The Kitāb aḫbār al-Nūba, written in the last quarter of the tenth century, and the History of churches and monasteries of Egypt (= HEME) composed in the late twelfth–early thirteenth century by Abū al-Makārim (and others), have long been recognised as the best-informed Arabic sources concerning Medieval Nubia. However, the textual relations between the two works have not attracted much attention in modern scholarship, despite the intriguing presence in both texts of seemingly similar descriptions. The aim of the present article is to investigate the nature of the link connecting the two accounts through a close comparison of the four passages that appear to be textually related.