the mediterranean and africa 437
ecclesiastical documents, legal and diplomatic texts, royal proclamations, property
inventories, commercial contracts and texts, land sales, religious and liturgical lit-
erature, magical texts, and personal correspondence.
In the late sixth or early seventh century Makuria incorporated Nobadia as a semi-
autonomous province; in the early ninth century royal marriage exchanges brought
Alodia into the Makurian political system. Makuria’s rulers aspired to the legacy of
imperial Meroitic Kush (c. 400 bce–c. 350 ce) in its relations with Christian and, later,
Islamic powers of the eastern Mediterranean world. Thus, in 573, a Makurian deputa-
tion visited Constantinople with gifts of elephants and a giraffe as a token of friend-
ship. In the last decade of the sixth century a Makurian king concluded a trade
agreement (pactum) with Byzantium and in 652, a peace treaty and gift-exchange
contract (baqt) was signed with Islamic Egypt. In 745, a Makurian army reportedly
sacked Cairo in defense of the Patriarch and Egyptian Christians facing Muslim per-
secution. From this period Makuria was recognized as the protector of the Patriarchate
of Alexandria, the seat of the Miaphysite (Monophysite) Church. In 836, a Makurian
prince signed a treaty with the caliph of Baghdad. But in the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies Makuria embarked on widespread military campaigns: eastwards to Red Sea
ports, northwards into Upper Egypt and westwards to the western Oases. The king-
dom exercised control over Upper Egypt, off and on, until the fourteenth century.
The discovery of Old Nubian language documents in the Monastery of St Mercurios
in the early twentieth century suggests that the Upper Egyptian city of Edfu was a
center of Makurian literary and religious culture in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
Under the Fatimids (tenth–twelfth century) Nubians were integrated throughout the
military and political structures of Egypt and in the eleventh century 50 000 “Nubian”
soldiers were dominant in the army and within Fatimid court circles. What are the
implications for the state of Mediterranean studies if Egypt has a scholarly presence
and Nubia is absent?
Makurian state and ecclesiastic officials promoted commercial and economic devel-
opment. Old Dongola, the capital, became a center of pottery production which ini-
tially followed late Roman models. In the sixth and early seventh centuries the city
imported amphorae, bowls, and plates from Egypt, Gaza, Palestine, and North Africa.
A Byzantine dodecanummia (or 12 nummia coin) found in the ruins of Old Dongola
points to connections with Alexandria where the coin was minted. Makuria’s curren-
cies included silver and gold coins and cloth strips. The kingdom’s commercial fields
of interaction stretched from India in the east to al-Andalus, North Africa, and the
middle Niger basin in the west and from Byzantium in the north to Ethiopia and east
Africa in the south. Makurian merchants, churchmen, monks, and officials were to be
found in cities from Baghdad and Constantinople to the Iberian Peninsula and they
resided in north-African, central-Saharan, and middle-Niger cities. Nubian monks
resided in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Baghdad and Alexandria each had a Nubian
quarter and it is likely that Constantinople had a Nubian portico or embolon. Around
1200, the archbishop of Novgorod relates that the Church of the Holy Resurrection
of the Lord was located in the “embolon of the Blacks.” The embolon, a colonnaded
street where merchants kept shops, very likely included resident Makurian traders.
A twelfth-century Byzantine source refers to Ethiopian churchmen in Thessalonika
and in 1204, Robert de Clari met a Nubian king in Constantinople, who was on a
pilgrimage to Rome and the shrine of St James in Galicia. The king, who was probably