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Hobatia

By the sixth century A.D, three distinctive kingdoms had emerged. The kingdom of "Nobatia", stretching from the first to the third Cataract, and with Faras as its capital, to the south lay the kingdom of "Makuria", centered on the site of old Dongola, and exercising control over the Nile valley for south as the region between 4th and 5th Cataract. The third kingdom, "Alwa" lay further south, its capital Soba was situated on the Blue Nile south cast of Khartoum.

It was against this political backdrop that the official conversion of the Nubians to Christianty took place. Merchants and monks from Egipt had probably begun to spread the knowledge of Chrisianily through Nubia by the 5th century A.D while the Ballana monarchies with their own custom of human sacrifice, can scarcely have been Christians themselves .

The presence of objects bearing christian decorative motifs among their grave good suggests that they were aware, if actually tolerant, of the new teaching, and its progressive acceptance by their subjects and doubtlessly this smoothed the way for the official mission to convert Nubia which set out from by Byzantium in the middle of the 6th century.