Nubian, Fedicca-Mohas

The Fedicca-Mohas are the Nubians who speak Nobiin, the largest Nile Nubian language and the direct descendant of Old Nubian, the written language of the medieval Christian kingdoms of Nobatia and Makuria. 'Fadicca' (Fadija, Fadidja) is the name of the Egyptian branch, whose villages ran from Korosko to the Sudanese border at Wadi Halfa; 'Mohas' (Mahas) is one of the Sudanese branches, alongside the Halfawi and Sukkot, between Wadi Halfa and the Third Cataract. Folk etymology reads Fadija as 'valley of the five', after five founding tribes. The Fadicca are one of the three sections of Egyptian Nubia, south of the Arabic-speaking villages and the Kenzi-speaking Kunuz, whose language Nobiin speakers do not understand, so Nubians of different sections talk to each other in Arabic. The Aswan High Dam drowned the whole of Egyptian and much of Sudanese Nubia in the 1960s: the Fadicca were moved to replacement villages near Kom Ombo, the Halfawi to New Halfa in eastern Sudan.

Nobiin is the language of home, village and song: folk songs, proverbs and wedding chants carry the memory of the river, and a large part of everyday vocabulary is now borrowed from Arabic. Villages are built around spacious courtyard houses with vaulted or domed rooms and facades painted in geometric and floral designs. Weddings run over several days with henna nights, processions, tar drums and clapping songs; marriage within the section and the village is preferred, and both maternal and paternal kin carry obligations. Men long migrated to Cairo, Alexandria and the Gulf for work while women kept the villages, and in the cities each village keeps its own association, which runs weddings, funerals, savings and, increasingly, Nobiin classes. Food centres on flatbreads, stews, dates and fish.

Sunni Muslims since the slow end of the Christian kingdoms between the 14th and 16th centuries. Practice is orthodox in form, with mosque prayer, Ramadan and Qur'an teaching, but older Nile customs survive: visits to the river at births, weddings and circumcisions, belief in river spirits, saints' shrines, protective amulets and spirit-possession ceremonies among women. Resettlement away from the river weakened the river rites, and younger, urban Nubians tend toward mainstream Egyptian Sunni practice.

Scripture in Nobiin is limited to old portions (the Gospel of Mark, 1885, on YouVersion); Global Recordings Network has audio recordings, and there is no Jesus Film in Nobiin. Nearly all speakers read Arabic, so the Arabic Bible, films and broadcasts are open to them, though nothing is made for them in their own language. Nubia was Christian for about a thousand years, and church ruins and Old Nubian manuscripts are part of the people's story. No known church or fellowship of Nubian believers exists among them.

Nobiin has no place in Egyptian schools, but Nubians teach it themselves: village associations in Cairo and Alexandria run classes, a Nobiin Language Club meets in Cairo, poets teach online on YouTube, and the Nubian Forum for Language and Heritage (founded 2020) links over 1,200 members in Egypt and abroad. Some write Nobiin in the Old Nubian alphabet, others in Arabic or Latin letters on social media. Attendance is mostly by those already committed, and a linguist at Alexandria University warned in 2025 that the Nubian languages could become academic subjects within a generation.

The ancestors of the Fedicca-Mohas were Christian for nearly a millennium. The Kingdom of Nobatia (founded circa 350 CE) and later the unified Kingdom of Makuria ruled Christian Nubia from the 6th to the 14th century. Their language, Old Nubian, is the direct ancestor of modern Nobiin and is attested in thousands of manuscripts, church inscriptions, and legal documents written in a modified Coptic/Greek script. The kingdoms maintained diplomatic relations with the Byzantine Empire and resisted Arab-Muslim expansion for centuries. Conversion to Islam occurred gradually between the 14th and 16th centuries. This Christian heritage makes the Fedicca-Mohas a rare case of a post-Christian Muslim community with a documented thousand-year Christian history.