Alwa was one of the Christian Nubian states occupying the Nile region before the rise of Funj power. The passage presents its decline as a prolonged process rather than a single event, shaped by Arab settlement near Soba and by the weakening of central authority. The customary date of the kingdom’s fall, 1504, coincides with the establishment of the Funj sultanate at Sennar, but the two developments may not have occurred simultaneously.

Soba, the political centre of Alwa, was probably conquered by Arabs acting independently of the Funj. The tradition attributes the operation to Chief Abdallah Jamma', leader of the Kawasima section of the Rufa'a Arabs, who is said to have acted against the alleged tyranny of the kings of Alwa. The city was conquered and probably destroyed, while its inhabitants were dispersed.

After the fall of Soba, Abdallah’s descendants, known as the Abdallabi, gained supremacy over nomadic groups and Arabized Nubians around the confluence of the two Niles and farther north. They established their capital at Kerri near the Sabluka gorge, a position that commanded the main Nile. Their authority was soon challenged by the Funj, whose victory created a new political order in the Nilotic Sudan.