Towns, villages and houses

Medieval Nubians, like all peasant farmers before and since, lived in tightly clustered villages, which might vary in size from a few houses to several hundred. There were no communities in Nubia that would qualify as "cities" by modern standards; even the royal capitals at Dongola and Soba, and the great ecclesiastical centers of Faras and Qasr Ibrim, probably numbered no more than a few hundred inhabitants. Some large villages like Meinarti and Arminna probably functioned as market towns, though specific identifying features are lacking. Most settlements however were no more than farming villages, comprising family residences plus one or more churches. Because of the limited agrarian resources of Nubia, they were seldom anywhere near as large as the peasant villages of Egypt.

The medieval Nubian house was a single family residence, having only one entry. It was usually constructed of mud brick, except at a few localities where rough stone was preferred. The structures show a distinctly marked evolutionary development. Early Christian houses, like those of the preceding Ballana period, were generally small and irregular in plan, with thin walls that can only have supported a flat roof. No consistently recurring layout of rooms has been identified.

The houses of the Classic Christian period, though still generally thin-walled, were consciously larger than those of the earlier period, bespeaking the country's increased prosperity. The typical plan consisted of a fairly large front room, to which the outside door opened, two or more smaller store rooms behind the front room, and an L-shaped passage leading beside and then behind the store rooms to a latrine at the back of the house. This feature of "indoor plumbing" was the single most unique feature of medieval Nubian housing, and it persisted until the end of the period.