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 Faras (formerly , ''Pakhôras''; ; Old Nubian: Ⲡⲁⲭⲱⲣⲁⲥ, ''Pakhoras'') was a major city in Lower Nubia. The site of the city, on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan at Wadi Halfa Salient, was flooded by Lake Nasser in the 196 ...

Makuria Makuria ( Old Nubian: , ''Dotawo''; ; ) was a medieval Nubian kingdom in what is today northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Its capital was Dongola (Old Nubian: ') in the fertile Dongola Reach, and the kingdom is sometimes known by the name of ...

with the capital in

Dongola Dongola (), also known as Urdu or New Dongola, is the capital of Northern State in Sudan, on the banks of the Nile. It should not be confused with Old Dongola, a now deserted medieval city located 80 km upstream on the opposite bank. Et ...

, 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 Alodia, also known as Alwa ( Greek: Αρουα, ''Aroua''; , ''ʿAlwa''), was a medieval kingdom in what is now central Sudan. Its capital was the city of Soba, located near modern-day Khartoum at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile r ...

from the sixth century until around 1500.

E. A. Wallis Budge Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 185723 November 1934) was an English Egyptology, Egyptologist, Orientalism, Orientalist, and Philology, philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient ...

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 Khartoum or Khartum is the capital city of Sudan as well as Khartoum State. With an estimated population of 7.1 million people, Greater Khartoum is the largest urban area in Sudan. Khartoum is located at the confluence of the White Nile – flo ...

, 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 Abu Muhammad Abdallah ibn Ahmad ibn Salim (or ibn Sulaym) al-Aswani () was a tenth-century Egyptian diplomat and Shia Muslim '' dāʿī'' (missionary) in the service of the Fatimids. Following the Fatimid conquest of Egypt, he was dispatched to N ...

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 The British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, and is dedicated to supporting historical, archaeological, and other social science and humanities research in eastern Africa. The BIEA is sponsored by the British A ...

, 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 The Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw (PCMA UW; ) operates as an independent research institute of the University of Warsaw under the present name since 1990. It is dedicated to organizing, implementing and coordin ...

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 Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, m ...

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