Soba (city)

Soba is the name of the capital of Alodia. E. A. Wallis Budge identified it with a group of ruins on the Blue Nile 12 miles from Khartoum, where there are remains of a Meroitic temple that had been converted into a Christian church. [E.A Wallis Budge, "A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia", 1928 (Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970) p. 118.] This would place Soba in the modern-day Sudanese state of Al Jazirah. Ibn Selim el-Aswani described the city as large and wealthy, but he probably never visited it and modern archaeological investigations show it to have been a moderate centre. Built mainly of red brick the abandoned city was plundered for building material when Khartoum was founded in 1821.

Notes

References

* William Y. Adams, "Nubia: Corridor to Africa." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.