Location of Soba in medieval times (below on the right) Soba 3 churches

Soba is an archaeological site and former town in what is now central

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

. Three kingdoms existed in medieval Nubia: Nobadia with the capital in Faras, Makuria with the capital in Dongola, and Alodia (Alwa) with the capital in Soba. The latter used to be the capital of the medieval

Nubia Nubia (, Nobiin language, Nobiin: , ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue Nile, Blue and White Nile, White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), and the Cataracts of the Nile, first cataract ...

n kingdom of Alodia from the sixth century until around 1500. E. A. Wallis Budge identified it with a group of ruins on the

Blue Nile The Blue Nile is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It travels for approximately through Ethiopia and Sudan. Along with the White Nile, it is one of the two major Tributary, tributaries of the Nile and supplies about 85.6% of the wa ...

from Khartoum, where there are remains of a Meroitic temple that had been converted into a

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

church. In the 10th century Ibn Selim el-Aswani described the city as large and wealthy, but he probably never visited it and modern archaeological investigations show it to have been a moderate centre. Built mainly of red brick, the abandoned city was plundered for building material when Khartoum was founded in 1821. Since the 1990s, development from the growth of suburbs in Greater Khartoum has continued to pose a threat to the ruins.

Archaeological research

In its heyday, the city covered approximately 275 hectares, but the excavations carried out prior to 2019 only encompassed about 1% of this area. The research was conducted by, among others, expeditions from the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM) and the British Institute in Eastern Africa, mostly as part of salvage excavations resulting from the construction of a tarmac road and the building activity along it. Since the 1900s, modern buildings started to cover the remains, resulting in modern development covering about half of the site. In 2019, the interdisciplinary project “Soba – the heart of Alwa” was commenced. It is carried out by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of distinguished scholars a ...

and is directed by Mariusz Drzewiecki ( PCMA UW). It aims to study the

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

of Soba and determine the extent, spatial structure, and character of each city quarter. A magnetic

geophysical prospection Geophysical survey is the systematic collection of Geophysics, geophysical data for spatial studies. Detection and analysis of the geophysical signals forms the core of Geophysical signal processing. The magnetic and gravitational fields emanatin ...

revealed unknown parts of medieval Soba. In one of the quarters, large architectural complexes stood at a distance from each other; in another, a clear street grid is visible. Test trenches were also excavated in strategic spots in the city or in places where the results of the geophysical research are not unequivocal.Mariusz Drzewiecki, Robert Ryndziewicz, Tomasz Michalik, Joanna Ciesielska, Ewa Czyżewska-Zalewska, Maciej Kurcz, Mokhtar Maali Alden Mokhtar Hassan
Soba Expedition. Preliminary report on the season of fieldwork conducted in 2019–2020
report written for the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums of Sudan. The residence of the kingdom of Alwa’s rulers has not yet been identified.

Notes

External links

Soba – the heart of Alwa
– the website of the research project {{Authority control Former populated places in Sudan Archaeological sites in Sudan History of Nubia Medieval Africa

Archaeological research

Notes

Further reading

External links