Dig Into History

26

by Jack ChengbyJackCheng

Old Dongola —

At the Edge o

View of Old Dongola

T

raveling over land, the distance from Constantinople to

the town of Dongola, in North Africa’s Sahara Desert, is

a little more than 3,000 miles. “A little more than 3,000

miles” is also about the distance from Boston, Massachusetts, to

San Francisco, California.

At 3,000 miles from the capital, Dongola was still part of the

Byzantine Empire. The town was definitely on the frontier, as it

lay south down the Nile in the modern nation of Sudan. To be

sure, the long geographic reach of Byzantium is evidence of the

empire’s powerful cultural influence. However, the question

remains, “How did Byzantine culture differ as it was adapted in

regions far from the heart of the empire?”