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Before the Turco-Egyptian Conquest M01_HOLT4458_06_SE_C01.QXD 12/17/10 8:44 AM Page 11 PART ONE Before the Turco-Egyptian Conquest At Bujarâs [Faras], the capital of the province of Al-Marîs, which is a well-populated city, there is the dwelling-place of Jausâr, who wore the turban and the two horns and the golden bracelet. Abu Salih, History (early thirteenth century), translated B.T.A. Evetts The Sultan of the Muslims, the Caliph of the Lord of the Worlds; who undertakes the affairs of the world and the Faith; who is raised up for the interests of the Muslims; who supports the Holy Law of the Lord of the Prophets; who spreads the banner of justice and grace over all the worlds; he by whom God corrects His servants and gives light to the land; the repressor of the race of unbelief and deception and rebellion, and the race of oppression and corruption; the mercy of God (praised and exalted be He!) to the townsman and the nomad; he who trusts in the King, the Guide: the sultan, son of the sultan, the victorious, the divinely aided Sultan Badi, son of the deceased Dakin, son of the Sultan Badi. May God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, grant him victory by the influence of the great Qur’an and the noble Prophet. Amen. Amen. O Lord of the Worlds. From a charter of Sultan Badi VI (1791) M01_HOLT4458_06_SE_C01.QXD 12/17/10 8:44 AM Page 12 M01_HOLT4458_06_SE_C01.QXD 12/17/10 8:44 AM Page 13 CHAPTER ONE The Eastern Bilad al-Sudan in the Middle Ages At the time of the coming of Islam in the early seventh century, there were three territories on the main Nile, south of the Byzantine province of Egypt. The first of these, the land of the Nobadae or Nubians proper, extended upstream from the First Cataract. Beyond it lay the country of the Makoritae with its capital at Old Dongola. Still further south was the kingdom of the Alodaei, the capital of which, Soba, lay on the Blue Nile, not far from the modern Khartoum. Christian missionaries had made converts, including the ruling families; and at an uncertain date before 891 the two northern ter- ritories were combined into one kingdom, usually called by its Arabic name, al-Muqurra (i.e. the Makoritae). The term al-Nuba (the Nubians), although properly restricted to the people of the more northerly of the two territories, was generally applied to the combined kingdom, and even extended to the inhabitants of its southern neighbour, known in the Arabic sources as ‘Alwa. The conquest of Egypt by the Muslim Arabs between 639 and 641 brought to the border of Nubia a militant power whose control over Upper Egypt was still precarious. Frontier raiding by both sides took place, and in 651–52, the governor of Egypt, ‘Abdallah b. Sa‘d b. Abi Sarh, besieged Dongola. The campaign is known to us only from later Arabic accounts, which represent the Nubians as suing for peace, but it is clear that ‘Abdallah was unable either to inflict a decisive defeat or to extend Muslim territory south of the frontier- town of Aswan. As the history of the following centuries was to show, invaders from the north were checked both by the resistance of the Nubians and by the long and di[cult lines of communications from advanced bases in Egypt. In the end Christian Nubia succumbed to gradual erosion and infiltration rather than to organized military invasion. Medieval Arabic writers attach to ‘Abdallah’s expedition the conclusion of a formal treaty of peace, which, we are given to understand, henceforward regulated the relations between Muslim Egypt and al-Muqurra. The story presents some anomalies. In the first place, the alleged instrument is known as the baqt – a word unique in Arabic diplomatic terminology, and derived from the Latin pactum by way of Graecized pakton, in Hellenistic usage ‘a compact M01_HOLT4458_06_SE_C01.QXD 12/17/10 8:44 AM Page 14 14 Before the Turco-Egyptian Conquest of mutual obligations and its connected payments’. In the second place, the stipulations of the baqt are curious. They are described with increasing elaboration as time goes on, until al-Maqrizi, writing eight hundred years after the event, gives what purports to be the authentic text, signed, sealed and delivered. Since it includes the provision that the Nubians shall maintain in good order the mosque the Muslims have built in the city of Dongola, we may stigmatize this as a medieval forgery. Earlier accounts, however, which go back to the ninth century, indicate that the essence of the baqt was an annual exchange of slaves from Nubia for provisions from Egypt. The number of slaves is given (with some variation), and in one source the kind and qualities of provisions are specified. One writer’s assertion that supply of these provisions originated as an act of grace may be disregarded as a face-saving presentation of state-controlled barter. Survival of the Hellenistic term suggests that ‘Abdallah’s invasion re-established, after interruption, a trade of long standing. In the first three centuries of Islam, Muslim jurists had di[culty accommo- dating within their categories this anomalous relationship with a Christian state; al-Maqrizi’s ‘treaty’ may represent such an adaptation of historical fact to legal fiction. To the east of Lower Nubia lay barren and mountainous territory, the source of gold and emeralds, known to medieval geographers as bilad al-ma‘din, ‘the land of the mines’. This was a region outside the effective control of Egyptian and Nubian rulers alike, inhabited by sparse and fragmented groups of Beja, and by its nature attractive to adventurers. Clashes between Beja and immi- grant Arab miners were inevitable, and led in 854 to a full-scale military expedition from Qus, supported by a supply-fleet in the Red Sea. The Beja chief, ‘Ali Baba, was defeated, and taken to the caliph in Baghdad. He was honourably received, and sent home with gifts. Such campaigns, and resultant undertakings to pay tribute, were of transient effect; more significant was continued Arab immigration to the land of the mines. The career of one Arab adventurer in the mid-ninth century illustrates the state of frontier society. ‘Abdallah al-‘Umari claimed to be a descendant of the third caliph, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab. A man of family and education, he bought a gang of slaves and went off to make his fortune in the gold mines. He built up a following among the miners by exploiting the tribal rivalries of the Arabs. His presence disturbed the Nubians, and hostilities ensued. Finally Ahmad b. Tulun, the governor of Egypt, alarmed at the unrest on his southern frontier, sent to Aswan an expeditionary force, which al-‘Umari defeated. His prestige in the land of the mines was now, in 869, at its height, but his authority rested on the unstable Arab grouping in the region. In the end he fell victim to tribal assassins. His head was carried to Ahmad b. Tulun, who was, no doubt, as gratified as the Nubian king to learn of his death. Al-‘Umari’s régime died with him, but his career indicates the increasing arabization of the region. One of the leading tribal groups in the land of the mines was Rabi‘a, which in the time of al-‘Umari had allied with the Beja against him, and suffered from his reprisals. By the middle of the tenth century, Rabi‘a, M01_HOLT4458_06_SE_C01.QXD 12/17/10 8:44 AM Page 15 The Eastern Bilad al-Sudan in the Middle Ages 15 who had intermarried with the Beja, were paramount throughout the region, and their chief was styled Sahib al-Ma‘din, ‘the Lord of the Mines’. In 969 Egypt was conquered on behalf of a dynasty, the Fatimids, who had set up a caliphate in North Africa in opposition to the ‘Abbasids of Baghdad. Shortly afterwards an envoy was sent to the court of Dongola. His name, Ibn Sulaym al-Aswani, suggests that he was a native of Aswan, and hence familiar with the Nubians. The object of his mission was twofold: to re-establish trade, which had been interrupted by the change of régime in Egypt; and to seek the Nubian king’s conversion to Islam. Ibn Sulaym returned to Egypt to write an account of the Nubians. Extant portions, transmitted by later authors, are the most important single literary source concerning medieval Nubia.1 Ibn Sulaym describes the country through which he passed on the way to Dongola. Five miles upstream of Aswan was the frontier-post of al-Qasr (‘the fortress’), the gateway to Nubia. Beyond lay the great province of Maris, the old land of the Nobadae, extending along the Nile to a village above the Fourth Cataract, which marked the boundary between Maris and al-Muqurra. The most northerly part of Maris was open to the Muslims, who held land in the vicinity of the frontier and traded upstream. Intermarriage and conver- sion to Islam are suggested by Ibn Sulaym’s comment that some of the Muslim inhabitants did not speak good Arabic. A narrow strip of land by the river was irrigated by water-wheels turned by oxen, and was cultivated in small patches of one to three acres. The land gave several crops in the year: wheat was uncom- mon, but barley, millet, sorghum, sesame and beans were grown. There were palm-trees, and upstream, where the cultivated area broadened out, vineyards. In this northern district of Maris were two fortresses, Ibrim and Bajrash (now known as Faras, the residence of the governor who was styled ‘the Lord of the Mountain’).
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