Barbar

Berber stands on the Nile north of the Atbara confluence, at the meeting of river traffic and desert roads. A caravan route ran east from the town across the Nubian Desert to Suakin on the Red Sea, connecting the Nile valley with the maritime trade of the coast. The town's fortunes fluctuated with those of the routes it served: raids disrupted trade from Dongola in the eighteenth century, and in 1814 the traveller Burckhardt found much of Berber in ruins.