Georgios of Makuria’s embassy to the caliph and the revision of the baqt

Under the baqt, concluded after the failed Arab siege of Dongola in 651 or 652, Makuria owed Egypt an annual delivery of slaves in exchange for Egyptian goods. The payments had lapsed during the turmoil that shook Egypt in the years after the war of al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, and in 835 an Abbasid envoy, sent on behalf of the caliph al-Mu'tasim, demanded the arrears of fourteen years — more than five thousand slaves — on pain of war. King Zacharias III could not meet such a demand. He made his son Georgios, then about twenty, co-ruler — perhaps with the Byzantine title of caesar, to add to his prestige — and sent him to negotiate with the caliph in person.

Georgios travelled with his retinue down the Nile and on to Baghdad; the Syriac chronicler Michael the Syrian, writing in the 12th century, describes his arrival there vividly, and the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, Joseph I, is said to have helped the negotiations. The educated and courteous prince won over the caliph: the fourteen years of arrears were written off, the baqt was made payable every three years instead of annually, and wine was dropped from the Egyptian side of the exchange. Georgios returned to Dongola in 836 or early 837 laden with gifts. Because the Egyptian sources on these events are late and partly contradictory, some historians doubt whether he went beyond Egypt.

The embassy, which came to al-Mu'tasim in the years when he was moving his court from Baghdad to Samarra, is a rare glimpse of the diplomacy between Christian Nubia and the caliphate. After Georgios’s return Dongola was adorned with a great new church, the Cruciform Church, some 28 m high and the largest building in the kingdom. Georgios later reigned alone from some time before 856 until about 887, and the baqt, with interruptions, remained in force until the 14th century.