Dongola

Who holds it

Name

King Basil (see King Basil)

Title

Royal city

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

medium

Lord in 1200

King Basil, from the citadel.

Overlord

The king of Dotawo (Makuria)

How things stand that morning

The seat of King Basil, at peace.

Wealth

Royal revenue and church wealth; the farmland of the reach.

Military

The citadel and the royal army.

Council

The royal court and the bishop (archbishop) of Dongola; no town council is known.

Communities

Nubian Christians of the royal court and the church; Muslim merchants are recorded at Dongola in other periods, not pinned for 1200.

Militia

The royal guard and the townsmen; not known in detail.

Walls and castle

The walled citadel founded in the fifth century and repaired after the Arab siege of the mid seventh century; the Throne Hall on its spur.

Trade and crafts

Royal and church building, pottery workshops (the fine painted Christian wares), weaving, the trade of the river and the Wadi Abu Dom road to the south.

Places of note

• Monastery of the Holy Trinity (Kom H): Monastery with paintings of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries

Where the sources disagree

• The cathedral of Dongola is not identified for certain; the Church of the Granite Columns may have been it.

Evidence: Long Polish excavations and Abu al-Makarim's description; little dated to 1200 itself.

On the map: The near land is the farmed east bank round the city and the islands opposite.

Primary sources for Makuria

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Exhortations and Reflections on the Quarters and Monuments: the chapters on Nubia and the Beja, al-Maqrizi (about 1417 to 1442, at Cairo). Two centuries late, but al-Maqrizi copied earlier books that are now lost, above all the account of Nubia by Ibn Salim al-Aswani, who went as Fatimid envoy to Dongola about 970 and described the Nubian king, his court, the eparch, the church and the land, which is the fullest description of Makuria ever written and still broadly valid in 1200; he also gives the Beja tribes, the oases, the baqt treaty and the Ayyubid campaigns against Nubia of 1173. Read online
• History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrij and continuators (Various) (compiled in Arabic 1088 to 1094 from Coptic lives; continued for the patriarchs of 1102 to 1243 and later). The Coptic church's own record. Read online
• Old Nubian and Greek documents from Qasr Ibrim and the Nubian royal documents (the dated Qasr Ibrim land sales and letters run from the 1150s to the 1460s; the royal documents of the 1180s and 1190s are the nearest to 1200). The only documents from inside Nubia: land sales, letters and legal texts from Qasr Ibrim in Old Nubian, dated by the reigning king, his eparch and the local officials, which give the names and titles of the court of Dotawo (the Nubians' own name for the kingdom) in the generation around 1200. Read online
• The History of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Abu al-Makarim (formerly attributed to Abu Salih the Armenian) (about 1177 to 1208; the core about 1200). The one Christian text written in Egypt around 1200 that looks south: it describes the kingdom of the Nubians with its king at Dongola, his churches, the eparch of Nobadia, the churches of Qasr Ibrim and the raid of Shams al-Dawla Turanshah in 1173, the kingdom of Alwa (Alodia) with its 400 churches and its capital Soba, and the Abyssinians with their king, their metropolitan sent from Alexandria, the church of Aksum and the Ark, as a Coptic churchman heard of them through the patriarchate. Read online
• Dictionary of Countries: the entries on Africa, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Mosul and Aleppo). Entries written within a generation of 1200 from earlier books and from informants: Maqdishu (Mogadishu), described as a town of the Barbar (Somali) on the edge of the Zanj country with no single ruler but elders for each group, the earliest notice of the town; Manbasa (Mombasa), Lanjuya (Zanzibar) and the Zanj coast; Zayla, Barbara and the Dahlak islands; Dunqula (Dongola) and the Nubians; the Beja; Kanem, Zaghawa, Ghana, Kawkaw and the Sudan, mostly from al-Bakri and al-Idrisi; and the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Read online
• The Picture of the Earth, Ibn Hawqal (about 977, revised to about 988). Two centuries old by 1200 but the only early geographer who had crossed the Sahara himself: he was at Sijilmasa and Awdaghust in 951, saw the gold trade and the famous cheque for 42,000 dinars, and described the king of Ghana as the richest on earth, with notes on the veiled Sanhaja, the Ibadi towns, the Fezzan, Nubia and Alodia, and the Zanj. Read online
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online
• Oriental Sources concerning Nubia, Various (collected and translated by Giovanni Vantini) (the collection published 1975). The standard collection, in English, of every eastern passage on Christian Nubia, and so the quickest way to all that was written about Makuria and Alodia near 1200: Abu al-Makarim, Ibn al-Athir on Turanshah's campaign of 1173, Ibn Jubayr and Yaqut, the History of the Patriarchs, Abu Shama, and the later Ibn Said, Abu'l-Fida, al-Nuwayri, Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi (who preserves the tenth-century Ibn Salim al-Aswani).