Old Dongola<\/a><\/span> had served as the departure point for caravans headed west. Today it\u2019s deserted ruins extend over more than two kilometres along the eastern bank of the Nile in Sudan. Dongola was abandoned at some point in the nineteenth century when the entire population moved its urban center 50 miles downstream on the opposite side of the river. The old town was left to the desert, to be buried under shifting sand dunes.<\/p>\nA random pot, discarded, sits outside a doorway, and the shadows hide other artifacts of daily life inside one of the homes. There is still a faint Jeep track running through what might have been a main street. The specter of life remains, though the town has been mostly empty for over a century now. I wonder to myself what made the residents just leave it all behind to rebuild a \u201cnew\u201d Dongola across the way.<\/p>\n
Founded in the fifth century as a fortress, Dongola\u2019s citadel included a royal residence, numerous palaces and public buildings. The city\u2019s heyday was in the ninth\u2013eleventh centuries, but building activity lasted until the fourteenth century. Around that time, the city began to decline. It was attacked by Arab armies several times, and a surviving inscription recording a military expedition sent by the Sultan of Egypt bears the date of 1317. The Nubian royalty left Dongola in 1364. At that point, Dongola faded into historical obscurity with only the briefest hints of its continued existence coming from accounts of European missionaries visiting the region.<\/p>\n
However, the Darb el-Arba’in camel caravan route, the famed \u201cForty Days Road,\u201d still ran through Dongola during the 17th century. According to a French traveller, Charles-Jacques Poncet, who visited the city in 1699, “The houses are ill built, and the streets half deserted and filled with heaps of sand\u2026the castle is in the very center of the town. It is large and spacious, but the fortifications are inconsiderable.”[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”13881″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”13883″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” bg_type=”bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1623181204616{padding-top: 20px !important;}” bg_color_value=”#ffffff”][vc_column width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”13882″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1625403650489{padding-bottom: 10px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1625403667653{padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”]A description that could easily have been written today, as the desert reclaims the stones and reduces the once-great city to rubble. By the 18th century, the caravan route shifted elsewhere sealing Dongola’s fate, and the town was definitively abandoned, its ruins left to the sand.<\/p>\n
Because of the ancient city\u2019s historical significance, archaeologists began excavating some of the most prominent sites in 1964. The project was initiated by Prof. Kazimierz Micha\u0142owski, and teams from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw have been working at sites in Old Dongola ever since. With the support of the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, they excavated ancient churches \u2013 among them the Cathedral, called the Church of the Granite Columns \u2013 palaces, a monastic complex, parts of the gigantic city wall and splendid suburban residences. The conservation and restoration effort, focused on the most \u201csignificant\u201d structures, has left the more mundane parts of the town as they were, which makes for an incredible wander through the timeless shadows of an ancient caravan stop.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” content_placement=”middle” css_animation=”none” bg_type=”bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1625237704703{padding-bottom: 10px !important;}” bg_color_value=”#e5e5e5″][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1625349552793{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;}”]AROUND DONGOLA[\/vc_column_text]
[vc_single_image image=”13881″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”][vc_single_image image=”13885″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”][vc_single_image image=”13883″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”][vc_single_image image=”13882″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”][vc_single_image image=”13887″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”][vc_single_image image=”13888″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”][vc_single_image image=”13900″ img_size=”large” onclick=”link_image”]<\/div><\/div>\t\t\t