DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47598#0024
William Y. Adams
The twilight of Nubian Christianity
Nubia, as we all know, formed a part of the world of Christendom for nearly a thousand years. The
circumstances under which the Christian faith was brought to this out-of-the-way region have been
and remain the subject of much scholarly debate1. Yet, curiously enough, the circumstances under
which Christianity disappeared from Nubia eight or nine centuries later seem to have received very
little attention from scholars. Many have been content to accept the rather naive explanation of
Ibn Khaldun, that Nubia turned to Islam because many Nubian women married Moslem immigrants,
and the offspring of these unions eventually succeeded to positions of power2.
It must be acknowledged that the period of the late Middle Ages remains, even after decades of
intensive study, one of the darkest ages in Nubian history. Yet enough is now known to indicate
that the decline and fall of Nubian Christianity was a much more complex and drawn-out process
than is suggested by Ibn Khaldun and his latter-day adherents. On the one hand, it is clear that the
Nubian church had already lost much of its spiritual force long before Islam became a serious
political or ideological threat. Yet, paradoxically, vestiges of Christian faith and practice survived
long after the Islamization of the principal Nubian monarchy. In this article I propose to review
briefly what we now know about the decline and fall of Nubian Christianity, and what we may yet
hope to learn.
1. The declining influence of the Nubian church
In the absence of documentary records we must measure the spiritual influence of Christianity in
Nubia in terms of its material monuments : artistic, architectural, and literary. By any of these
measures, it would appear that the great age of Nubian Christianity was between the eight and
twelfth centuries. Church architecture actually reached its climax fairly early in this period :
practically all of the largest and most elaborate Nubian churches were built before 800 A.D3.
Thereafter there was a continual decline in the size and complexity of ecclesiastical buildings,
culminating in the tiny and often crudely constructed cupola churches of the 13th and 14th
centuries4. Ecclesiastical decoration seems to have had a somewhat later efflorescence, reaching its
climax in the great Multi-Colored Style of the 11th and 12th centuries at Faras5. Thereafter it too
suffered a rapid decline; the late period frescoes at Abd el Qadir6 and the Faras Citadel Church7
are almost caricatures of the great paintings in the Faras Cathedral. The flowering of Christian
literature in Nubia is more difficult to date, but it would appear that the principal literary
monuments which have survived (mural inscriptions, mortuary texts, and fragments of religious
manuscripts) date also from the period between the eight and twelfth centuries, after which there
may have been a general decline in literacy.
1 See, among many other sources, A. Kraus, Die Anfänge des Christentums in Nubien, Mödling 1930; L. P. Kirwan in:
University of Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XXIV (1937), pp. 88-105; and U. Monneret de
Villard, Storia della Nubia Cristiana, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 118, Roma 1938, pp. 53-70.
2 J. W. Crowfoot in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIII (1927), p. 148; Μ. Μ. Musad in: Sudan Notes and
Records, XL (1950), p. 125; Y. F. Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan, Edinburgh 1967, pp. 124-5.
3 See W. Y. Adams, in: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, IV (1965), pp. 103-8.
4 Ibid., pp. 116-20.
5 See K. Michalowski in: E. Dinkier, Ed., Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in christlicher Zeit, Recklinghausen 1970,
p. 15.
6 F. LI. Griffith in: University of Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XV (1928), pls. XXXII-XLVII.
7 Griffith in: University of Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XIII (1926), pls. XXXIV-XXXV.
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The twilight of Nubian Christianity
Nubia, as we all know, formed a part of the world of Christendom for nearly a thousand years. The
circumstances under which the Christian faith was brought to this out-of-the-way region have been
and remain the subject of much scholarly debate1. Yet, curiously enough, the circumstances under
which Christianity disappeared from Nubia eight or nine centuries later seem to have received very
little attention from scholars. Many have been content to accept the rather naive explanation of
Ibn Khaldun, that Nubia turned to Islam because many Nubian women married Moslem immigrants,
and the offspring of these unions eventually succeeded to positions of power2.
It must be acknowledged that the period of the late Middle Ages remains, even after decades of
intensive study, one of the darkest ages in Nubian history. Yet enough is now known to indicate
that the decline and fall of Nubian Christianity was a much more complex and drawn-out process
than is suggested by Ibn Khaldun and his latter-day adherents. On the one hand, it is clear that the
Nubian church had already lost much of its spiritual force long before Islam became a serious
political or ideological threat. Yet, paradoxically, vestiges of Christian faith and practice survived
long after the Islamization of the principal Nubian monarchy. In this article I propose to review
briefly what we now know about the decline and fall of Nubian Christianity, and what we may yet
hope to learn.
1. The declining influence of the Nubian church
In the absence of documentary records we must measure the spiritual influence of Christianity in
Nubia in terms of its material monuments : artistic, architectural, and literary. By any of these
measures, it would appear that the great age of Nubian Christianity was between the eight and
twelfth centuries. Church architecture actually reached its climax fairly early in this period :
practically all of the largest and most elaborate Nubian churches were built before 800 A.D3.
Thereafter there was a continual decline in the size and complexity of ecclesiastical buildings,
culminating in the tiny and often crudely constructed cupola churches of the 13th and 14th
centuries4. Ecclesiastical decoration seems to have had a somewhat later efflorescence, reaching its
climax in the great Multi-Colored Style of the 11th and 12th centuries at Faras5. Thereafter it too
suffered a rapid decline; the late period frescoes at Abd el Qadir6 and the Faras Citadel Church7
are almost caricatures of the great paintings in the Faras Cathedral. The flowering of Christian
literature in Nubia is more difficult to date, but it would appear that the principal literary
monuments which have survived (mural inscriptions, mortuary texts, and fragments of religious
manuscripts) date also from the period between the eight and twelfth centuries, after which there
may have been a general decline in literacy.
1 See, among many other sources, A. Kraus, Die Anfänge des Christentums in Nubien, Mödling 1930; L. P. Kirwan in:
University of Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XXIV (1937), pp. 88-105; and U. Monneret de
Villard, Storia della Nubia Cristiana, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 118, Roma 1938, pp. 53-70.
2 J. W. Crowfoot in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIII (1927), p. 148; Μ. Μ. Musad in: Sudan Notes and
Records, XL (1950), p. 125; Y. F. Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan, Edinburgh 1967, pp. 124-5.
3 See W. Y. Adams, in: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, IV (1965), pp. 103-8.
4 Ibid., pp. 116-20.
5 See K. Michalowski in: E. Dinkier, Ed., Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in christlicher Zeit, Recklinghausen 1970,
p. 15.
6 F. LI. Griffith in: University of Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XV (1928), pls. XXXII-XLVII.
7 Griffith in: University of Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XIII (1926), pls. XXXIV-XXXV.
11