International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1995) 577 MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN NUBIA AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD: A RECONSIDERATION OF THE BAQT TREATY By Jay Spaulding Between the fall of Egypt to the Arabs in 641 and the Egyptian conquest of...
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International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1995) 577 MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN NUBIA AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD: A RECONSIDERATION OF THE BAQT TREATY By Jay Spaulding Between the fall of Egypt to the Arabs in 641 and the Egyptian conquest of the northern Nubian kingdom of Makuria in 1276, contemporary observers often perceived the conduct of foreign relations across this segment of the frontier between Christendom and Dar al-Islam to be distinctive and unusual. These unusual arrangements were commonly designated "bagt," from the Hellenistic Greek pakton, an alien loanword equally foreign to all participants,! The bagt is a comparatively well-documented theme in medieval African history and has figured prominently in most previous scholarship about Christian Nubia.? From a limited number of familiar sources a recent generation of scholars has erected, with but minor variations of emphasis, a single standard edifice of interpretation. Unfortu- nately this structure of conse
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