ABSTRACT
The term al-Nuba, although properly restricted to the people of the more northerly of the two territories, was generally applied to the combined kingdom, and even extended to the inhabitants of its southern neighbour, known in the Arabic sources as 'Alwa. The history of the southern kingdom of'Alwa is even more obscure than that of al-Muqurra, since it was more remote from Egypt, with which it had little direct contact. To the east of Lower Nubia lay the barren and mountainous territory, the source of gold and emeralds, known to medieval geographers as bilad al-ma'din, 'the land of the mines'. As warrior-kings and converts to Islam, they saw their principal duty as the protection of Muslim territory against the infidel - the Mongols in Iraq and Persia, the Crusaders on the coast of Syria-Palestine, the Nubian Christians in the far south.
