Alodia, also known as Alwa (Greek: Αρουα, Aroua;[3] Arabic: علوة, ʿAlwa), was a medieval kingdom in what is now central and southern Sudan.

It possibly reached its peak during the 9th–12th centuries when records show that it exceeded its northern neighbor, Makuria, with which it maintained close dynastic ties, in size, military power and economic prosperity.

The capital Soba, described as a town of "extensive dwellings and churches full of gold and gardens",[4] prospered as a trading hub.

[8] The events around the Christianization of the kingdom in the 6th century were described by the contemporary bishop John of Ephesus;[9] various post-medieval Sudanese sources address its fall.

[17] Soba is approximately 2.75 km2 (1.06 sq mi) in size and is covered with numerous mounds of brick rubble previously belonging to monumental structures.

[18] Alodia was located in Nubia, a region which, in the Middle Ages, extended from Aswan in southern Egypt to an undetermined point south of the confluence of the White and Blue Nile rivers.

[28] Abu Hamad likely constituted the northernmost outpost of the Alodian province known as al-Abwab ("the gates"),[29] although some scholars also suggest a more southerly location, nearer the Atbara River.

[23] The name Alodia might be of considerable antiquity, perhaps appearing first as Alut on the Kushite stela of king Nastasen from the late 4th century BC.

It appeared again as Alwa on a list of Kushite towns by the Roman author Pliny the Elder (1st century AD), said to be located south of Meroë.

[46] The excavated tumuli of El-Hobagi are known to date to the late 4th century,[47] and contained an assortment of weaponry imitating Kushite royal funerary rituals.

[52] Independently of John of Ephesus, the kingdom's existence is also verified by a late 6th century Greek document from Byzantine Egypt, describing the sale of an Alodian slave girl.

The capital Soba was a prosperous town with "fine buildings, and extensive dwellings and churches full of gold and gardens", while also having a large Muslim quarter.

[83] In the same period poet al-Harrani wrote that Alodia's capital was now called Waylula,[77] described as "very large" and "built on the west bank of the Nile".

[84] In the early 14th century geographer Shamsaddin al-Dimashqi wrote that the capital was a place named Kusha, located far from the Nile, where water had to be obtained from wells.

[89] By 1276 al-Abwab, previously described as the northernmost Alodian province, was recorded as an independent splinter kingdom ruling over vast territories.

It is not clear if they were still subject to the king in Soba[92] or if they were independent, implying a fragmentation of Alodia into multiple petty states by the late 13th century.

[95][96] The bedouin may have profited from the plague which has been suggested to have ravaged Nubia in the mid-14th century killing many sedentary Nubians, but not affecting the nomadic Arabs.

[100] It was the disintegration of Makuria in the late 14th century that, according to archaeologist William Y. Adams, caused the "flood gates" to "burst wide open".

[105] By the second half of the 15th century, Arabs had settled in the entire central Sudanese Nile valley, except for the area around Soba,[98] which was all that was left of Alodia's domain.

[106] In 1474[107] it was recorded that Arabs founded the town of Arbaji on the Blue Nile, which would quickly develop into an important centre of commerce and Islamic learning.

[108] In around 1500 the Nubians were recorded to be in a state of total political fragmentation, as they had no king, but 150 independent lordships centered around castles on both sides of the Nile.

[10] It is unclear if the Kingdom of Alodia was destroyed by the Arabs under Abdallah Jammah or by the Funj, an African group from the south led by their king Amara Dunqas.

Under Abdallah's leadership Alodia and its capital Soba were destroyed,[114] resulting in rich booty such as a "bejeweled crown" and a "famous necklace of pearls and rubies".

[120] As recently as 1930[111] Hamaj villagers in the southern Gezira would swear by "Soba the home of my grandfathers and grandmothers which can make the stone float and the cotton ball sink".

[142] As late as the 20th century several practices of undoubtedly Christian origin were "common, though of course not universal, in Omdurman, the Gezira and Kordofan",[143] usually revolving around the application of crosses on humans and objects.

[c] Soba, which remained inhabited until at least the early 17th century,[149] served, among many other ruined Alodian sites, as a steady supply of bricks and stones for nearby Qubba shrines, dedicated to Sufi holy men.

[161] Coptic documents observed by Johann Michael Vansleb during the later 17th century list the following bishoprics in the Alodian kingdom: Arodias, Borra, Gagara, Martin, Banazi, and Menkesa.

[78] The three churches had many similarities, including having a narthex, wide entrances on the main east-west axis and a pulpit along the north side of the nave.

[178] It had a nave, where two L-shaped walls projected, and at least two aisles with rectangular brick piers between, as well as a range of possibly three rooms across the western end, which was a typically Nubian arrangement.

[235] According to an oral tradition Arab merchants came to Alodia to sell silk and textiles, receiving beads, elephant teeth and leather in return.