranteed peaceful relations between the
two sides.
The Nubians agreed to give Arab traders more
privileges of trade in addition to a share in their slave
trading, while the Egyptians may have been obliged to send
manufactured goods south.
There is no extant copy of the
treaty they signed, and the earliest copies are several
centuries after the fact and are quite varied. The treaty
might not have been written at all and simply an oral
agreement. Still, the main features of the treaty seem clear:
Arabs and Nubians should not attack each other; the subjects
of the two countries should be allowed to travel and trade
freely and have safe passage; immigration to each other’s
country and settlement was forbidden; fugitives were to be
extradited; Nubians should maintain a mosque for visiting
Arabs; the Egyptians had no obligation to protect the Nubian
from third parties. 360 slaves per year should be sent to
Egypt, of the best quality, men and women and not too old.
This was an unprecedented treaty in the history of Arab
conquests since it imposed costs on Arabs as well – including
sending wheat and lentils south. It blocked the expansion of
Islam and was therefore criticized by Islamic scholars. King
Zacharias III of Makuria sent his son Georgios to Bagdhad in
835 to renegotiate the treaty directly with the caliph. This
expedition was a great success and the arrears were canceled
and the baqt was altered so that it only had to be paid once
in three years.
Zacharias III, 822-854, was ruler of the Nubian kingdom of
Makuria. In 833 he ceased paying the baqt to the rulers of
Egypt, and prepared to fight the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutasim,
833-842, over the tribute. He sent his son Georgios to
renegotiate the terms, and al-Mutasim reduced the payment to
once every three years. When the Beja refused to pay their
tribute to the Abbasids in 854, the forces of Makuria joined
with them in attacking Egypt. They slew the Egyptian working
the emerald mines of the eastern desert, invaded upper Egypt
and pillaged Edfu, Asna and many other villages.
The country was prosperous and peaceful in the eighth-century
and ninth-century. They invaded Egypt in the twelfth-century,
but lost and were invaded in turn. The Egyptians did not seem
to bother.
The country is Islamicized in the thirteenthcentury, and becomes more unstable. Arab traders invade.
Bedouins from the desert invade. The Mamluks invade. The
deal was that Makuria should secure Egypt’s southern border
but they are now no longer able to do this. In 1317, the
Dongola cathedral was turned into a mosque. Civil war and
anarchy ensue.
Egypt itself.
In the sixteenth-century it was included into