Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia

After reading a short book on Alwa and revisiting Welsby and Ruffini, we decided to take another look at Vantini's Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia. We read Vantini back in 2020 during a past obsession with the question of Kanem relations to the Eastern Sudan. While one cannot deny the great use of having a compilation of various "Oriental" sources on Nubia from Late Antiquity to the early 16th century as a reference work, far too many of the extracts are incredibly repetitive. Some selections nearly repeat verbatim earlier chronicles or geographical texts, often adding little or no new information. These repetitions can be useful in terms of illustrating the sources for later writers, but makes for rather uninteresting reading. However, it was occasionally interesting to see how mistakes of copyists or authors introduced more confusion, such as transferring to the Nubians a description of the "Zaghawa" of Kanem. Or confusion mixing the Nubians with the Habasha or Beja when detailing relations between the Patriarchs in Alexandria and the southern Christian populations of the Sudan and Ethiopia. Some of these mistakes raise questions about the reliability of the included texts for parts of the "Sudan" and contain clearly legendary materials or outdated ideas derived from Ptolemy on the course of the Nile and the interior of Africa. 

In spite of the cultural, religious and perhaps racial bias of several of the sources, they are of paramount importance for understanding the societies of medieval Nubia. Although modern scholars are correct to stress the significance of relying on internal sources to reconstruct the history of the region, we have relied so heavily on external Arabic sources for West Africa during this same time. If historians have, over time, been able to match the external Arabic texts on West Africa with local archaeological, textual and oral sources, then one should be able to do the same for Nubia. After all, Nubia was even closer to the central Islamic lands and known to the ancient world for several millennia. If used judiciously, these sources tell us something, albeit not enough, of the kingdoms of Makuria and Alwa over a period of 1000 years. Sadly, Alwa was, despite its reputation as the wealthier kingdom, not as well known. But these sources have been used by scholars such as Zarroug for proposing some theories on the kingdom's likely role in east-west trade routes. 

Moreover, when interpreted together, the external Arabic sources point to connections between the different regions of the Sudanic belt of the African continent. We are unsure if some of the copyists or authors made a mistake here, but one source in Vantini actually refers to the ruler of Dahlak levying a duty on the ships of al-Kanam. Our first response is to think Kanem was connected to the Red Sea through ships commissioned by their rulers. There are also references by al-Idrisi to conflict between the Nubians and the Daju between Kanem and Nubia. Other sources mention war between the "Zaghawa" and Nubians. Additional sources point to the pilgrimage route that went from Upper Egypt through the Eastern Desert to Aydhab. Beja and Nubians may have interacted with travelers and traders from the Western and Central Sudan through those arenas, not to mention in Egypt itself. In addition, conflict between the Oasis Dwellers west of the Nile and the Nubians are casually referenced, leading us to wonder about Nubian interests in trade to the northwest and west. Despite their limitations, these sources possess a number of suggestive implications for cultural and economic connections across the "Sudan."Hopefully archaeologists in Chad and Sudan will uncover evidence.