First Battle of Dongola
After the Arab military leader ‘Amr ibn al-‘As conquered Egypt from the Byzantine Empire in 640, he sent troops to North Africa and Nubia. In 642, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As sent a column formation of 20,000 horsemen under the leadership of his cousin, Uqba ibn Nafi, to conquer the Nubian kingdom of Makuria. The Arabs reached as far as Dongola, the capital of Makuria, before they suffered a major defeat by Makurian warriors.
According to historian Al-Baladhuri, the Arabs found that the Nubians fought strongly and met them with showers of arrows. The majority of the Arab forces returned with wounded and blinded eyes. It was thus that the Nubians were called ‘the pupil smiters‘. Al-Baladhuri recalls one of his sources saying, “One day they came out against us and formed a line; we wanted to use swords, but we were not able to, and they shot at us and put out eyes to the number of one hundred and fifty.”
The Nubian victory at Dongola was one of the Rashidun Caliphate’s rare defeats during the mid-7th century. Having archers with deadly marksmanship and highly skilled and experienced cavalry forces, Makuria was able to force the Arabs to withdraw their forces from Nubia.
