For a thousand years, from the fourth century to the fourteenth, this was the capital of Makuria, a Christian Nubian kingdom on the Nile that held off the Arab expansion by treaty and outlasted a great many states that get more attention. The Church of the Granite Columns had sixteen carved columns. The Throne Hall, a ninth-century block 28 metres by 18 and 12 tall, was turned into a mosque in 1317 and was still in use as one in 1969. The court left in 1364 and the town declined; when the Mamluks founded New Dongola downstream in 1812 the centre of gravity moved for good. Polish archaeologists have been digging here without a break since 1964 and are still turning things up, including a probable cathedral with a nine-metre-deep apse and medieval paintings of the Virgin and an archangel presenting a Nubian king to Christ. Northern State, east bank.
Northern State, Sudan
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