Salim Faraji: Professor of Africana Studies Reveals Oldest Form of Christianity in Antique Nubia

Salim Faraji, assistant professor of Africana studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills, has been invited to present his research on Christianity in ancient Nubia at the 12th Annual International Conference for Nubian Studies, which will be held in August at the British Museum. One of only two nubiologists on the West Coast – the other being Dr. Stuart Tyson Smith at the University of California, Santa Barbara – Faraji will present “Africana Nubiology: Examining Classical Sudanese Traditions in West Africa” at the conference.

Faraji says that the study of the ancient civilization of Nubia – now the modern-day Sudan – which lasted from 3800 BC to 1400 AD was long considered merely a sub-discipline of Egyptology. However, he says that since the 1970s it has come into the growing consciousness of scholars as an independent discipline.

“Nubia is actually older than ancient Egypt in the Nile Valley,” says Faraji of the region’s significance to archaeology and history. “There are archaeological remains showing that the kingship traditions you see in ancient Egypt with the pharaohs and the tall crowns are actually dated in Nubia even earlier than the first Egyptian dynasty in 3200 BC. Nubia even lasted longer as a pharaonic civilization than Egypt, which was conquered by the Greeks and the Romans. During that time, Nubia was still an independent, politically free civilization practicing beliefs similar to the ancient Egyptians, up until the 4th or 5th century AD. They were engaged in trade as far east as India, in Saudi Arabia, and in trade and diplomatic relations with the Greeks and the Romans.”

Faraji is currently at work on a book on the cultural transformation that occurred with the conversion of ancient Nubia to Christianity between the 4th and 6th century AD and the establishment of three medieval kingdoms that lasted from approximately the fifth century AD until the 1500s. He says that the book’s significance lies in the fact that Nubia, along with Egypt, North Africa, and what is modern-day Ethiopia were centers of early Christianity.

“It reorients our understanding of antiquity and early Christianity,” says Faraji. “Often in Western civilization when we think of antiquity and Christianity together, we usually think of Greece, Rome, and the Hebrews. We don’t think of Africa although it is the center of early Christianity... [with] one of the oldest forms of orthodox Christianity in the world.”

Faraji points out that warriors from the three kingdoms fought side-by-side with Europeans in the Crusades.

“European Christians actually idealized and romanticized about these Nubian kings as great warriors and defenders of the Crusades,” he says. “In Germany in the Cathedral of Magdeburg, the patron saint is a Nubian warrior who fought as an ally with Christians, St. Maurice the Black.”

According to Faraji, Egypt is given preeminence in discussions of the Nile Valley civilizations due to the European fascination with ancient Egypt after French and British conquests in the 18th century and extensive archaeological excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries. He attributes the growing interest in Nubian antiquity to efforts by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the early 1960s to rescue artifacts and monuments from the area during the construction of the Aswan High Dam, which resulted in the creation of Lake Nasser.

“It was at this point that scholars began to realize the importance of Nubia not just as a subdiscipline of Egyptology but as a civilization that can stand on its own,” says Faraji of the discoveries made at that time.

Faraji’s research on Nubia is cited in the book “The Archaeology of Late Antique Sudan – Aesthetics and Identity in the Royal X-Group Tombs at Qustul and Ballana” by Rachael J. Dann. He presented a paper titled, “King Silko and the Roots of Nubian Christianity: A Reappraisal of the Post-Meroitic Period Rethinking Cultural Hybridity and Multiple Religious Identities” at the 11th International Conference for Meroitic (Nubian) Studies in Vienna in 2008.

For more information on Africana studies at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

- Joanie Harmon