16th century, although a Franciscan letter confirms the existence of a community immediately south of Dongola practicing a "debased Christianity" as late as 1742. According to the 1699 account of Poncet, Muslims reacted to meeting Christians in the streets of Sennar by reciting the Shahada. The Fazughli region seems to have been Christian at least for one generation after its conquest in 1685; a Christian principality was mentioned in the region as late as 1773. The Tigre in north-western Eritrea, who were part of the Beni Amer confederation, remained Christians until the 19th century. Rituals stemming from Christian traditions outlived the conversion to Islam and were still practiced as late as the 20th century. From the 17th century foreign Christian groups, mostly merchants, were present in Sennar, including Copts, Ethiopians, Greeks, Armenians and Portuguese. The sultanate also served as interstation for Ethiopian Christians travelling to Egypt and the Holy Land as well as European missionaries travelling to Ethiopia. Languages In the Christian period, Nubian languages had been spoken between the region from Aswan in the north to an undetermined point south of the confluence of the Blue and White Nile. They remained important during the Funj period, but were gradually superseded by Arabic, a process accomplished in central Sudan by the 19th century. After the Funj conversion to Islam, Arabic grew to become the lingua franca of administration and trade while also being employed as language of religion. While the royal court would continue to speak their pre-Arabic language for some time by 1700, the language of communication at the court had become Arabic. In the 18th century, Arabic became the written language of state administration. As late as 1821, when the kingdom fell, some provincial noblemen were still not capable of speaking Arabic. Evliya Çelebi (17th century) and Joseph Russegger (mid 19th century) described a pre-Arabic language in the Funj heartland. Çelebi provided a listing of numerals as well as a poem, both written in Arabic script; the numerals are clearly Kanuri, while the language used for the poem remains unidentified. Russegger stated that a Fungi language, sounding similar to Nubian and having absorbed many Arabic words, was spoken as far north as Khartoum, albeit already reduced to a secondary role compared to Arabic. In Kordofan, Nubian was still spoken as primary or at least secondary language as late as the 1820s and 1830s. Trade During the reign of