Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – Old Dongola is an archaeological site in Sudan, situated on the eastern bank of the Nile. During the Middle Ages, it served as the capital of Makuria, one of the most significant African states of that period.
For a little over 60 years, Polish archaeologists and historians have been studying the history and development of this center, as well as the everyday lives of its inhabitants across the centuries.
Dongola, the so-called King’s House. Credit: Maciej Wyzgol/CAS UW.
One of the key findings from these excavations was the discovery of an Arabic document that confirms the existence of King Qashqash, a ruler who had previously been regarded as semi-legendary. This document was uncovered in a building that local residents still refer to as the King’s House.
Tomasz Barański, an Arabist from the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw (PCMA UW), is studying a collection of Arabic documents discovered in Old Dongola, a major medieval city in Nubia (present-day Sudan). These documents include letters, administrative and legal records, and amulets. Together, they help researchers reconstruct the city’s history and give context and “voice” to the ruins uncovered by archaeologists.
In an article published in the journal *Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa*, researchers from PCMA UW presented several newly identified historical texts from Old Dongola. One of the most notable is a written order issued on behalf of King Qashqasha, a ruler previously known only from limited historical references.
Dongola, manuscript of King Qashqash. Credit: T. Barański/ PCMA UW
This document was found in a large, high-status residential building. Archaeological evidence of the building’s elite character includes luxury items such as cotton, linen, and silk textiles, as well as ivory and rhinoceros horn. More than 20 Arabic documents were recovered there, many of them preserved in refuse layers. The royal order itself was discovered in such garbage deposits, illustrating how discarded materials can provide crucial historical information.
Dongola, the so-called King’s House. Credit: Maciej Wyzgol/CAS UW
“Interestingly, local residents still refer to this structure as the King’s House. The discovery of this document in this specific location provides further support for the local identification of these ruins, which has survived to this day thanks to oral tradition,” the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw told PAP.
As lead author Tomasz Barański explains, however, this transformation was far from sudden. “Nubia was not a marginal or isolated region of the Nile Valley, but a pivotal corridor connecting the Mediterranean world to sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than a civilizational dead end, Nubia functioned for millennia as a dynamic zone of movement for people, goods, and ideas. Through Nubia passed commodities such as gold, ivory, and enslaved people, but it also enabled the exchange of less tangible elements: technologies, religious beliefs, and political models.
“Moreover, Nubian communities were not passive recipients of outside influence; they actively shaped and adapted the flows passing through this corridor. This long history of exchange helps us understand later cultural transformations in the region, including Arabization and Islamization. These were not sudden ruptures, but part of a much older pattern of interaction, negotiation, and adaptation that has characterized Sudan throughout history.”
The manuscript, written on paper, has survived to the present day in complete form, unlike many other documents preserved only in fragments that are difficult to interpret.
According to Barański, King Qaszqasz’s written order confirms the historical existence of this ruler, who had previously been known only from brief references in an early 19th-century hagiographic text. Although the content of the letter itself is relatively mundane, it offers a rare window into the socio-economic relations in the kingdom of Dongola during a period of intense Arabization and Islamization, particularly in terms of the king’s interactions with his subjects.
Dongola, in the photo: D. Dzierzbicka and T. Barański. Photo: M. Rekłajtis
The document suggests that Qaszqasz and his court likely managed the distribution of material goods—and thus social prestige—within a traditional system of royal patronage, of which this text is only a small surviving trace.
The language of the document and the scribe’s calligraphic abilities point to a writing style that was not fully developed. The use of non-standard grammatical forms and the scribe’s rather unsophisticated handwriting is not unexpected in a context where Arabic had not yet become a native language.
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In addition, the irregular shape of the sheet on which the order was written indicates that this text may have been only a draft of the final document. The key conclusion from this discovery is that Arabic was in use among scribes serving the heirs of Makuria at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. It remains unclear, however, whether Arabic was already widely spoken at the royal court in Dongola, and it is even less certain that it was used in more distant social circles, where a local variety of Nubian was almost certainly still employed in everyday communication.
The study was published in the journal Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer