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Sudan in the "Cataln Atlas"

Historical flags

Last modified: 2019-01-06 by bruce berry
Keywords: sudan | book of all kingdoms | dongola | dobaha | sohan |
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Background

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


Nubia (city)

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 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

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.
Tomislav Todorovic, 04 Sept 2016