The Nubian kingdoms had proven their resilience in maintaining political independence and their commitment to Christianity until the thirteenth century.

Nubian kings had led armies into Egypt in the early eighth century and again in the tenth century, to force the release of the imprisoned Coptic patriarch and to relieve fellow Christians suffering persecution under Muslim rulers.

In 1276, however, the Mamluks (Arabic for "owned"), who are an elite but frequently disorderly caste of soldier-administrators composed largely of Turkish, Kurdish, and Circassian slaves, intervene in a dynastic dispute, oust Dongola's reigning monarch and delivered the crown and silver cross that symbolize Nubian kingship to a rival claimant.

Hereafter, Dongola becomes a satellite of Egypt.

Nubian nobles frequently marry the kinswomen of Arab sheikhs: thus, the lineages of the two elites merge and the Muslim heirs take their places in the royal line of succession.

A Muslim prince of Nubian royal blood ascends the throne of Dongola as king in 1315.

Traditional genealogies trace the ancestry of most of the Nile Valley's mixed population to Arab tribes that migrate into the region during this period.

Even many non-Arabic speaking groups claim descent from Arab forebears.

The Jaali and the Juhaynah are the two most important Arabic-speaking groups to emerge in Nubia are.

Both show physical continuity with the indigenous pre-Islamic population.

The former claim descent from the Quraysh, the Prophet Muhammad's tribe.

Historically, the Ja'alin have been sedentary farmers and herders or townspeople settled along the Nile and in Al Jazirah.

The nomadic Juhayna comprise a family of tribes that includes the Kababish, Baqqara, and Shukriya.

They are descended from Arabs who migrate after the thirteenth century into an area that extends from the savanna and semidesert west of the Nile to the hill country east of the Blue Nile.

Both groups form a series of tribal shaykhdoms that succeed the crumbling Christian Nubian kingdoms and that are in frequent conflict with one another and with neighboring non-Arabs.

Nubia's indigenous people absorb Arab migrants who settle among them in some instances, as among the Beja.

Beja ruling families will later derive their legitimacy from their claims of Arab ancestry.

Although not all Muslims in the region are Arabic-speaking, acceptance of Islam facilitates the arabizing process.

There is no policy of proselytism, however, and forced conversion is rare.

Islam penetrates the area over a long period of time through intermarriage and contacts with Arab merchants and settlers.

Exemption from taxation in regions under Muslim rule also proves a powerful incentive to conversion.

There are no records from travelers to the Nubian Christian kingdom Makuria from 1171 to 1272, and the events of this period have long been a mystery, although modern discoveries have shed some light on this era.

During this period, Makuria seems to have entered a steep decline.

The best source on this is Ibn Khaldun, writing several decades later, who blamed it on Bedouin invasions and Nubian intermarriage with Arabs.

The Ayyubid rulers of Egypt had dealt very aggressively with the Bedouin tribes of the nearby deserts, forcing them south into conflict with the Nubians.

Archaeology gives clear evidence of increasing instability in Makuria.

Once unfortified cities gained city walls, the people retreated to better defended positions, such as the cliff tops at Qasr Ibrim.

Houses throughout the region were built far sturdier, with secret hiding places for food and other valuables.

Archaeology also shows increased signs of Arabization and Islamicization.

Free trade between the kingdoms was part of the ancient trade treaty known as the bakt, and over time Arab merchants became prominent in Dongola and other cities.

Eventually the northern area, most of what was once Nobatia, had become largely Arabized and Islamicized.

Largely independent of Dongola it was increasingly referred to as al-Maris.

While the desert tribes may have been the most important destructive force, the campaigns of the Egyptian Mamlks are far better documented.

An important component of the bakt was the promise that Makuria would secure Egypt's southern border against raids by desert nomads, like the Beja.

The Makurian state could no longer do this, prompting interventions by Egyptian armies that further weakened it.

The Mamluk Sultan Baibars invaded in 1272 after King David I had attacked the Egyptian city of Aidhab, initiating several decades of intervention by the Mamluks in Nubian affairs.

The declining kingdom of Makuria has also been hurt, it seems, by internal difficulties.

King David's cousin Shekanda claims the throne and travels to Cairo to seek the support of the Mamluks.

They agree and invade Nubia in 1276, and place Shekanda on the throne.

The Christian Shekanda then signs an agreement making Makuria a vassal of Egypt, and a Mamluk garrison is stationed in Dongola.

The expansion of Islam coincides with the decline of the Nubian Christian church.

A "dark age" envelops Nubia in the fifteenth century during which political authority fragments and slave raiding intensifies.

Communities in the river valley and savanna, fearful for their safety, form tribal organizations and adopt Arab protectors.

Muslims probably do not constitute a majority in the old Nubian areas until the fifteenth or sixteenth century.

Arab caliphs had governed Egypt through the Mamluks for several centuries.

The Mamluks had seized control of the state in the thirteenth century and created a sultanate that ruled Egypt until the early sixteenth century.

Although they repeatedly launch military expeditions that weaken Dongola, the Mamluks do not directly rule Nubia.

The Turks conquer Egypt in 1517 and incorporate the country into the Ottoman Empire as a pashalik (province).

Ottoman forces pursue fleeing Mamluks into Nubia, which is claimed as a dependency of the Egyptian pashalik.

Although they establish administrative structures in ports on the Red Sea coast, the Ottomans exert little authority over the interior.

Instead, the Ottomans rely on military kashif (leaders), who control their virtually autonomous fiefs as agents of the pasha in Cairo, to rule the interior.

The rule of the kashif, many of whom are Mamluks who have made their peace with the Ottomans, will last three hundred years.

Concerned with little more than tax collecting and slave trading, the military leaders terrorize the population and constantly fight among themselves for title to territory.

Egypt, as a pashalik of the Ottoman Empire, is divided into several provinces, each of which is placed under a Mamluk bey (governor) responsible to the pasha, who in turn answers to the Porte, the term used for the Ottoman government referring to the Sublime Porte, or high gate, of the grand vizier's building.

No fewer than one hundred pashas will succeed each other in approximately two hundred years years of Ottoman rule

Their authority become tenuous in the eighteenth century as rival Mamluk beys become the real power in the land.

The struggles among the beys continue until 1798 when the French invasion of Egypt alters the situation.

Combined British and Turkish military operations force the withdrawal of French forces in 1801, introducing a period of chaos in Egypt.

The Ottomans seek to restore order in 1805 by appointing Muhammad Ali as Egypt's pasha.

With the help of ten thousand Albanian troops provided by the Ottomans, Muhammad Ali purges Egypt of the Mamluks.

He launches a seven-year campaign in Arabia in 1811, supporting his suzerain, the Ottoman sultan, in the suppression of a revolt by the Wahhabi, an ultraconservative Muslim sect.

To replace the Albanian soldiers, Muhammad Ali plans to build an Egyptian army with enslaved Sudanese recruits.

Although a part of present-day northern Sudan is nominally an Egyptian dependency, the previous pashas had demanded little more from the kashif who rules here than the regular remittance of tribute; this changes under Muhammad Ali.

A party of the Mamluks, after he defeats them in Egypt, escapes and flees south.

These Mamluks establish a state at Dongola in 1811 as a base for their slave trading.