Chronology

According to ecclesiastical historians, the conversion of the Nubians to Christianity began in the year 543, and was completed around 580. The last known textual reference to a Christian Nubian ruler or ecclesiastic bears the date 1482, although there is much evidence for the survival of Christian worship, if not of Christian kingdoms, until considerably later. It is common practice today to take the years 550 and 1500 as marking respectively the beginning and ending dates for Nubia's medieval civilization.

For heuristic convenience, archaeologists commonly divide the medieval period into a succession of eight cultural phases, as follows:

Phase Approximate Dates, AD

(Article contributed by William Y. Adams.)