a flourishing Christian country. It needs an effort to imagine Dongola, of all places, as a centre of Christianity.
Apart from legends about the Eunuch of Queen Candace as a missionary, Barhebræus counts the conversion of Nubia[1] as made under Justinian (523-565) by a Coptic monk, Julian.[2] In any case, it seems due to the zeal of the monks of Upper Egypt. They preached the gospel south of their monasteries and converted tribes of blacks. These people got their bishops from Egypt, and so, like the Abyssinians, followed Egypt into Monophysism. The Syrian historian John of Ephesus,[3] in the 6th century, took a great interest in the Nubian Church, and describes its origin and state at length.[4] In the 7th century there was a mighty Christian kingdom of Nubia between Egypt and Abyssinia, which formed a great barrier to the Moslems of Egypt. Its capital was Dongola on the Nile.[5] There was constantly fighting between the King of Nubia and the Moslems. The Moslems sent embassies to their neighbour, invaded his land or were invaded by him. From the ambassadors we have descriptions of this Church. They say that in the capital there were churches, well-built and large, full of golden ornaments. Under the king were thirteen governors, who were also bishops. The people are all Monophysites dependent on the Coptic Patriarch. Their holy books were written in Greek; but they had versions in their own language.[6] The Nubians also came to the defence of the Copts.
- ↑ Nubia is the Northern Sudan, beginning at the southern frontier of Egypt (now by Wādi Ḥalfah).
- ↑ Chron. Eccl. i. 230-233.
- ↑ John of Ephesus († soon after 585) was a Monophysite monk at Constantinople and a friend of Justinian. He wrote the first Syriac Church History (the third part was edited by W. Cureton, Oxford, 1853, translated by R. Payne-Smith, ib. 1860; all that remains, in German: Die Kirchengeschichte des Johannes von Ephesus, by J. M. Schönfelder, Munich, 1862). See Duval: Litterature syriaque, 191-195.
- ↑ Ed. Payne-Smith, iv. 6-8 (pp. 251-258).
- ↑ Besides this kingdom, of which the sovereign is generally called King of the Nubians (malik an-Nūb) by Moslem writers, there were other Christian States between Egypt and Abyssinia; notably we hear of a King of Aluwah in the 10th century.
- ↑ So the Kitāb alfihrist and 'Abdu-llāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Sulaim, who came on an embassy from the first Fatimid Khalif (Mu'izz, 953-975) to King George of Nubia. Their accounts are translated by Quatremère: Mémoires géographiques et historiques sur l'Égypte (Paris, 1811), ii. 1-126.
