Old Dongola

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Plan of Old Dongala in the Mediaval Period

Old Dongola is a town in Sudan, on the east bank of the Nile opposite the Wadi Al-Malik. It is 50 miles (80 km) upstream from (New) Dongola. Old Dongola was the departure point for caravans west to Darfur and Kordofan.

It was an important city in ancient Nubia. From the fourth to the fourteenth century it was the capital of the Makurian state. When the traveller C.J. Poncet travelled through the city, he described it as located on the slope of a sandy hill. His description of Old Dongola continues:

The houses are ill built, and the streets half deserted and fill'd with heaps of sand, occasion'd by floods from the mountains. The castle is in the very center of the town. It is large and spacious, but the fortifications are inconsiderable. It keeps in awe the Arabians, who are masters of the open country¹

Notes

1. Charles Jacques Poncet in The Red Sea and Adjacent Countries, William Foster, editor (London: Hakluyt Society, 1949), pp. 99f.

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