Old Dongola
Ruined city on the Nile in northern Sudan, given by the Pleiades gazetteer as the capital of the Nubian kingdom of Makuria. John of Ephesus knew the Makurites as the people between the Nobadae and the Alodaei.
Old Dongola lies on the Nile in northern Sudan. The Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places describes it as the late antique capital of the Nubian state of Makuria and a centre of trade through the medieval period (Pleiades 865674318). John of Ephesus mentions the Makoritae as a people living between the Nobadae and the Alodaei whose king tried to stop the bishop Longinus on his way south (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.51); he does not name their city. A Latin chronicle records under the third year of the emperor Justin II that a people it calls “Maccurritae” received the Christian faith; the name is close to theirs, though the chronicle’s editor took it for that of a people in Mauretania (John of Biclaro, Chronicle third year of Justin (Mommsen, p. 212)). See the Conversion of the Nubian Kingdoms.
What happened here
- about AD 543 to AD 580, estimated dateThe Conversion of the Nubian Kingdoms
John of Ephesus tells how the empress Theodora sent the priest Julian to the Nobadae on the Nile south of Egypt ahead of her husband’s envoys, so that they were baptised into the church that rejected Chalcedon, and how the bishop Longinus later baptised the king of Alodia.