Alodia

Alodia, also called Alwa, was a medieval Nubian kingdom in what is now central Sudan. Its capital was Soba, near the confluence of the Blue and White Nile at modern Khartoum. The kingdom emerged after the fall of Kush, around the fourth century AD, and is first mentioned in written records in 569. It was the last of the three Nubian kingdoms to adopt Christianity, converting in 580 after Nobadia and Makuria. Alodia was a large, multicultural state ruled by a powerful king with provincial governors, and at its height in the ninth to twelfth centuries it surpassed Makuria in size, military strength and wealth. Soba was described as a town of extensive dwellings and churches filled with gold, and it prospered as a trading hub linking Makuria, the Middle East, western Africa, India and China. Literacy in Nubian and Greek flourished. From the twelfth and especially the thirteenth century the kingdom declined, perhaps because of southern invasions, drought and shifting trade routes. In the fourteenth century plague may have struck, while Arab tribes moved into the Upper Nile valley. Around 1500 Soba fell to Arab or Funj forces, and the Funj Sultanate of Sennar replaced Alodia, beginning a period of Islamization and Arabization.