Map - Shendi

Shendi or Shandi (شندي) is a small city in northern Sudan, situated on the southeastern bank of the Nile River 150 km northeast of Khartoum. Shandi is also about 45 km southwest of the ancient city of Meroë. Located in the River Nile state, Shandi is the center of the Ja'alin tribe and an important historic trading center. It's principal suburb on the west bank is Matamma. A major traditional trade route across the Bayuda Desert connects Matamma to Merowe and Napata, 250 km to the northwest. The city is the historical capital of the powerful Arabised Nubian Ja'alin tribe whom most of its denizens belong to. The village of Hosh Bannaga, where former President Omar al-Bashir's hometown is, is located on the outskirts of the city.

The narrations and interpretations differed about the meaning of the word “Shendi” and the reason for naming the city with it. Sudan in the sixth century and thereafter constitutes a large market slavery in which the trade exchange takes place in cash, but it is likely that the name was used for this site since the Kingdom of Meroe, as Shendi was a known and existing human gathering before The rise of the Christian kingdoms in Sudan, and the question also revolves around the origin of the ancient Nubian language from which it was derived, and there is no evidence that the ancient Shendi market was limited to the slave trade, and whether that trade was done with money or by barter.

According to another version that goes by the same doctrine, the word Shendi is an old Nubian word that has been distorted and means “lip” because it falls in the bend of the Nile River, which is similar to the shape of the lips. But the shape of the bend of the Nile in the region can only be seen through aerial photography, which was not possible when the city was established.

Another interpretation of the meaning of the word is that it meant in the Meroitic language “the ram”, because the place was a pasture for sheep that were being sanctified in the Kingdom of Meroe, which is clearly shown in the remains of the statues inside the sheep hall at the entrance Al-Naq’a Palace and the Al-Bajrawiya area, though the letters of the Meroitic writing have not been deciphered so far so that this interpretation can be verified, and perhaps this is the reason why some attribute the name to the Daju language that uses the same pronunciation for sheep, asserting that the Daju tribe The area was settled before leaving it, heading to Kordofan and Darfur in the face of the invasion of the Abyssinian Lmeroy under the leadership of Aizana the king of Axum. The name, according to another different narration, is derived from the word "Shanda", which is the long winter in the language of the Beja people, which used to inhabit the region in ancient times.

Referring to the ancient Egyptian Pharaonic sources (Egyptian hieroglyphs), it is clear that the ancient Egyptians used the name Shendi to refer to the acacia trees, and it is known that the Shendi region has a large number of this type of tree.