A fragment of Arabic writing recovered from a long-forgotten rubbish heap in northern Sudan has provided the first firm proof that a ruler once dismissed as little more than legend did in fact exist.
The document, issued in the name of the Nubian king Qashqash, was discovered during excavations at Old Dongola, the former capital of the Christian kingdom of Makuria on the Nile. For historians of late medieval Sudan, it represents the earliest contemporary evidence that Qashqash exercised real authority, rather than existing solely in the realm of inherited tradition.
Like Britain’s King Arthur, Qashqash had hitherto been known only through much later accounts, in which he was remembered as an ancestor of subsequent rulers. The absence of surviving records from the period meant that his life and reign could not be independently verified. That gap has now narrowed considerably.
After the 14th century, the region entered what scholars describe as a poorly documented transitional era. Political fragmentation and gradual Islamisation altered the cultural landscape, and Arabic steadily supplanted earlier written forms. Yet few documents survive to illuminate who governed Old Dongola during this period or how power was exercised.
According to Metro, the newly uncovered order was found in a refuse layer within a building inside the citadel, locally known as the House of the Mekk — a term used for a minor king. Although undated, researchers have assigned it to the 17th century by correlating it with references in the Ṭabaqāt, a Sudanese biographical work chronicling the lives of holy men and scholars.
The study, led by Tomasz Branski of the University of Warsaw, notes that the Ṭabaqāt records that King Ḥasan, identified as the son of Qashqash, married his daughter to the religious leader Muḥammad b. ʿĪsa Suwār al-Dhahab, who was active in Old Dongola in the early to mid-17th century. On that basis, the team concludes that Qashqash must have held power by that time, and possibly as early as the latter half of the 16th century.
In tone and content, the text is strikingly practical. It instructs an official named Khiḍr to receive goods, including livestock and textiles, and to redistribute them without delay. The king’s scribe, identified as Ḥamad, is named in the closing lines. Far from a grand proclamation, it reads as an everyday administrative directive — precisely the sort of evidence historians prize for confirming that a ruler governed in fact as well as in memory.
Intriguingly, the Arabic employed is not the polished classical form associated with high literary culture but a more colloquial variant. Scholars suggest this may reflect the linguistic and cultural shifts then under way, as Arabic consolidated its position in a society emerging from its Christian past into a new Islamic era.
The order appears to have been discarded decades after it was written, perhaps in the mid- to late 17th century or even the 18th, when it was swept into the rubbish layer where it lay undisturbed for centuries.
Excavations conducted under the UMMA project have revealed that the building in which the fragment was found stood apart from neighbouring houses. Artefacts recovered from the same context — including silk and fine cotton textiles, leather footwear, a dagger handle carved from ivory or rhinoceros horn, a gold ring and musket balls – suggest the occupants belonged to an elite milieu.
Taken together, the finds offer a rare glimpse into a formative yet obscure chapter of Sudan’s pre-colonial history. Most significantly, they elevate Qashqash from the realm of half-remembered legend into the ranks of demonstrable historical figures, providing a firmer foundation for understanding the political landscape of late medieval Nubia.
The research has been published in the journal Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa.
