Dar al-Manasir

Dar al-Manasir (Arabic: دار المناصير) is the region of the Fourth Cataract, the most impassable of all rapids of the Nile. It is the homeland of the Arab tribe of the Manasir and from them gets its name. Still today the water rapids cannot be crossed by any large boats making the region accessible only via a sandy and rocky desert track.

At the height of the Island of Muqrat (N 19°30') the Nile river is blocked from its northward course taking a sharp turn SSW for 280 kilometres before continuing to flow north. In the middle of this S-shape between the Bayudah Desert to the south and the Nubian Desert to the north, the Nile is forced by the topography to split up into a multitude of tributaries forming a fertile river oasis of small rocky islands described by the traveller GRAY (1949:120) with the following words: "Whereas usually [agriculture] in the Nile Valley […] is confined to the belt on two banks on which the river has deposited silt, in this cataract area, where islands are scattered like a flock of goats, the number of silt-covered river banks in any given 10 kilometres may be up to a dozen".

Dar al-Manasir will be successively flooded by the Merowe Dam project.