Alodia

Alodia, also called Alwa, was the southernmost of the three medieval Christian kingdoms of Nubia, in what is now central Sudan. Its capital, Soba, lay near the meeting point of the Blue and White Nile, close to modern Khartoum. It lasted from around the sixth century until about 1500, the last of the Nubian kingdoms to fall.

When the kingdom of Kush declined in the fourth century CE, three new kingdoms took shape along the middle Nile: Nobadia in the north, Makuria in the centre and Alodia in the south. Alodia covered the fertile lands of the Gezira, between the Blue and White Niles, and the plains to the east and south, where rainfall allowed farming and herding. Its people, like the other Nubians, spoke a Nubian language, and the kingdom probably included many other peoples.

The Byzantine historian John of Ephesus recorded that in 580 a missionary bishop named Longinus, who had already converted Nobadia, travelled south to Alodia, avoiding Makurian territory, since Makuria followed a rival Christian doctrine at the time. The Alodian king and his court were baptised. Alodia followed the Miaphysite doctrine of the Coptic Church of Egypt, and its bishops were later appointed by the patriarch of Alexandria.

Soba was a large city by medieval African standards. The tenth-century traveller Ibn Selim al-Aswani, who visited as an envoy from Egypt, described Soba as having fine buildings, spacious houses, churches full of gold and gardens, and a Muslim quarter for traders. He said that Alodia was larger and more prosperous than Makuria, with more cattle and crops, and that its king had absolute power over his subjects, who could be enslaved for minor offences. Excavations at Soba since the 1950s have revealed churches built of red brick, a large mound that may have been a palace, houses, and pottery, glass and other goods, including imported Islamic glazed wares and some Chinese porcelain.

Alodia and Makuria seem to have had close relations, and at times may have been ruled by the same king or closely linked royal families. Alodia was not directly involved in the baqt treaty between Makuria and Egypt, though it traded with Egypt and the Red Sea coast. Its exports included gold, ivory, cattle and enslaved people.

Like Makuria, Alodia had a rich church culture, with paintings, manuscripts in Greek, Coptic and Old Nubian, and monasteries. Few Alodian texts survive, and much less is known about it than about Makuria, because the main archaeological work has focused on the north.

Alodia's later history is obscure. From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Arab nomads moved into the region, and Islam spread among parts of the population. The kingdom seems to have broken into smaller units. Sudanese tradition says that around 1504, an alliance of the Arab Abdallab tribes, led by Abdallah Jamma, and the Funj, a people from the south, destroyed Soba. The Funj founded the Sultanate of Sennar, which became the main power on the Blue Nile, and Islam became dominant. A Sudanese saying, "the ruin of Soba", came to mean any great destruction. Christianity in the region faded over the following decades.

Soba's ruins, on the outskirts of Khartoum, are now threatened by urban growth. Alodia's history reminds us that Christian kingdoms flourished in the heart of Africa for nearly a thousand years.

Our maps show Alodia on every map from 600 to 1500, with an outline of up to about 350,000 square kilometres, almost all in today's Sudan, at its largest on the 800 map. Khartoum's site lies inside it until 1279. The basemap places its successor in 1530 under the Ottoman Empire; most histories credit the Funj Sultanate of Sennar instead.