Last modified: 2019-01-06 by bruce berry
Keywords: sudan | book of all kingdoms | dongola | dobaha | sohan |
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The Catalan Atlas is the most important map of the medieval period in the Catalan language. It was produced in 1375 and is now housed in the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France).
In the Catalan Atlas Sudan is
called Nubia and this name is inscribed in the map twice: the first inscription
is actually placed approximately in present-day Chad,
while the other one does seem to be placed in the present-day Sudan, in the area
bordered with the White Nile to the west and the Blue Nile to the east (if we
accept that the two rivers shown to form the Nile on the map are indeed meant to
be the White Nile and the Blue Nile) and extending down to the map edge. There
is also a city named Nubia (see below), placed between these two inscriptions,
near the third one which says "Africha" (i.e. Africa). There are three
flags in the area, with the designs which are derived from the "Book
of All Kingdoms".
Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
image by Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
The blue
flag charged with a silver crescent (nowadays nearly blackened by age) is
hoisted over the said city of Nubia ("Ciuta de Nubia"), which is placed
not very far from the supposed White Nile and much farther from the Nile,
somewhere in the western part of present-day Sudan, not far from the border with
Chad and Libya. This is clearly based on the flag of Tremecin from the "Book of
All
Kingdoms"
with the colour of the field changed from blue to purple, typically for the
portolanos, as discussed here. The flag of Dobaha is very similar to that of
Sohan, but the disc is
smaller and the bottom arm of the cross does not reach the disc edge.
Also, the side arms' length is increasing from the top to the bottom,
resulting in a shape very similar to the papal cross. For all these
reasons, the flag is presented here separately.
The flag reflects Muslim conquest of Sudan, which had already been
under way when the "Book of All Kingdoms" was completed, although
still far from the end.
Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
The other two flags represent the Christian states in Nubia,
which were still very
powerful at the time when the "Book of All Kingdoms" was completed, although the geographic information presented in the map is
somewhat confused. The design of these flags resembles somewhat the
flag of Dongola from the "Book of All
Kingdoms". The city of Dongola is shown in the map, but with no flag.
The flag is placed much farther to the south from its actual location, near the supposed Blue Nile, far upstream from its confluence with
the White Nile. Its actual location was on the Nile, further
downstream from the confluence, and the present-day city is placed
even further downstream. The first of these flags was hoisted over
a city named Sohan, placed at the confluence of the Niles, where the
present-day city of Khartoum is located. The other flag was hoisted over a city
named Dobaha, placed to the south-west from Sohan and to the south
from the supposed White Nile. Since another Christian city named
Sobaha is shown (without the flag) not far from Dobaha in the west, it
is possible that all of these names, resembling each other, are
somehow derived from the name of Soba, the historical capital of
Christian kingdom of Alodia, which was placed on the Blue Nile, not
far from the present-day Khartoum.
Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
Sohan
image by Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
The flag of Sohan has an engrailed fly and displays a large white
disc, charged with a red eight-armed cross, on a golden field. All six
side arms of the cross have approximately the same length, the top arm
is very short, and the bottom arm is issuing from the disc edge. The
endings of the top and side arms are not all the same: some look like botonny and others like formy, but such asymmetrical cross shapes,
while their blazons are technically feasible, seem not to have ever
been used. When zoomed in to the maximum, the map photo seems to
reveal that there are more arms bottony than formy, so the cross is
shown here with all arms formy.
Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
Dobaha
image by Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016
Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016