Christianity
Christianity reached what is now northern Sudan, then called Nubia, by about the end of the first century after Christ.
It greatly developed under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. Indeed, Byzantine architecture influenced most of the Christian churches in lower Nubia
The Roman Emperor Justinian I made Nubia a stronghold of Christianity during the Middle Ages. By 580 AD, Christianity had become the official religion of the northern Sudan, centered around the Faras cathedral.
It largely disappeared following later Islamic conquests, but only after a long lasting struggle that went on for eight centuries.
Read more about this topic: Sudanese Arabs
Famous quotes containing the word christianity:
“What’s the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there’s cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“But, with whatever exception, it is still true that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal; that thus historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man; where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“With two thousand years of Christianity behind him ... a man can’t see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)