The Egyptians (presumably) undertake deep underground mining by 1300 in the Nubian desert. (One surviving mine is fifteen hundred feet, or four hundred and fifty meters, long and had been excavated to a depth of two hundred and ninety-two feet, or eighty-nine meters).

The coming of Islam will eventually change the nature of Sudanese society and facilitate the division of the country into north and south.

Islam also fosters political unity, economic growth, and educational development among its adherents; however, these benefits are restricted largely to urban and commercial centers.

The spread of Islam begins shortly after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632, by which time he and his followers had converted most of Arabia's tribes and towns to Islam (literally, submission), which Muslims maintain united the individual believer, the state, and society under God's will.

Islamic rulers, therefore, exercise temporal and religious authority.

Islamic law (sharia), which is derived primarily from the Quran, encompasses all aspects of the lives of believers, who are called Muslims ("those who submit" to God's will).

Arab armies carry Islam north and east from Arabia into North Africa within a generation of Muhammad's death. 

Muslims impose political control over conquered territories in the name of the caliph (the Prophet's successor as supreme earthly leader of Islam).

The Islamic armies win a major North African victory in 643 in Tripoli (in modern Libya).

However, the Muslim subjugation of all of North Africa will take about seventy-five years.

The Arabs invade Nubia in 642 and again in 652, when they lay siege to the city of Dongola and destroy its cathedral.

The Nubians put up a stout defense, however, causing the Arabs to accept an armistice and withdraw their forces.

Contacts between Nubians and Arabs long predate the coming of Islam, but the arabization of the Nile Valley is a gradual process that occurs over a period of nearly one thousand years.

Arab nomads continually wander into the region in search of fresh pasturage, and Arab seafarers and merchants trade in Red Sea ports for spices and slaves.

Intermarriage and assimilation also facilitate arabization.

After the initial attempts at military conquest fail, the Arab commander in Egypt, Abd Allah ibn Saad, concludes the first in a series of regularly renewed treaties with the Nubians that, with only brief interruptions, will govern relations between the two peoples for more than six hundred years.

So long as Arabs rule Egypt, there is peace on the Nubian frontier; however, when non- Arabs acquire control of the Nile Delta, tension arises in Upper Egypt.

The fortress city of Old Dongola (modern Sudan) along the Nile River becomes the capital of Makuria.

Several churches are built, including the "Old Church" (approximate date).

The origins of Makuria are uncertain.

Ptolemy mentions a Nubian people known as the Makkourae, who might be ancestors to the Makurians.

The kingdom is believed to have formed in the fourth or fifth century.

The first recorded mention of it is in a work by the sixth-century John of Ephesus, who decries its hostility to Monophysite missionaries traveling to Alodia.

John of Biclarum wrote approvingly soon after of the adoption by the "Makurritae"' of the rival Melkite faith.

Amr ibn al-'As sends an Arab expedition of twenty thousand horsemen under his cousin Uqba ibn Nafi to Makuria.

The Nubians strike hard against the Muslims near Dongola with hit-and-run attacks.

According to historian Al-Baladhuri, the Muslims found that the Nubians fought strongly and met them with showers of arrows.

The majority of the Arab forces returned with wounded or blinded eyes.

It is thus that the Nubians are called 'the pupil smiters'.

The Nubian victory at Dongola is one of the Rashidun Caliphate's rare defeats during the mid-seventh century.

With their archers' deadly accuracy plus their own experienced cavalry forces, Makuria is able to shake the Amr's confidence enough for him to withdraw his forces from Nubia.

Arab sources claim that the expedition into Nubia was not a Muslim defeat while at the same time acknowledging it was not a success.

The expedition into Nubia, like as the more successful expedition into the imperial lands of North Africa, is undertaken by 'Amr ibn al-'As on his own accord.

He believes that they will be easy victories and will inform the caliph after the conquests.

The Arab sources also make it clear there were no pitched battles in Nubia.

Yet, they do mention an encounter whereupon Uqba ibn Nafi and his forces happened upon a concentration of Nubians that promptly gave battle before the Muslims could attack.

In the ensuing engagement, he claims two hundred and fifty Muslims lost their eyes.

Arab sources lend more credit to Nubian guerrilla tactics than a single decisive engagement.

They claim that the Nubians would call out to their Muslim adversaries from afar where they would like their arrow wound.

The Muslims would jokingly respond, and the arrow would strike them there invariably.

This statement, along with a claim that Nubian horsemen were superior to Muslim cavalry in hit-and-run tactics, was used to support their position that the Nubians were besting them in skirmishes and not all-out battles.

Regardless of the situation, Uqba ibn Nafi was unable to succeed with his expedition and wrote back to his cousin that he could not win against such tactics and that Nubia was a very poor land with no treasure worth fighting for.

Uqba may not have been exaggerating, since Nubia is surrounded by formidable deserts.

Upon receiving this news, Amr bin al-As asks his cousin to withdraw, which he does.

Peace between Muslim Egypt and Christian Makuria only really materializes in 645 upon the succession of Abdullah Ibn Sa'ad.

This peace will last until the Second Battle of Dongola, the outcome of which in 652 will result in one of the longest peace treaties in recorded history.

Relations between the kingdom of Makuria and Rashidun Egypt had gotten off to a rocky start in 642 with the First Battle of Dongola.

After their defeat, the Arabs had withdrawn from Nubia and by 645 something of a peace had been established.

Makuria did something to violate the truce, according to the fourteenth-century Arab-Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi.

It is now that Abdullah Ibn Saad, the successor of the first governor of Arab Egypt, invades Makuria in an attempt to bring the Makurians to heel.

Northern and central Nubia at this time are united under the Makurian king Qalidurut.

Abdullah in 651 marches with a force of five thousand men, equipped with a catapult, to the Makurian capital of Dongola.

He then lays siege to the city, putting his cavalry in the precarious situation of storming a walled city defended by the infamous Nubian archers.

The town's cathedral during the battle is damaged by catapult fire.

The casualties incurred by Abdullah's forces are heavy, particularly to his cavalry, and Qalidurit does not sue for peace.

In the end, Abdullah calls off the siege and negotiates the baqt, one of the most famous documents in medieval history.

A negotiated peace that will last for six centuries, the baqt sets up trade relations between Muslim Egypt and Christian Nubia.

It involves the exchange of wheat, barley, wine, horses and linen from Egypt for three hundred and sixty slaves per year from Nubia.

This is an arrangement greatly in Nubia's favor.

The baqt is without precedent in the early history of Islam.

Also new to the paradigm of relations between Mulims and non-Muslims is Nubia's status as a land free from conquest.

Early Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres: the Dar el-Islam or "House of the Faithful", which includes all Muslim nations, and the Dar al-Harb, meaning "House of the Enemy", composed of all other nations (Christian, Zoroastrian, Animist, etc.).

It is the duty of the caliphate to expand the Dar el-Harb, but an exception is made for Nubia, a Christian region where its rulers will do business with Muslim rulers on equal terms well into the twelfth century, when Nubian power begins to wane.

As a result of the battle and the baqt, Islam is kept at bay and Christian Nubia gains the space to flourish for the next six hundred years.

The Arabs realize the commercial advantages of peaceful relations with Nubia and use the treaty to ensure that travel and trade proceed unhindered across the frontier.

The treaty also contains security arrangements whereby both parties agree that neither will come to the defense of the other in the event of an attack by a third party.

The treaty obliges both to exchange annual tribute as a goodwill symbol, the Nubians in slaves and the Arabs in grain.

This formality is only a token of the trade that develops between the two, not only in these commodities but also in horses and manufactured goods brought to Nubia by the Arabs and in ivory, gold, gems, gum arabic, and cattle carried back by them to Egypt or shipped to Arabia.

Acceptance of the treaty does not indicate Nubian submission to the Arabs, but the treaty does impose conditions for Arab friendship that eventually permits Arabs to achieve a privileged position in Nubia.

For example, provisions of the treaty allow Arabs to buy land from Nubians south of the frontier at Aswan.

Arab merchants establish markets in Nubian towns to facilitate the exchange of grain and slaves.

Arab engineers supervise the operation of mines east of the Nile in which they use slave labor to extract gold and emeralds.

Muslim pilgrims en route to Mecca travel across the Red Sea on ferries from Aydhab and Suaykin, ports that also receive cargoes bound from India to Egypt.

An entry in the chronicle of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria Eutychius states that the church of Nubia in 719 transferred its allegiance from the Greek to the Coptic Church.

The Christian Nubian kingdoms, which will survive for many centuries, achieve their peak of prosperity and military power in the ninth and tenth centuries.

However, Muslim Arab invaders, who in 640 had conquered Egypt, pose a threat to the Christian Nubian kingdoms.

Most historians believe that Arab pressure forced Nobatia and Makuria to merge into the kingdom of Dongolah sometime before 700.

Although the Arabs had soon abandoned attempts to reduce Nubia by force, Muslim domination of Egypt often makes it difficult to communicate with the Coptic patriarch or to obtain Egyptian- trained clergy.

As a result, the Nubian church becomes isolated from the rest of the Christian world.