A History of Protestant missions in the near East

364 History of Protestant Missions in the Near East
infinitely greater number of towns, villages, herds, corn-fields,
vineyards, and palm-groves than in the province that borders
on the Muhammadan territory." Towards the end of the
thirteenth century the Mameluke sultans of Egypt found occasion
to interfere in a question concerning the succession in
Nubia, and succeeded in placing their tool upon the throne.
In this way the northern province of Dongola
first became
dependent on Egypt. After this a heavy tribute of slaves
was imposed on the Nubians, and eventually the country was
ruined by the increasing slave-trade in Egypt. The various
provinces and kingdoms into which Nubia was at that time
divided fell into constant feud with one another in the attempt
to capture slaves one from the other. Gradually the
slave-driver himself came from Egypt to pursue his nefarious
trade on a larger scale, and so the slave hunts and slave wars,
that are so well known, began. In this state of anarchy the
Christian Church perished. It can hardly be shown how its
gradual dissolution took place.
A Portuguese priest,
who travelled in Abyssinia in 1520
and 1527, found the country in a miserable state of transition,
being " neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muhammadan,"
" without religion or law, but still with the desire to remain
Christian." As they had neither bishops nor priests, they
sent a deputation to the Abuna of Abyssinia to ask him for
priests but
; they got none. Traces of Christianity still remained
into the nineteenth century. When General Gordon
became governor of the Sudan in 1884 he found a bishop in
Khartum with seven churches and a convent. Even this poor
remnant was fearfully decimated in the Mahdi rising (Intelligencer,
1899, pp. 266 ff., 895).
In 1906 there were found considerable remnants of ancient
Christian writings in the ancient language of Nubia, portions
of a translation of the Bible and fragments of ecclesiastical
literature. This is a fact that must excite thoughts in the
mind of a friend of mission work, for the Nubians belong to a
large national and linguistic family, formerly called the Nubaalso
the
Fulah group, but now the Sudanese, to whom belong