Nubians are an indigenous group native to Egypt and Sudan. They are believed to be the early inhabitants of the central Nile Valley and one of the world’s oldest civilizations. They appeared at around 5000 BC.
Nubians resided in what we know as “Old Nubia” a location in modern-day Egypt and Sudan.
In the early 1500s, many Nubian kingdoms collapsed, the final in 1504 as the land of Nubia became divided between the countries mentioned earlier Egypt and Sudan.
Unfortunately, this caused a large portion of the Nubian people to be converted to Islam during the Arabization of the geographic area.
According to a site, there are no exact statistics as to what number of Nubians live in Modern-day Egypt, however, there are estimates of 300k to 5 million still residing all over the country. Unfortunately, the land of Old Nubia was replaced with dam projects, which were designed to quickly develop the country of Egypt. The Nubians of course never received any compensation, as they remain displaced and angry over the destruction of their homeland.
Language too is a dying part of their culture, the original language Old Nobin or Old Nubian went extinct sometime during the 15th century. Now a new version of Nobiin is spoken among approximately 610,000 Nubians, although that number is estimated to go down.
What do you all think? Can the Nubian culture and language be saved? And what did you all know about this culture before reading this article?
- Benjamin Myers
Sources can be found HERE and HERE.
Language source – HERE