|
Arabs has been penetrating the area at various
times for centuries. however, as peaceful settlers , as traders
and as raiders .Some came as tribal remnants of defeated
Caliphates, such as the Abbassids . During the Fatimid Caliphate
(969- 1161 A.D),there were many Arab trading expeditions going
along the Nile, dealing particularly in slave. Many of Arab
tribal leaders married into leading Nubian families and after
several centuries it seems that the Nubian kinship system as
gradually converted from one tracing relatives matrilineally to
one tracing them patrilineally .Islamic religious doctrine and
legal practices also because more and more widespread through
this intermarrying process.
The Muslim conversion of Nubia thus seems to have been gradual,
covering several centuries, though in the late phases military
victories were decisive. Salah al-Din ( the famous Saladin )
defeated a Nubian army that invaded Egypt in 1171, for example ,
and at various times unruly Arab tribes from Upper Egypt
pillaged the area. Christianity held on in many parts of Nobia
until the fourteenth century, however, when Islamic raiders
coming from south, in what is now the Sudan , looted the
churches and finally completed the long process of conversion.
Christian Nubian pilgrims were noted in the holy places of
Palestine as late as the Fifteenth century, but by the end of
the fourteenth century the vast majority of the Nubians had
become staunch Muslims, as they are today. From 1517, when the
Turkish Sultan selim sent Hassan Koosy to take over governorship
of the area, all through the Ottoman period , and up to the
present century , much of Egyptian Nubia was ruled or dominated
by descendants of this family of Turkish petty gentry . Members
of the Koosy family married into local lineage and the resulting
aristocracy became known as the Kushaf .The descendants of this
ruling family still regard themselves as a superior class among
the Nubians .
During the Turkish period condition of relative anarchy
alternated with those of local tyranny, and military forces
frequently swept devastatingly through the region. The last time
battles were fought in Nubia was during the Mahdist uprising in
the Sudan in the 1880s, and in the present century the
succession of Aswan dams has replaced military turmoil as the
principal disruptive force in the troubled history of the
Nubians.
The Nubian now regard themselves as strong Muslims, though they
were converted to the Islamic faith relatively late in
comparison with the Egyptian. It is unclear what the precise
details of the ancient Nubian religion were prior to the
Christianization of the region in the middle of the sixth
century A.D, but judging from the many Egyptian temples which
were found along this part of the Nile, their belief system must
have been heavily influenced by the Pharaonic religion of
ancient Egypt .One reason the character of pre-Christian,
pre-Islamic Nubian religion is somewhat obscures that there is
considerable uncertainty in the archaeological record regarding
the antecedents of the modern Nubians in the region known Nubia.
The Nubians were converted to Christianity during the sixth
century. They remained so until the gradual process of
Islamization began taking place from the fourteenth until the
seventeenth centuries. Today, the Nubians are all Muslims.
However, their traditional animistic beliefs (belief that
non-living objects have spirits) are still mingled in with their
Islamic practices.
Christian Nubia, ca. A.D. 550-1400
Nubia first became Christian in the time of the Roman emperor
Justinian, but soon after, the Moslem Arabs conquered Egypt, and
the Nubians were isolated from direct contact with the Christian
world north of the Mediterranean. Early attempts at Moslem
conquest in Nubia failed, allowing various Christian kingdoms of
Nubia to remain independent for centuries, and they even had a
profitable treaty arrangement with the Caliph. At times,
Christian Nubia became quite powerful and was able to intervene
on behalf of the Coptic Christians in Egypt and even to hold
territory. In the twelfth century, under Saladin, and later,
under the Mamelukes, the power of Christian Nubia was broken by
a series of campaigns and invasions of Arab tribes. By 1400,
Christian Nubia had disappeared. Nubians are now virtually all
Moslem.
The conversion to Christianity was a major stimulus to cultural
achievement. Christianity required churches, written texts, in
Greek, Egyptian Coptic and in Old Nubian, as well as educational
and inspirational decoration. The Christian images and symbols
were drawn largely from traditions developed in Egypt and the
Mediterranean world, but Nubian artists and architects added
details, designs, combinations, and proportions of their own to
establish a unique formal art. Some of the greatest paintings of
the Middle Ages were made on the walls of the Cathedral at Faras
and rescued by a Polish expedition for the Museums of Khartoum
and Warsaw. The Oriental Institute excavated a major monastery
at Qasr el Wizz, and a large town at Serra East, which contained
churches with frescoes that could be copied, but were too
damaged to remove. Much architectural information was recovered,
along with objects from daily life, including superbly painted
pottery which was, as so often before, the glory of Nubia.
The Roots of Nubian Christianity
Traditionally in Nubian Christian scholarship there are three
major competing interpretations on the conversion and
transformation of ancient Nubia to Christianity and the
subsequent Byzantine encounter with Nubian courtly culture
during the fourth to the sixth centuries c.e. { Salim Faraji in
"A Transitional Culture in Late Antique Africa " } There are
historical sources that support the influence of Coptic Folk and
official Monophysite Christian traditions in ancient Nubia as
evidenced in Coptic hagiographical literature and the sixth
century ecclesiastical history of John of Ephesus. The
historical evidence also supports the direct influence of
Byzantine Orthodox Christianity (Melkite) on Nubian Christianity
as recorded in the extant literature of John of Biclarum. A
third perspective though not an ecclesiastical history defending
or propagating a particular theological agenda is the Greek
Axumite stela of the newly converted Ethiopian Christian King
Ezana describing his military conquest of Upper Nubia thereby
implying the encroachment of Christiantiy in the southern
regions of ancient Nubia.
Despite the standard rendition of the Christianization of
ancient Nubia provdided for us by the "sectarian histories" of
John of Ephesus and John of Biclarum, archaeological evidence
supports that Christianity began to enter ancient Nubia as early
as the second half of the fifth century c.e. during the reign of
the Nubian Ballana Culture Monarchy. A significant indicator of
a possible Nubian "conversion" to Christianity prior to the the
Byzantine imperial missions of Emperor Justinian and his wife
Theodora in the early sixth century is the famous but
controversial Silko Inscription and representation. The Silko
Inscription is preserved on the west wall of the forecourt of
the Temple of Mandulis at Kalabsha in Lower Nubia. Nubiologists
date the inscription from the fifth century c.e. The language of
the inscription is in Greek and is laudatory proclamation of how
the Nubian King Silko conquered the surrounding Nubian tribes.
The most striking statement of the inscription is Silko's
proclamation "God gave me the victory." The paper seeks to
address the questions, Did the Silko Inscription possess any
significance for the conversion and transformation of ancient
Nubia to Christianity? Did the Nubian King Silko provide the
entryway for Christianity to advance into Lower Nubia? What was
Silko's relationship with Constantinople and the Byzantine
court? Did he legitimize diplomatic relations between Byzantium
and Nubian nobility. Silko may have been the first and last
"Christian Pharaoh" and thereby functioned as transitional
figure in late Antique Africa in the same way as Constantine had
done in the Roman empire one and a half centuries before.
The Decline of Christian Nubia
Until the thirteenth century, the Nubian kingdoms proved their
resilience in maintaining political independence and their
commitment to Christianity. In the early eighth century and
again in the tenth century, Nubian kings led armies into Egypt
to force the release of the imprisoned Coptic patriarch and to
relieve fellow Christians suffering persecution under Muslim
rulers. In 1276, however, the Mamluks (Arabic for "owned"), who
were an elite but frequently disorderly caste of
soldier-administrators composed largely of Turkish, Kurdish, and
Circassian slaves, intervened in a dynastic dispute, ousted
Dunqulah's reigning monarch and delivered the crown and silver
cross that symbolized Nubian kingship to a rival claimant.
Thereafter, Dunqulah became a satellite of Egypt.
Because of the frequent intermarriage between Nubian nobles and
the kinswomen of Arab shaykhs, the lineages of the two elites
merged and the Muslim heirs took their places in the royal line
of succession. In 1315 a Muslim prince of Nubian royal blood
ascended the throne of Dunqulah as king. The expansion of Islam
coincided with the decline of the Nubian Christian church. A
"dark age" enveloped Nubia in the fifteenth century during which
political authority fragmented and slave raiding intensified.
Communities in the river valley and savanna, fearful for their
safety, formed tribal organizations and adopted Arab protectors.
Muslims probably did not constitute a majority in the old Nubian
areas until the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
|
