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Makuria

(Redirected from Maqurra)

Makuria (to Arabs al-Mukurra or al-Muqurra) was a kingdom located in what is today Southern Egypt and the Sudan. Its capital was Dongola (or Dunqulah). It was one of a group of successor kingdoms formed after the fall of Meroe about AD 350. By the 6th century AD it had become the most powerful force in the region. Christianity in the form of the Coptic Church arrived in 543. After signing a peace treaty, known as the bakt, with the Muslim rulers of Egypt in 651 Makuria survived into the fourteenth century, when it was overwhelmed by Arab invaders.

Table of contents

History

Makuria was one of three kingdoms to emerge in Nubia in the 4th century; the other two were Nobatia to the north of Makuria, and Alodia to the south. These three nations shared a common Nubian heritage and also professed a similar version of Christianity. Makuria eventually merged with Nobatia, most likely under the rule of King Merkurios in the mid-seventh century. It also appears that Alodia and Makuria were at times under the same rulers, but Alodia eventually regained its independence.

An Arab army attacked Makuria in 652 from Egypt, but it was defeated. A peace treaty known as the bakt was eventually signed, which obliged Makuria to pay a tribute of slaves to Egypt, but preserved its independence and Christian faith; this tribute was originally paid each year, but king Zacharias III refused to pay the bakt in 833, and this tribute was eventually renegotiated to a triennial payment. This treaty, which also defined a common border, held for about 600 years. Egypt and Makuria had especially close relations when Egypt was ruled by the Fatimids: the Shi'ite Fatimids had few allies in the Muslim world. Fatimid power also depended upon the black slaves provided by Makuria, who were used to man the Fatimid army. Trade between the two states flourished: Egypt sent wheat, wine, and linen south while Makuria exported ivory, cattle, ostrich feathers, and slaves.

The slaves sent north were likely not from Makuria itself, but rather from further south in Africa. Almost all the information on Makuria comes from Arab, largely Egyptian, sources. Even less is known about trade and relations with states to the west such as Darfur and Kanem-Bornu. There is some archeological evidence of contacts and trade but few details. However, somewhat more evidence exists for Makurian relations with the Christian Ethiopian kingdom to the west: in the 10th century, Georgios II successfully intervened on behalf of the unnamed ruler at that time, and persuaded Patriarch Philotheos of Alexandria to at last ordain an abuna, or metropolitan for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. There are some Makurian church documents written in Greek and others written by the large community of Coptic exiles. A handful of texts in the local Old Nubian language have also been discovered.

The main economic activity in Makuria was farming, with farmers growing several crops a year of barley, millet, and also dates. All land was technically owned by the king and the farmers were obliged to pay rents. The king was chosen by a form of matrilineal succession where it was the king's sister's eldest son who would inherit the throne.

The bishops played an important role in the governance of the state and councils of the leading bishops advised the king on important issues. While appointed by the Patriarch of Alexandria they were generally natives. Originally the Makurian church had been diphysitic and allied with the Byzantine Church. This was in large part because its southern rival Alodia was monophysitic and allied to the Coptic Church of Egypt. With the Islamic conquest of Egypt and the rest of North Africa most links with Byzantium were severed and the Makurian church turned to monophysitism and was placed under the dominion of the Patriarch of Alexandria. The Makurian state also became the temporal protector of the patriarch.

Relations with Egypt soured when the Ayyubids came to power. Allowing free trade between the kingdoms was part of the bakt and over time Arab merchants became prominent in Dongola and began to convert people to Islam. Historians also question how deeply rooted Christianity was in the Makurian population, some arguing that it was largely confined to the elite while the bulk of the population retained their traditional beliefs. Islam penetrated far more deeply into the society. By the tenth century the northern area, most of what was once Nobatia, had become largely Arabized and Islamicized, and largely independent of Dongola was increasingly referred to as al-Maris.

Subject to these pressures from Egypt and her own internal problems, Makuria began to decline. An important component of the bakt was the promise that Makuria would secure Egypt's southern border against raids by desert nomads, like the Baja. The Makurian state could no longer do this, prompting interventions by Egyptian armies that further weakened it. In 1272 Mamluk Sultan Baybars invaded, after King David I had attacked the Egyptian city of Aidhab. King David was defeated in 1276 and his cousin Shakanda was placed on the throne. The Christian Shakanda was forced to sign an agreement making Makuria a virtual vassal of Egypt and a Mamluke garrison was stationed in Dongola.

After only a few years of occupation Shamamun, a member of the Makurian royal family, led a rebellion that eventually defeated the Mamluk garrison. He offered the Egyptian an increase in the annual bakt payments in return for scrapping the obligations Shakanda had agreed to. The Mamluk's armies were occupied elsewhere and they agreed to this new arrangement.

Several decades later, King Karanbas defaulted on these payments and the Egyptians again invaded. This time a Muslim member of the Makurian dynasty was placed on the throne. Sayf al-Din Abdullah Barshambu began converting the nation the Islam and in 1317 the Dongola cathedral was turned into a mosque. This was not accepted by other Makurian leaders and the nation fell into civil war and anarchy. The countryside came under the control of the raiding tribes from the desert, and the monarchy was left having effective control over little more than the capital. The last known evidence of the Makurian dynasty is a call for aid in 1397.

In 1412, the Awlad Kenz took control of Nubia and part of Egypt above the Thebaid, and remained the effective rulers until 1517 when the area was conquered and amalgamated into Egypt by the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Selim.

Rulers

References

  • E.A. Wallis Budge. A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, 1928. Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970.
  • L. Kropacek. "Nubia from the late twelfth century to the Funj conquest in the early fifteenth century", UNESCO General History of Africa, Volume IV.

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