Creating Islamic landscapes and holy places in Sudanese Nubia

Over more than a century of archeological and ethnographical research prompted by the construction of the Aswan Dams, a considerable, if not a fragmentary, body of material relating to the religious history of Nubia has been collected. In a region better known for its medieval Christian heritage, it is also possible to trace the development of Islamic habitation in the wider landscape through a range of “holy places,” which have taken many forms, both natural and artificial. An archeological interest in the longer-term landscape history of the region has also brought into focus how some pre-Islamic “places” and other traces of the past have taken on new Islamic meanings, and occasionally, have been “forgotten.” Among smallscale rural communities, the local idioms of a “Nubian” Islam invite comparisons with other parts of the Islamic world, not least as a counterpoint to the higher-level and monumental “holy places” of the metropoles. On the margins of a literate-textual Islam, the varied material manifestations of the sacred can also be striking. In more recent history, a range of material also confirms familiar patterns of contestation over “correct practice” both within “Nubian” communities as well as between “Nubians” and external forces.