Dongola, town, northern Sudan. It lies on the west bank of the Nile River, about 278 miles (448 km) northwest of Khartoum. The town is an agricultural centre for the surrounding area, which produces cotton, wheat, barley, sugarcane, and vegetables. Dongola is linked by road with Wādī Ḥalfāʾ and Marawī and has a domestic airport.
The historic town of Old Dongola (Dunqulah al-Qadīmah or Dunqulah al-ʿAjūz) was situated on the east bank of the Nile about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of present-day Dongola. Old Dongola was the capital of the Christian kingdom of Makurra from the mid-6th century. Old Dongola was besieged in 652 by a Muslim army from Egypt under ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿd ibn Abī Sarḥ, who agreed to raise the siege only after conclusion of a pact, which regulated relations between Egypt and Dongola for some six centuries thereafter. Medieval Dongola was described as having many churches, large houses, wide streets within a city wall, and, from 1002, a red-brick palace. After the Christian kingdom of Nubia collapsed (14th century), Dongola became a Muslim town. Upon the establishment at Sennar of the Funj dynasty (16th century), it emerged as the seat of a tributary king whose dominion extended northward to the third cataract of the Nile. Following the rise of the Shāyqīyah confederacy of Dongola in the late 17th century, the region was ruled by petty chiefs, and the principal north-south trade routes tended to skirt Dongola. In its subsequent decline, Dongola was prey both to the Shāqīyah from within and to Mamlūk refugees fleeing southward from Egypt. By the time these refugees founded the present-day Dongola as a camp in the early 19th century, Old Dongola had sunk into ruins and been abandoned. Pop. (2008 prelim.) 56,167.