Nobatia or Nobadia was an ancient African Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 kingdom in Lower Nubia

Lower Nubia

Lower Nubia is the northern portion of Nubia, downstream on the Nile from Upper Nubia. It lies between the First and Second Cataracts, roughly from Aswan in the north to Wadi Halfa in the south. A great deal of Lower Nubia was flooded with the construction of the Aswan High Dam and the creation...

 and subsequently a region of the larger Nubia

Nubia

Nubia is a region along the Nile river, which is located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.There were a number of small Nubian kingdoms throughout the Middle Ages, the last of which collapsed in 1504, when Nubia became divided between Egypt and the Sennar sultanate resulting in the Arabization...

n Kingdom of Makuria. Its name is often given as al-Maris in Arabic histories.

Nobatia was likely founded by the Nobatae, who had been invited into the region from the Egyptian desert by the Roman Emperor Diocletian

Diocletian

Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244  – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....

 to help defeat the Blemmyes

Blemmyes

The Blemmyes were a nomadic Nubian tribe described in Roman histories of the later empire. From the late third century on, along with another tribe, the Nobadae, they repeatedly fought the Romans...

 in AD 297. Early Nobatia is quite likely the same civilization that is known to archeologists as the Ballana culture. Eventually the Nobatae were successful, and an inscription by Silko, "Basiliskos" of the Nobatae, claims to have driven the Blemmyes into the eastern deserts

Eastern Desert

The Eastern Desert is the section of Sahara Desert east of the Nile River, between the river and the Red Sea. It extends from Egypt in the north to Eritrea in the south, and also comprises parts of Sudan and Ethiopia.-Features:...

. Around this time the Nobatian capital was established at Pakhoras

Faras

Faras was a major city in Lower Nubia in modern Egypt. The site of the city was flooded by Lake Nasser in the 1960s, and is now permanently underwater...

 (modern Faras); soon after, Nobatia converted to non-Chalcedonian Christianity

Oriental Orthodoxy

Oriental Orthodoxy is the faith of those Eastern Christian Churches that recognize only three ecumenical councils — the First Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople and the First Council of Ephesus. They rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon...

.

By 701, Nobatia had been annexed to its southern neighbor, Makuria. The circumstances of this merger are unknown. It most likely occurred before the Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 invasion in 652, since the Arab histories speak of only one Christian state in Nubia and reached at least as far as Old Dongola

Old Dongola

Old Dongola is a deserted town in Sudan located on the east bank of the Nile opposite the Wadi Al-Malik. An important city in medieval Nubia, and the departure point for caravans west to Darfur and Kordofan, from the fourth to the fourteenth century Old Dongola was the capital of the Makurian state...

. Nobatia seems to have maintained some autonomy in the new state. It was ruled by an eparch

Eparchy

Eparchy is an anglicized Greek word , authentically Latinized as eparchia and loosely translating as 'rule over something,' like province, prefecture, or territory, to have the jurisdiction over, it has specific meanings both in politics, history and in the hierarchy of the Eastern Christian...

 of Nobatia who was also titled the Domestikos

Domestikos

Domestikos , in English sometimes [the] Domestic, was a civil, ecclesiastic and military office in the late Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire.-Military usage:...

of Pakhoras. These were originally appointed but seem to be dynastic in the later period. Some of their records have been found at Fort Ibrim

Qasr Ibrim

Qasr Ibrim is an archaeological site in Lower Nubia. It was originally a major city perched on a cliff above the Nile, but the flooding of Lake Nasser after the construction of the Aswan High Dam transformed it into an island and flooded its outskirts. Qasr Ibrim is the only major archaeological...

, presenting a figure with a great deal of power. However, some Arab writers refer to the merged state as the "Kingdom of Makuria and Nobatia," which might imply a dual monarchy

Personal union

A personal union is the combination by which two or more different states have the same monarch while their boundaries, their laws and their interests remain distinct. It should not be confused with a federation which is internationally considered a single state...

 for at least some periods.

Nobatia was the closest part of Nubia to Egypt and was the most subject to the pressures of Arabization

Arabization

Arabization or Arabisation describes a growing cultural influence on a non-Arab area that gradually changes into one that speaks Arabic and/or incorporates Arab culture...

 and Islamization

Islamization

Islamization or Islamification has been used to describe the process of a society's conversion to the religion of Islam...

. Over time the people of Nobatia gradually converted and married into Arab clans such as the Banu Kanz

Banu Kanz

The Banu Kanz were a group of Rabi'ah Arabs who emigrated to Egypt and Sudan, eventually dislocating the Beja and penetrating into the desert east of the Nile around Aswan...

, although some remained independent in the Christian kingdom of Dotawo

Dotawo

Dotawo was a kingdom that might have existed in the Beja Region of Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt Lower Nubia in the Middle Ages. It has long been known that a kingdom by this name is mentioned as existing during the collapse of Makuria in the thirteenth century. It was reported to be one of...

 until its conquest by Sennar in 1504.