Medieval Nubia

I am developing a greater interest in medieval Nubia these days. It's a fascinating region where, for nearly 1000 years, Christian kingdoms thrived along the Sudanese Nile Valley. They left behind beautiful works of art, ceramics, churches, old cities, written records, and were one of the few civilizations in Africa where Christianity thrived after the Muslim conquests of North Africa. Indeed, Nubia seems a sibling of sorts to Coptic Egypt and Christian Ethiopia. Unfortunately, we know too little about Christian Nubia, despite the plethora of legal documents, land scales, religious literature, and external accounts of Nubia. Indeed, after going through several translations of Arabic and other sources on Nubia from the 6th century to the 16th, one is left with even more questions. For instance, what was the relationship of the Christian Nubian states to their neighbors further west, south, and east? What was the nature of town life like along the Nile, particularly in the cities Arab sources depicted as being large or attracting people from all over the "land of the Blacks" (Africa)? So many answers to these questions will have to be answered by archaeologists who, God willing, may be able to continue to excavate sites associated with Alwa.