This volume presents an edition of a corpus of Arabic documents datable to the 11th and 12th centuries AD that were discovered by the Egypt Exploration Society at the site of the Nubian fortress Qaṣr Ibrīm (situated in the south of modern Egypt). The edition of the documents is accompanied by English translations and a detailed analysis of their contents and historical background. The documents throw new light on relations between Egypt and Nubia in the High Middle Ages, especially in the Fatimid period. They are of particular importance since previous historical studies from the perspective of Arabic sources have been almost entirely based on historiographical sources, often written a long time after the events described and distorted by tendentious points of view.

This volume presents an edition of a corpus of Arabic documents datable to the 11th and 12th centuries AD that were discovered by the Egypt Exploration Society at the site of the Nubian fortress Qaṣr Ibrīm (situated in the south of modern Egypt). The edition of the documents is accompanied by English translations and a detailed analysis of their contents and historical background. The documents throw new light on relations between Egypt and Nubia in the High Middle Ages, especially in the Fatimid period. They are of particular importance since previous historical studies from the perspective of Arabic sources have been al-most entirely based on historiographical sources, often written a long time after the events described and distorted by tendentious points of view.

As one of the few surviving archaeological sites from the medieval Christian kingdom of Nubia, Qasr Ibrim is critically important in a number of ways. It is the only site in Lower Nubia that remained above water after the completion of the Aswan high dam. In addition, thanks to the aridity of the climate in the area, the site is marked by extraordinary preservation of organic material, especially textual material written on papyrus, leather, and paper. Particularly rich is the textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, written in Old Nubian, the region's indigenous language. As a result, Qasr Ibrim is probably the best documented ancient and medieval site in Africa outside of Egypt and the Maghreb. Medieval Nubia is the first book to make available this remarkable material, much of which is still unpublished. The evidence discovered reveals a more complicated picture of this community than originally thought. Previously, it was accepted that medieval Nubia had existed in relative isolation from the rest of the world, subsisting on a primitive economy. Legal documents, accounts, and letters, however, reveal a complex, monetized economy with exchange rates connected to those of the wider world. Furthermore, they reveal public festive practices, in which lavish feasting and food gifts reinforced the social prestige of the participants. These documents prove medieval Nubia to have been a society combining legal elements inherited from the Greco-Roman world with indigenous African social practices. In reconstructing the social and economic life of medieval Nubia based on the Old Nubian sources from the site, as well as other previously examined materials, Giovanni R. Ruffini corrects previous assumptions and provides a new picture of Nubia, one that links it to the wider Mediterranean economy and society of its time.

This collection of essays celebrates 50 years since the founding of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library. Three generations of scholars contributed their research and memories from their time at the GRU, stretching back to 1974. Their work comprises 18 articles on medieval Jewish History, Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts, archival history, and the story of the Cairo Genizah collections at the University of Cambridge. Together, they demonstrate the achievements of GRU alumni in advancing the field of Genizah Studies for more than five decades.

Die moderne Geschichte Ägyptens und des Sudan hat mehrfach radikal in die nubische Lebenswelt eingegriffen und tut dies bis auf den heutigen Tag: Nach den großen Staudammbauten des 20. Jahrhunderts sind neue Damm-, Bau- und Schürfprojekte auch im 21. Jahrhundert der Anlass, unter enormem Zeitdruck großflächig nubisches Terrain zu erforschen. Hierdurch bedingt wurde auf allen Gebieten der Kulturgeschichte ein gewaltiger Wissenszuwachs erreicht. Ergänzt wird dies durch Entdeckungen in ägyptischen Fundplätzen, angrenzenden Wüstengebieten und benachbarten Großräumen. Die 42 Beiträge dieses Handbuches zielen auf die diachrone, regionale und großräumliche Perspektive. Beginnend mit den Befunden der Altsteinzeit wird der Weg hin zu dem Nebeneinander pastoraler Gesellschaften und größerer Kulturäume in der Flussaue dargestellt. Über die bronzezeitlichen Kulturen wird der Bogen zu den Königreichen von Napata und Meroe bis hin zu den christlichen Königreichen und der islamischen Frühneuzeit gespannt. Dieser Sammelband beabsichtigt, den interessierten Kulturwissenschaftler auf den jüngsten Stand der Forschung zu bringen und die wechselvolle Geschichte dieses Bindeglieds zwischen dem Mittelmeerraum und Afrika zu vermitteln.

Nubia had a rich pagan heritage, stretching back thousands of years. During probably the 6th century AD various factors led to the adoption of Christianity. This book charts this huge cultural transition and its impact.

First published in 1996. This book is designed to provide a clear, up-to-date account of the past of Nubia (both in Egypt and the Sudan) from the earliest human activity known there in Old Stone Age times until the coming of Islam in the fourteenth– fifteenth centuries AD, based on over 45 years' experience of that country both as an archaeological civil servant and an academic. The archaeology and ancient history of Nubia has not been well known until very recently and the book is planned to fill a gap by making this story more widely known. This book is designed to provide a clear, up-to-date account of the past of Nubia (both in Egypt and the Sudan) from the earliest human activity known there in Old Stone Age times until the coming of Islam in the fourteenth– fifteenth centuries AD, based on over 45 years' experience of that country both as an archaeological civil servant and an academic. The archaeology and ancient history of Nubia has not been well known until very recently and the book is planned to fill a gap by making this story more widely known.

This volume explores the range of interactions between the historical sources and archaeology that are available on the African continent. Written by a range of experts on different aspects of African archaeology, this book represents the first consideration of historical archaeology over the African continent as a whole. This seminal volume also explores Africa's place in global systems of thought and economic development and is of interest to historical archaeologists and historians.

In Saladin, the Almohads and the Banū Ghāniya, Amar Baadj gives us the first comprehensive, modern study of a fascinating but little-known episode in the history of the medieval Mediterranean. This is the story of the long struggle between the Almohad caliphs of the Maghrib, the Banū Ghāniya of Majorca, and the Ayyubids for dominance of North Africa. The author makes use of important textual sources that have been ignored as well as new archaeological evidence to challenge some of the basic assumptions about the events in question. He also successfully places these events in their wider temporal and geographical context for the first time.

The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.