African Jihad: Al-Qaeda in Darfur

Posted on April 30, 2006 by McGregor

Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies Commentary

April 2006

Could a United Nations peacekeeping mission face al-Qaeda’s fighters in Darfur? According to Osama bin Laden, if a UN force deploys in the region, al-Qaeda will attack UN troops. On April 23, al-Jazeera television broadcast a bin Laden audiotape in which he called for al-Qaeda fighters to begin traveling to Darfur to prepare for a “long-term war against the Crusaders,” an apparent reference to the UN force (controlled by the United States in bin Laden’s mind) that could replace the ineffective African Union mission in the region. The commander of the United Nations Mission in Sudan has announced that the UN force is treating Bin Laden’s threat with “whole seriousness” (Sudan Tribune, April 26). The Sudanese government is doing everything possible to prevent a large-scale UN deployment in Darfur, but this sudden offer of al-Qaeda assistance is surely unwelcome in Khartoum.

Bin Laden in Sudan

Bin Laden’s presence in Sudan from 1991 to 1996 was enabled by Hassan al-Turabi, the country’s leading Islamist, widely regarded at the time as the real (and unelected) power behind the presidency. Times have changed in Sudan, however. Al-Turabi’s influence on the government waned long ago. His one-time deputy has usurped his position, and al-Turabi has spent most of the last few years in prison or under house arrest. To add to his woes, he has been accused of heresy for his recently declared liberal views on the role of women in Islamic society. Al-Turabi made many enemies in his ruthless pursuit of an Islamic state in Sudan, and they will surely now circle in to take their revenge. The government has seen changes as well; under the provisions of the peace treaty with the South, Southern Sudanese Christians now occupy leading positions in the administration. They are no fans of al-Qaeda.

Most Sudanese do not admire the Wahhabist-style Islam espoused by al-Qaeda. Their Islam is based on the proud Sufi lodges, whose form of worship is violently opposed by al-Qaeda. While al-Turabi and others have had some success in their efforts to radicalize the population, most local Muslims will tell you that Sudanese Islam is in no need of improvement by outsiders. Not everyone in the Khartoum regime shared al-Turabi’s fondness for al-Qaeda. When bin Laden was in Sudan, the suspicious Mukhabarat (secret service) took note of every move and utterance by bin Laden and his associates. Attempts were made to turn thousands of pages of intelligence over to the United States after bin Laden was deported in 1996, but the Clinton administration refused to have anything to do with a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

Despite his sojourn in Sudan, the al-Qaeda leader appears poorly informed about the country. He describes the conflict in Darfur as tribal differences cleverly manipulated by the United States to “send crusader troops to occupy the region and steal its oil under the guise of preserving security there.” In doing so, bin Laden ignores all the environmental, economic, political, ethnic and religious factors behind the current war. His suggestion that “crusader” forces are trying to “steal” Darfur’s oil resources under the pretext of peacekeeping is absurd. Sudan’s main oil industry is located in Upper Nile Province and is already owned by a Chinese-Malaysian consortium. It will take much more than a peacekeeping force to change that. The Sudanese/Swiss ABCO corporation claims that preliminary drilling in Darfur revealed “abundant” reserves of oil, but it appears that the rights may have already passed into Chinese hands (AlertNet, June 15, 2005; Guardian, June 10, 2005).

China has emerged as the Sudanese regime’s protector on the UN Security Council, and may use its veto to prevent the formation of a UN force in Darfur. China has been quietly active in Sudan for decades, developing a close relationship with the current regime. Sudan already provides 10 percent of China’s petroleum imports. Any attempt by the “crusaders” to bring Sudanese petroleum reserves under Western control could cause friction with China.

Bin Laden also claims that the Sudanese government has abandoned Sharia law, which is surely news to everyone in Sudan. His assertion that the southern separatist/nationalist movement was sponsored by Great Britain after independence defies historical reality. Ironically, in view of his own failure to grasp regional issues, Bin Laden calls on the mujahideen to learn everything they can about Darfur, for “it has been said that a man with knowledge can conquer land while land can conquer the ignorant.”

Unwelcome Jihadis

One of the two main Darfur rebel groups, the Islamist Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), is allied with al-Turabi, yet even they have rejected bin Laden’s appeal. A JEM spokesman declared that “Bin Laden is still preaching the theory of an American-Zionist conspiracy when the real problem comes from Khartoum, which is a Muslim government killing other Muslims” (Sudan Tribune, April 23). JEM’s rival group of rebels in Darfur, the much larger Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), has gone even further, declaring that bin Laden’s intent is to “exterminate the peoples of Darfur.” The Sudanese government dismissed bin Laden’s appeal, announcing that Sudan would not play host to terrorists. Government spokesmen also declared that a decision to replace African Union forces with UN troops “is not going to be imposed on Sudan” (Sudan Vision Daily, May 8).
The regime of President Omar al-Bashir has bought time to implement its Darfur policy by aligning itself closely with the United States in the war on terrorism. Sudanese intelligence provides valuable information to U.S. security services, knowing that the U.S. desire to protect its homeland overrides human rights concerns in distant states. It is a calculating approach that requires considerable finesse, taking what one can, but never going too far. Allowing al-Qaeda back into the country is not just a step too far, but a jump into the volcano, particularly at a time when Washington appears to be taking a harder line on Khartoum.

Janjaweed on the Move

It is unlikely that any UN force will be deployed without the permission of the Sudanese government. There will be difficulties in the mission, but the Sudanese government’s aims in Darfur have been largely realized, and it is unlikely that any international force will be entrusted with the job of restoring lands seized by the Janjaweed militias to the dispossessed tribes. The peace agreement’s call for the Sudanese government to supervise the disarmament of the Janjaweed is the main reason for the refusal of Abdul-Wahid Muhammad al-Nur’s faction of the SLA to sign the document (Asharq al-Awsat, May 9).

With desertification sterilizing the traditional grazing lands of the Darfur nomads who supply the bulk of Janjaweed manpower, it will prove nearly impossible to cast the militias and their families back into the desert, regardless of their crimes. Some Janjaweed leaders (like Sheikh Musa Hilal) are already appealing for peace in the interests of consolidating their gains. In the meantime, discipline is breaking down in the African Union force, which has not been paid in two months (Daily Trust, Abuja, May 8). The commander of the AU troops, Major General Collins Ihekire, has called for a quick deployment of UN troops to reinforce the AU mission, whose mandate has been extended until the end of September (IRIN, May 9).

Conclusion

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has displayed little interest in exporting Islamic revolution beyond Sudan. That was al-Turabi’s mission, and the president has already threatened to execute him. Similarly, al-Bashir has no interest in hosting a group of armed foreign Islamists who could threaten his regime and whose presence would isolate Sudan internationally. Bin Laden’s declared aim of disrupting the North-South peace agreement is completely at odds with the aims of the regime. Sudan is exhausted by war, and there is oil to be pumped from the wells of the South. The abandonment of the Sudanese government’s jihad in South Sudan was recognition that war is bad for business.

Bin Laden qualified his offer of support by noting that it was not his intention to defend the Khartoum government, for “even though our interests may be mutual, our differences with it are great.” How can bin Laden send fighters to aid a regime that he just announced he does not particularly support? What does bin Laden expect will happen to them once they arrive? If this message is genuinely from bin Laden, it suggests that the terrorist leader is desperately searching for a cause to sustain his movement. There is a crime in Islam called fitna; it means creating discord among Muslims, and it is one of Islam’s greatest offenses. Bin Laden apparently believes that sending Muslims to disrupt peace treaties negotiated by (and between) other Muslims is a suitable aim for his movement. With or without the peace treaty in the works in Abuja, neither Sudan’s government nor the Darfur rebels desire the assistance of al-Qaeda. Should bin Laden’s followers head to Darfur, there is no doubt a hot reception awaits them.

Terrorism and Violence in the Sudan: The Islamist Manipulation of Darfur, Part Two

Posted on July 1, 2005 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

July 1, 2005

This is the second of a two part series on Islamism and Terrorism in Darfur.

The conflict in Darfur is closely tied to the War on Terrorism, largely because the influence of the U.S. to deter ethnic and political violence in the region has been compromised by its growing security alliance with Sudan’s ruling Islamists. Despite meager popular support, the now divided Islamist faction continues to dominate both government and opposition in Khartoum. The radical racial and religious policies of this group have resulted in a shocking tally of death that far surpasses anything committed by al-Qaeda. The price of security cooperation with Sudan’s rulers is the risk of complicity in the brutal destruction of an ancient culture that once rivaled the kingdoms of the Nile.

Although it has been a decade since al-Qaeda operated within Sudan, the nation has been an important recruiting ground with its pool of young men indoctrinated in the government’s jihadist ideology. For now, the insularity of Sudanese Islamism and a distrust of ambitious foreigners preclude active al-Qaeda involvement in the Darfur conflict, but a sudden break in the security partnership with the U.S. could see a return of foreign militants.

Sudan’s western province is widely viewed in Khartoum as a proxy battle-ground for the continuing struggle by President al-Bashir and the security apparatus against Hassan al-Turabi’s Islamist following. Indeed, the terror that has descended on Darfur reveals a shocking cynicism both on the part of the government and the leading opposition party. The atrocities of the government-backed Janjawid militias have occurred under the cover of negotiations to end the war in South Sudan, which no party (especially the United States after its considerable diplomatic investment) wishes to derail. The growing relationship between the CIA and the Sudanese security chiefs (some of whom were named in Congress as suspects in Darfur war-crimes) has effectively sidelined U.S. influence in Darfur. The main groups involved in the fighting in Darfur are described below.

The Janjawid Militias

The development of the Janjawid is a direct consequence of the ethnic composition of the Sudanese regular army. For decades the regular Sudanese army has been largely formed (60-65%) from Kordofan Nubas and recruits from Darfur. Despite the civil war, the Sudanese army also relies on a large number of troops from the south. For all the rhetoric of jihad in Khartoum, service in the military appeals to few of the Nile-based Arabs who control the political process. With the Darfur troops considered politically unreliable in fighting their kinsmen, the government sought an alternative fighting force in Darfur that could be motivated by racial hatred.

Most Janjawid are drawn from the northern camel-raising Arabs who have suffered most from the disappearance of pasturelands. There are allegations that the Sudanese government has recruited Janjawid from the “Arab” tribes of Chad (such as the Salamat). The Janjawid also recruit from the Fellata population, Muslim migrants from West Africa who are receptive to the message of Islamism. Many Janjawid are simply common criminals, reliable for the dirty work and expendable when international pressure forces a round of arrests. Few, if any, of the Janjawid come from the powerful Baqqara Arab tribes of South Darfur. The Janjawid number about 15,000 – significantly larger than both rebel groups.

Save for the AK-47s and satellite-phones, the horse and camel-mounted Janjawid militias most resemble traditional raiding parties. The tools of the Janjawid (“Devils on Horseback”) include massacres, torture, mutilation and gang-rape. Their main victims are the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa, all of whom once presided over sultanates on the territory of modern Darfur. Janjawid units are expected to pay themselves through the proceeds of looting. Motorized units of the regular army often assist Janjawid raids. Khartoum’s ancient fleet of Antonov bombers has been put to use in Darfur, dropping crude barrel-bombs full of explosives and scrap metal to soften up villages before Janjawid attacks. The use of government helicopter-gunships was common earlier in the conflict before several helicopters were lost to rebel fire.

Janjawid leader Musa Hilal is the son of a leading Jalul Rizayqat shaykh with a long career as a militant/brigand. He was released from prison to take command of the militias. Hilal claimed in an interview with Human Rights Watch that senior officers of the Sudanese regular army led all Janjawid field operations. After being recalled to Khartoum, a reinvented Musa Hilal has emerged as a traveling ambassador of peace and reconciliation, urging Darfuris to unite through intermarriage. This goodwill effort seems tied to attempts to make elements of the Janjawid “disappear” by incorporating members into the police and Popular Defense Forces (a government paramilitary). Undisciplined Janjawid forces are even reported to have engaged in fighting with the regular army.

Rebels: The Sudan Liberation Army/Sudan Liberation Movement

The SLA is composed mostly of Zaghawa and Fur, with representation from the Masalit, Daju and other tribes. The origins of the movement can be found in the self-defense militias created by the Fur in the late 1980s. A Fur lawyer, Abdul-Wahid Muhammad al-Nur, created the Darfur Liberation Front (soon renamed the SLA) in 2002 and armed the group by raiding a police station. Minni Arkou Minnawi, a leader of the secular, left-wing SLA maintains that the movement is not separatist in nature, but has specific demands regarding aid, development, political recognition and the insertion of international peace-keepers. The movement espouses a nationalist approach in which Sudan’s remoter regions would receive the same attention as the Nile corridor.

Unit of the SLA-MM – Note this fighter’s large collection of amulets (Sudan Tribune)

Like most armed groups in the field (including the regular army) the SLA feeds itself at the expense of civilian farmers. Funding for arms comes largely from Fur communities in the Persian Gulf States and other parts of the Sudan. The guerrillas operate in groups of four-wheel drive vehicles mounted with heavy machine-guns over ground they know intimately. The SLA aspires to the highly-mobile tactics used so successfully by the northern tribes of Chad to expel the Libyans, but more closely resemble the low-level military activity of the similarly equipped 1990s Tuareg rebellion in Mali and Niger.

In early 2004, the SLA joined the National Democratic Alliance, a fractious grouping of the southern SPLA and various northern opposition parties. [1] The SLA also signed a cooperative agreement with the Beja Congress, a long established militant group in Sudan’s eastern region representing Muslim non-Africans complaining of similar underdevelopment and under-representation in the central government. The accord was signed in Eritrea, which has also been accused by Khartoum of providing military assistance to the Darfur rebels.

Rebels: The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)

The government describes the Islamist JEM as the military wing of the PCP, but so far JEM has proved less militarily effective than the SLA. The movement is led by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim Muhammad, a Turabi loyalist and author of The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan, an outlawed manifesto that claims the Nile-based Arabs have dominated the government since independence at the expense of the majority of Sudanese. JEM units cooperated with SLA forces in the opening phase of the rebellion in February 2003. For a time the government tried to negotiate a separate agreement with the SLA, but the SLA demanded that both parties be part of the peace process.

Like the SLA, JEM finds many eager recruits in the refugee camps of Chad. Like the Janjawid, JEM also draws recruits from the Fellata population, which was not granted citizenship until 1989 under an al-Turabi initiative. Islamism has a small but fervent constituency of recent vintage in Darfur. Islam as practiced in Darfur is highly different from the Islamist orthodoxy of Khartoum, incorporating many traditional customs and beliefs. It is unlikely that all of JEM’s guerrillas back the Islamist project, but may have found in the organization the means to obtain the weapons and vehicles needed to take revenge for the loss of farms and families. Most of the JEM funding is believed to come through Turabi’s organization. In early May, both the JEM and the SLA appealed to Muammar Qaddafi for funds and political support. Of late Qaddafi has abandoned Arabism for the cause of African unity and identity.

Conclusion

The Sudanese government has considerable military power that would enable it to restore order in Darfur, but is understandably reluctant to divert its resources from the South until the peace process there has been completed. Offers of peacekeeping assistance from the SPLA have been met with charges of SPLA military aid to the rebels in Darfur. The strategy of the Sudanese security forces in Darfur follows a pattern established in the war in the South; divide the opposition through bribery and the inflammation of ethnic or tribal differences while arming pro-government militias. The resulting death or displacement of the population eventually isolates rebel units from sources of support.

In some sense the people of Darfur are being made to pay the price for the private humiliation of Sudan’s security apparatus, resentful that it has had to come to the negotiating table with the South Sudan’s SPLA. The terms of the peace settlement with the SPLA virtually ensure further revolts elsewhere in Sudan to wring similar considerations from the highly centralized government in Khartoum. Unfortunately, the manipulation of race and Islam is likely to continue to substitute for a willingness to create an equitable distribution of wealth and power.

Notes

Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army, a South Sudanese rebel force commanded by John Garang, not to be confused with the SLA of Darfur.

Terrorism and Violence in the Sudan: The Islamist Manipulation of Darfur: Part One

Posted on June 17, 2005 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

June 17, 2005

The United States has made some strange alliances in the War on Terrorism, but none odder than its growing relationship with the ruling Islamists of Sudan. Once eager hosts of Osama bin Laden, Sudan’s Islamist movement has since split, with the two factions now fighting a proxy war in Darfur. In the 1990s, the U.S. rejected every initiative offered by the Sudanese to cooperate on counter-terrorism issues, including an offer to extradite Osama bin Laden. The Sudanese government’s willingness to share its copious intelligence on al-Qaeda has now bought it some immunity from responsibility for the atrocities in Darfur. The CIA has initiated close contacts with Sudanese intelligence director Major-Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, who has also been identified in Congress as a war crimes suspect for his exploits in Darfur. In a sign of growing cooperation many Sudanese prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been released to Sudanese authorities. Besides intelligence sharing, the U.S. is also keen to protect the peace agreement that will end the North-South civil war and release vast new reserves of oil onto the market.

Dr. Hassan al-Turabi

The Arming of Darfur

During the 1980s the Umma Party government of Sadiq al-Mahdi and private sponsors (including General Swahr al-Dahab, a former President of Sudan) began arming Arab militias in South Darfur known as Murahalin. The object of the militias was to put pressure on the Bahr al-Ghazal heartland of the Dinkas (the leading tribe in the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army), which lies directly south of Darfur. [1] With the arms came a Khartoum-based ideology of Arab superiority. The Murahalin carried out their duties with enthusiasm. Looting, murder, abductions and all manner of atrocities were practiced, all without government responsibility, as the militias were not part of the regular army. The Murahalin would serve as the model for the Janjawid raiders of today.

Arms flooded Darfur as the region became a staging base for armed groups involved in the struggle to control Chad in the 1980s. In the 1970s and 1980s many Darfuri followers of the Umma Party were forced into exile in Libya, where they joined Muammar Qaddafi’s Islamic Legion, a force of Arabs, Tuareg and West Africans. Many of these exiles absorbed heavy doses of the radical Arabist ideology propagated by Qaddafi at the time. Qaddafi proposed the creation of an “Arab corridor” through North Africa, which implied the expulsion or extermination of the non-Arab tribes of central Darfur. Based in Libyan-occupied northern Chad, the Islamic Legion became an important conduit for the cross-border arms trade. Law enforcement vanished and in its absence even peaceful communities were forced to arm themselves.

Ecological pressures began to force the nomadic Zaghawa and the northern Arab tribes into the territory of the Fur, the pre-colonial rulers of the region. Attempts to settle there were opposed by the Fur and fighting broke out after which the army focused its efforts on punishing the non-Arab Zaghawa. The Arab tribes were given a free hand to seize land, resulting in the death of thousands of Fur and the displacement of tens of thousands more. In 1991, an ill-fated attempt was made by the southern-based Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army to open a new Fur-led front in the civil war. The local SPLA leader, Daoud Bolad, was a former member of Hassan al-Turabi’s Islamist National Islamic Front (NIF) but became involved in Fur self-defense militias in the late 1980s. He emerged in 1991 as leader of the new SPLA front in Darfur. Bolad’s brief military success was followed by defeat and death in prison.

In the late 1990s, even as oil money began to pour into Khartoum, funds for government services in Darfur began to dry up. Security was virtually non-existent in the countryside and military garrisons rarely ventured out. Gun-rule made an unwelcome return. In 1998 and 1999, northern Arab tribes began moving their herds into Masalit lands earlier than usual, leading to violence in which the Masalit got the worst of it. Thirty thousand Masalit fled to Chad where they were still attacked by Arab militias.

The Turabi Factor

Former leader of the Muslim Brothers and founder of the National Islamic Front, Hassan al-Turabi’s life-long goal of establishing an Arabized and Islamic state in Sudan has run roughshod over the cultural and religious sensibilities of many Sudanese. His first attempt at introducing Islamic law as Attorney-General, the “September Laws” of 1983, was reviled by Muslims and Christians alike. Its emphasis on huddud (traditional Islamic punishments, including amputations and crucifixion) shocked most Sudanese. As the civil war worsened and then-President Ja’afar Nimeiri’s position became more precarious in coup-prone Khartoum, Turabi and the Muslim Brothers were rounded up and blamed for the rapidly deteriorating security situation.

Nimeiri’s overthrow brought a brief spell of ineffective civilian government until Turabi joined Brigadier Umar al-Bashir in an Islamist coup in 1989. Bashir was installed as President with Turabi as an unaccountable power behind the throne. Strict interpretation of Islamic law returned and a brutal campaign against the non-Arab Nuba of Kordofan in 1991-1992 targeted both Muslims and Christians. Even mosques were destroyed in an explicit rejection of non-Arab Islam. Under the influence of Turabi and his deputy ‘Ali ‘Uthman Muhammad Taha the war in the South became a jihad against disbelievers. The ruling arrangement lasted until 1996 when disagreements between Bashir and Turabi seemed to leave the latter in the ascendance. However Turabi miscalculated in 1999 when he introduced legislation restricting the power of the president. Consequently Bashir reasserted his authority and the NIF split under the resulting pressure. Bashir’s supporters became the governing National Congress Party while Turabi’s followers went into opposition as the Popular Congress Party (PCP). Most of the NIF’s membership in Darfur joined the PCP.

Turabi was arrested in 2001 under emergency laws and sent to Khobar prison. His offence was opening peace negotiations with the SPLA without government approval. Turabi was not only held in solitary confinement, but was judged so dangerous that a wall was built around his cell to prevent any interaction with other prisoners. Eventually he was released to house arrest and freed in October 2003.

On April 15, 2005, a Sudanese court sentenced 21 soldiers and 3 others for mounting a coup attempt in March 2004. Two-thirds of the convicted were members of Turabi’s PCP and many of the leaders were military officers from Darfur. Turabi was re-arrested at the time but not charged, though he accused the government of arming the Janjawid raiders of Darfur and purging Black African officers from the army. Following the alleged coup attempt the government suspended the PCP from political activities, partly on charges of aiding insurrection in Darfur. State prosecutors also alleged participation by Turabi in a second coup attempt in September 2004. Most of those charged were from Darfur and alleged by the government to be PCP members. Again Turabi was not charged even though the Attorney-General claimed to have evidence he “indirectly” planned the coup.

After his release, Turabi denounced the government’s actions in Darfur and called for greater political representation for the region in the central government. He also asserted that the government of Chad was responsible for some of the violence in Darfur. [2] The allegations may refer to military aid provided by the Zaghawa-dominated government in Chad to their Zaghawa cousins in the rebel Sudan Liberation Army.

There are many signs that Turabi uses the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM – the Islamist rebel group in Darfur) as a proxy army in his struggle against the government. Turabi covers his own complicity in the Darfur outrages by blaming the Sudanese government for encouraging militias and tribes to fight each other. According to Turabi, PCP members fighting alongside the JEM do so without his authorization. Turabi is playing a dangerous game and has received clear warning from the President: “It would not be difficult for us to bring in Turabi, to issue a presidential decree and have his head chopped off. We could do it and our conscience would not be bothered” [3]

Arab or African?

While the conflict in Darfur has its ethnic and political dimensions, it is largely sparked by the loss of nomadic pasture-lands to desertification or absorption into fenced-off farmland. The conflict also revolves around the traditional marginalization of Darfur, which is poorly represented in the central government and receives little development assistance. To complicate the issue, Darfur has also become a battleground in the ever-shifting web of political rivalries of Khartoum’s Islamists, bent on exploiting Sudan’s Arab/African identity crisis.

The roots of the conflict run deep in Darfur’s history. For centuries the camel-raising Arabs of north Darfur and the cattle-owning Arabs of South Darfur (the Baqqara) were reluctant subjects of the African Muslim Fur Dynasty. Tribute was often collected from the Arabs by force. Islam was better established in the Fur capital than amongst the nomadic Arab tribes and the Fur Sultan’s monopoly of the slave and ivory trade brought significant wealth to the kingdom.

The ancient sultanate was seized in 1874 by the slave army of Arab freebooter Zubayr Pasha and turned over to the Egyptian government. The Mahdi’s rebellion in the early 1880s brought down the Egyptian regime before going on to conquer most of the Sudan. After the Mahdi’s death, his successor, a Baqqara Arab from Darfur, brought the Baqqara tribes to Khartoum where they dominated all of Sudan. A succession of Fur “shadow-sultans” continued to fight for the restoration of the sultanate. The arrival of Kitchener’s British-Egyptian army in 1898 destroyed the power of the Baqqara Arabs.

Determined to eliminate the Sultan during WWI, the British began arming the Arab tribes of southern Kordofan and Darfur in preparation for an invasion of the Sultanate. The veteran Arabists who dominated British intelligence felt comfortable dealing with the Arabic-speaking nomads but had little regard for the “black” Fur. Encouraged by what seemed the approval of the Khartoum government, the Arab tribes wreaked havoc in Darfur and were only restrained with great difficulty at the end of the campaign. The Sultan’s death marked the end of the once-powerful African tribes as a political force in Darfur. Every effort was made to eliminate the legacy of Fur rule in the region, which gradually became a forgotten outpost, even after Sudanese independence in 1956.

There was always a high degree of mobility in Darfur between ethnic groups and intermarriage was common. Most tribes, both nomadic and sedentary, had sections formed from members of other tribes or ethnic groups. During British rule a great deal of effort was devoted to defining tribal borders in neat patterns that had little to do with the incredibly complex system of seasonal land use. These artificial divisions were then used to allocate dar-s (homelands) to each tribe. In the south, where Baqqara tribes had historically acknowledged land-claims, the system worked satisfactorily, but the Arabs of the north, who wandered with their herds in the pastures between farming communities, were never granted their own dar-s. This early interference in Darfur’s social structure laid the foundation for today’s conflict.

Notes:

The SPLA is not to be confused with the Darfur-based SLA (Sudan Liberation Army)
‘Turabi slams Government’, Sudan Mirror 1(11), March 1-14, 2004.
‘Sudanese president urges opposition party to dump Turabi’, AP, Sept. 27, 2004.

This article first appeared in the June 17, 2005 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor

Darfur in the Age of Stone Architecture – Index

Posted on December 30, 2001 by McGregor

McGregor, Andrew: Darfur in the Age of Stone Architecture c. AD 1000 – 1750: Problems in Historical Reconstruction, BAR International Series 1006, Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 53, 2001

Please note the names from the King-lists have not been included in the index.

Footnotes are indexed for content but not citations.

Aba Kuri: 96(fn.44)

Abalessa: 14, 14(fn.29)

‘Abbasids: 24, 25, 26(fn.39), 28(fn.65), 28(fn.65), 29(fn.73), 43, 48, 50, 50(fn.64), 51, 52, 55, 56, 128

‘Abd al-Gadir: 38,

‘Abd al-Karim, Sultan: 44, 45, 56, 77-78, 88

‘Abd al-Karim ibn Yame: 28(fn.65), 43

‘Abd al-Majid, Sultan: 44

‘Abd al-Qadir: 68

‘Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, Sultan: 96, 96(fn.39)

‘Abdallahi ibn Muhammad al-Khalifa: 62(fn.38)

‘Abdallab Arabs: 50(fn.64), 126

‘Abdullah Gema’a (Jama’a): 126-127

‘Abdullah Wad Hasoba al-Moghrabi: 62(fn.36)

‘Abdullahi Bahur, King: 28

‘Abdullahi Kamteinye, Sultan: 30

Abéché: 45, 77

Abo: 96(fn.44)

Abraham: 36(fn.44)

Abtar: 128(fn.68)

Abu Asal: 88, 95

Abu Delayk: 117

Abu Deleig: 125(fn.37)

Abu al-Fida: 22(fn.4), 23, 52

Abu Garan: 118-119

Abu Hadid: 129, 130

Abu Hamed: 37(fn.46), 124

Abu Hamid al-Gharnati: 38

Abu Haraz: 124(fn.32)

Abu Kundi: 89

Abu’l-Malik: 55

Abu Negila: 116(fn.4)

Abu’l-Qasim: 89, 89(fn.28), 96

Abu Qona’an: 16, 74, 117, 122(fn.6), 123, 128-130, 128(fn.68), 132, 140

Abu Sufyan (Sofyan): 122-124, 127, 127(fn.51), 130, 131, 134

Abu Suruj: 21

Abu Telfan: 23(fn.18), 45, 77

Abu Urug: 125

Abu Zabad: 28

Abu Zayd: 49-52, 52-53, 85

Abu’l-Sakaring Dynasty: 50

Abunjedah: 54

Al-Abwab: 37, 37(fn.46), 129, 129(fn.78)

Abydos: 25

Abyssinia, Abyssinians: 26(fn.38), 38, 111(fn.12), 129, 129(fn.79)

Acien, Kwanyireth Bol: 75

Adams, William Y.: 68, 123, 132(fn.5), 134

Al-Adayk: 49

Addison, F.: 122

Adelberger, J.: 64(fn.57)

Adimo (Dimo): 75

Adindan: 68(fn.97)

Ador, King: 37, 129

‘Agab, King: 85

Agadez: 137

Agadez Chronicle: 130

Agathermerus: 16

Agumbulum: 130

Ahaggar: 13(fn.26)

Ahl al-Awaid: 86

Ahmad Adam: 36

Ahmad al-‘Abbasid: 50

Ahmad Arbaf, Faki: 35

Ahmad Bakr, Sultan: 88-89, 93(fn.10), 95, 96, 96(fn.44)

Ahmad al-Daj: 25, 26, 27, 27(fn.45), 28, 29, 30

Ahmad al-Dia: 29

Ahmad Hamid: 61, 62(fn.37)

Ahmad al-Kabgawi: 27

Ahmad Kanjar: 45

Ahmad al-Ma’qur: 10, 18, 44, 46(fn.31), 49-56, 50(fn.60), 84-85, 87, 112(fn.26), 139

Ahmad al-Turkan: 28

Aidhab: 65

Ainyumba Daifani: 116

Aïr: 113, 130, 137

Akec La, Queen: 75

Akurwa: 75(fn.2)

Alans: 36(fn.44)

Albanians: 74

Albinism: 129, 129(fn.86)

Alexander the Great: 29, 36-39, 36(fns.44-45), 37(fns.51-52),

Alexandria: 126(fn.44)

Algeria: 13-14, 20,

‘Ali, A. Muhammad: 9

‘Ali Ahmad: 119(fn.36)

‘Ali Dinar (Sultan): 4, 11, 11(fn.s 10, 11), 12, 34(fn.26), 34(fn.29), 35, 43(fn.3), 45(fn.23), 54, 57(fn.5), 62(fn.38), 69, 78(fn.14), 96, 96(fn.38), 96(fn.40), 116, 116(fn.1)

‘Ali Dunama: 72

‘Ali Ghaji Zeinama: 72

‘Ali ibn Ahmad, Sultan: 72

‘Ali Korkorat, Sultan: 59, 59(fn.15)

‘Ali Musa: 45

Almásy, László Ede: 127(fn.57)

Almohads: 52

Almoravids: 110(fn.1)

Alwa (Aloa): 37(fn.46), 62(fn.36), 122, 123, 126(fn.44), 127, 131

Ama Soultane: 77

‘Amara Dunqas: 126

Ambus Masalit: 78(fn.14)

Amdang: 86

Aminu, Muhammadu: 16

Ammon: 37, 37(fns.53-54), 38

Ammon (place-name): 128

Amsa, Queen: 72

Amun-Re: 37

Anakim: 128

‘Anaj (Anag, Anak): 48(fn.53), 117, 122, 122(fn.6), 123-131, 123(fn.12), 124(fn.32), 125(fns.37,38), 127(fns.57,58), 128(fns.60,68), 130(fn.92), 140

Andal: 29

Andalus: 48

Anderson, AR: 37(fn.50)

Anedj: 129

‘Angarib, Sultan: 26, 27

Anglo-Egyptian Condominium: 12, 13, 27, 27(fn.52), 62(fn.42), 79, 124

Ani, King: 129, 129(fn.77)

Annok: 36(fn.41)

Anthony: 13(fn.26)

Arab, Arabs: 17, 18, 24(fn.25), 26, 28(fn.65), 31(fn.5), 36(fn.44), 43(fn.6), 44, 44(fn.8), 45, 45(fn.23), 48, 49, 50(fn.60), 53(fn.90), 55, 56, 57(fn.2), 62, 63(fn.47), 72(fn.128), 87, 88(fn.18), 89, 111, 111(fns.11,12), 116, 117, 119, 125(fn.33), 125(fn.37), 126, 128(fn.68), 129, 130, 139

Arabia: 2, 26(fn.38), 27, 28(fn.65), 29(fn.73), 38, 50, 117, 135, 136

Arabic: 11(fn.11), 13, 44(fn.13), 63, 64(fn.54), 71(fn.119), 73(fn.142), 75(fn.7), 77(fn.9), 96(fn.41), 97, 104, 109, 110(fn.1), 111(fn.11), 117(fn.15), 140

Arari: 96(fn.41)

Arin Dulo: 31

Arkell, AJ: 1, 7-9, 12, 16, 20, 21, 23(fn.16), 25, 26, 27, 29(fn.69), 31, 31(fn.6), 33, 33(fn.18), 34, 34(fn.25), 34(fn.30), 36, 36(fn.39), 38, 38(fn.57), 44(fn.13), 45, 45(fn.21), 46, 46(fn.31, 32), 46(fn.35), 47, 48, 50, 53(fn.90), 54, 56, 57, 57(fn.1), 59(fn.9), 60, 60(fn.24), 61, 62, 62(fn.37), 63, 63(fn.49), 64, 64(fn.53), 65, 65(fn.67), 66-69, 68(fn.97), 69(fns.101,102), 70-71, 70(fn.111), 71(fn.118), 72, 72(fn.129), 74, 75, 75(fn.7), 78(fn.14), 91(fns.2,3,7), 93, 93(fn.8), 94, 94(fns.21,22,27), 95, 96(fns.39,41), 97, 97(fn.46), 112, 112(fn.21), 113, 115, 116, 116(fn.4), 117, 118, 122(fn.6), 123, 123(fn.13), 127, 128, 130(fn.96), 132, 134

Arianism: 137

Arlas: 128(fn.68)

Armenia, Armenians: 52(fn.79)

Armi Kowamin: 64(fn.53)

Ary: 129

Asben: 130

Ashdod: 128

Ashmolean: 65

Assyrian: 8, 28(fn.65)

Aswan: 110, 116, 137

Asyut: 5, 125

Atbara: 88, 116, 131

Aule: 63

Aurès: 20

Aurungide Dynasty: 116

Awlad Mahmud: 130

Awlad Rashid: 72(fn.128)

Awlad Sulayman: 44, 63(fn.47)

Axum: 113

Ayesha: 55

‘Ayn Farah: 33, 36(fn.39), 54(fn.99), 56, 57(fn.5), 61, 64-74, 64(fn.60), 65(fn.67), 66(fn.75), 67(fn.86), 69(fn.100), 69(fn.102), 91(fn.3), 112, 122, 127, 131, 132, 134, 137, 139

‘Ayn Galakka: 55, 66(fn,75), 73-74, 73(fns.146,148), 128(fn.68)

‘Ayn Siro: 60(fn.23)

‘Ayn Sirra: 72(fn.129)

Ayyubid: 23

Axum, Axumites: 8

Azagarfa: 96(fn.41)

Al-Aziz, Caliph: 52(fn.79)

Babaliya: 48,

Babylon: 22

Bachwezi: 18

Bacquié, Captain: 134

Badanga Fur: 71

Badar: 136

Badi, Sultan: 87

Badr al-Gamali al-Guyushi: 52(fn.79)

Bagari: 116

Baghdad: 50, 52

Bagirmi: 5, 7, 27(fn.55), 43, 62, 63, 75(fn.3), 88, 95, 111, 111(fn.11), 119, 135

Bagnold, RA: 116

Bahar: 91

Baheir Tageru: 125

Bahnasa: 43(fn.6)

Bahr, Wazir: 89

Bahr al-Arab: 27(fn.55), 75

Bahr al-Ghazal (Chad): 67(fn.86), 73, 74, 132-135, 132(fn.1)

Bahr al-Ghazal (South Sudan): 23, 25, 27(fn.45), 27(fn.55), 29, 31(fn.5), 33(fn.12), 75, 128(fn.68), 132(fn.1)

Bahr al-Jamal: 56

Baiyuda Wells: 124

Balal: 111(fn.11)

Balfour Paul, HG: 1, 8(fn.19), 17, 20, 26-27, 28, 31, 35, 36(fn.41), 38(fn.60), 44, 60, 60(fn.24), 61, 61(fn.29), 62, 65, 66, 66(fns.75,77), 68(fn.92), 69, 70, 72, 95

Banda: 7, 27(fn.55)

Bani Abbas: 48

Bani Habibi: 16

Bani Mukhtar: 16

Bantu: 27(fn.55)

Banu Hillal: 44, 46(fn.31), 48, 48(fn.53), 49, 51, 51(fn.71), 52, 52(fns.79, 80), 52(fn.86), 53, 57(fn.2), 85, 117, 120(fn.46), 129

Banu Sulaym: 52, 52(fn.79)

Banu Ummaya: 64(fn.53)

Bao: 49

Baqqara: 24, 27(fn.55), 44, 50(fn.60)

Barah (Bazah): 129

Barakandi: 31(fn.6)

Barani Berbers: 128(fn.68)

Barboteu, Lieutenant: 48

Barca: 64

Bargala: 57(fn.1)

Bariat: 55

Barkindo, BM: 46, 46(fn.30), 47, 111(fn.12), 136, 136(fn.32), 137, 137(fn.41)

Barqat Umm Balbat: 124

Barquq, Sultan: 111(fn.12)

Barr: 128(fn.68)

Barr ibn Qays ‘Aylan: 38

Barra, Battle of: 54

Barrjo: 31(fn.4), 128(fn.68)

Barth, Heinrich: 5, 43, 43(fn.6), 46, 46(fn.27), 57(fn.2), 111

Basa: 129(fn.78)

Basi: 28(fn.60)

Basigna: 119(fn.37)

Batálesa: 43, 43(fn.6)

Batnan, King: 85

Bayko: 23, 23(fns.17, 19), 25, 25(fn.29), 27(fn.45), 29, 88

Bayko King-List: 42

Bayt al-Mayram: 61, 69, 69(fn.102)

Bazina à degrès: 20, 20(fn. 22), 118(fn.27)

Beaton, AC: 16, 87, 87(fn.9)

Bedariya: 128

Bedde: 63

Befal: 129

Beja: 22, 132

Beliin: 137

Bell, Herman: 130(fn.92)

Bender, Lionel M.: 6, 23, 119(fn.34), 128(fn.60)

Bénesé: 43, 43(fn.6)

Benghazi: 77(fn.1)

Beni – see Bani

Benoit Pierre: 13, 13(fn.26)

Berber, Berbers: 7, 13, 14, 14(fn.29), 16, 17, 17(fn.15), 20, 21, 25, 26, 33, 36(fn.44), 38, 45(fn.25), 46, 46(fn.27, 30, 31), 48, 48(fn.53), 49, 52, 53, 53(fn.90), 57(fn.2), 61(fn.31), 62, 64(fn.53), 70, 72(fn.129), 77, 80(fn.2), 111(fns.11,12), 119, 122, 122(fn.6), 123, 125, 125(fn.33), 128, 128(fn.68), 129, 130, 130(fn.93), 137, 139

Beri: 23

Beringia, Battle of: 45(fn.23), 62(fn.42)

Berre, Henri: 24, 25

Berti: 33, 64, 116, 118-119, 119(fn.34), 120(fn.44)

Bayuda Desert: 125

Bible: 37(fn.52), 128

Bidayat: 27, 48, 48(fns.53, 54), 49, 49(fn.55), 72(fn.128), 117, 128(fn.68), 137

Bidayriya Arabs: 88(fn.18)

Bilaq: 33, 33(fn.22)

Bilia Bidayat: 137

Bilia Bidayat, Sections: 48

Bilma: 46

Biltine: 45

Binga: 7, 27(fn.55)

Bir Bai Depression: 77

Bir Natrun: 22(fn.1)

Birged (Birked): 51, 51(fn.71), 64, 64(fn.54), 88, 120, 120(fn.46)

Birged Sections: 120(fn.46)

Biriara Bidayat, Sections: 49

Birni: 56, 72(fn.134)

Bivar, AH: 11, 67(fn.86), 73(fn.144), 74

Blemmyes: 127(fn.58)

Blue Nile, Blue Nile Province: 7, 62(fn.36), 117

Bochianga: 132, 132(fn.7)

Bora Dulu: 9

Bordeaux, General: 73(fn.146)

Borgu: 135, 136

Borku: 44, 66(fn.75), 73, 74, 77(fn.1), 128, 132(fn.4), 137

Borno (Bornu): 5, 7, 11, 16, 16(fns. 4,7), 26(fn.39), 28, 28(fn.65), 29(fn.73), 36(fn.44), 44, 46, 46(fn.27), 47, 47(fn.43), 48, 50, 50(fn.64), 51, 54, 57(fn.2), 63, 69(fn.101), 70, 70(fns.111,116), 71, 72-73, 72(fns.129,135), 74, 75, 75(fn.3), 77(fn.1), 80(fn.1), 88, 91, 110, 111, 111(fns.11.12), 112, 118, 119, 123, 127, 131, 137, 139

Bosnians: 74

Botolo Muhammad: 119(fn.36)

Brahim (Sultan): 44

Brands: 25, 46(fn.37), 70, 70(fn.107), 72(fn.129)

Braziers: 134

Brett, Michael: 52

Bricks, Brick Construction: 65(fn.67), 66, 66(fn.75), 67(fn.86), 70(fn.109), 72-73, 73(fns.142,143,144,148), 74, 95, 96, 114, 122, 124, 126, 127, 132

Britain, British: 11(fn.10), 13, 45(fn.23), 62(fn.42), 65(fn.67)

British Columbia: 15

Brown, Robert: 111

Browne, WG: 5, 46(fn.37), 114, 130

Bruce, James: 38(fn.58), 89(fn.28)

Brun-Rollet: 52

Buba: 15

Budge, EA Wallis: 127(fn.58)

Bugiha: 137(fn.37)

Bugur, King: 29, 31

Bukar Aji: 136(fn.32)

Bulala: 44, 48, 56, 67(fn.86), 70, 73, 73(fn.143), 110, 111, 111(fn.11), 112, 112(fn.21), 137

Bulgi: 57(fn.1)

Burgu Keli: 57(fn.1)

Burnus: 128(fn.68)

Burundi: 115

Busa: 135

Bussa: 136

Butana: 130

Butr Berbers: 128(fn.68)

Byzacena: 137

Byzantium, Byzantines: 43(fn.6), 135, 135(fn.21), 137

C-Group: 45(fn.21), 132(fn.7), 134

Cailliaud, Frèdèric: 38, 46(fn.37)

Cain: 128

Cairo: 11(fn.9), 52, 52(fn.79), 63, 64, 78(fn.15), 111, 111(fn.12)

Cameroon: 5, 115, 136(fn.32)

Campbell, E.: 60

Canaanites: 128, 128(fn.68), 132

Canary Islands: 37, 130, 37, 130(fn.93)

Cannibalism: 78(fn.14)

Capot-Rey, MR: 132(fn.5)

Carbou, H: 27(fn.54), 44(fn.8), 46(fn.32), 53, 80(fn.1), 111-112

Carrique, Captain: 73-74, 128(fn.68)

Carthage, Carthaginians: 14, 115, 137

Caucasus: 35, 36(fn.44)

Celts: 36(fn.44)

Central African Republic: 27(fn.55)

Chad: 7, 17, 22, 23, 27(fns.54,55), 31(fn.5), 44, 44(fn.13), 45, 48(fn.51), 66(fn.75), 67(fn.86), 72, 111(fn.9), 112, 113, 114, 132-137, 132(fn.7), 140

Changalif: 45

Chapelle, Jean: 44, 48

Chittick, HN: 125-127

Chokhorgyal Monastery: 35

Chosroe II (Chosroes, Khosraw, Kisra): 26(fn.38), 135, 135(fn.25)

Chouchet Tomb: 14, 14(fn.27), 20, 20(fn.21), 77, 118, 118(fn.27), 119, 119(fns.40,41,42)

Christianity, Christians: 8, 11, 23, 33, 36(fn.44), 38, 44(fn.13), 46, 46(fn.31), 46(fn.35), 46(fn.37), 47, 46(fn.37), 62(fn.36), 64(fn.54), 65(fn.67), 66, 67, 67(fn.86), 68-69, 69(fn.102), 70, 72(fn.129), 74, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 120, 120(fn.48), 122-123, 124(fn.29), 125-127, 126(fn.44), 130, 131, 132-137, 132(fns.4,6), 137(fn.41), 139-140

Chronicle of John: 137

Circassians: 74

Clapperton, H: 110(fn.3)

Clarke, Somers: 68

Cleopatra: 13(fn.26)

Cline, Walter: 48(fn.47)

Cohanim: 15

Cohen, Ronald: 11

Congo: 27(fn.55), 33(fn.12)

Copts (Egyptian): 111, 112, 123, 126(fn.44), 132, 135

Crawford, WF: 27, 38(fn.58), 123, 123(fn.13)

Crete: 38(fn.58)

Cromlech: 31(fn.10)

Crowfoot, JW: 130

Cunnison, I: 24

Cuoq, Joseph M.: 77(fn.9)

Currie, James: 46(fn.37)

Cyrenaïca: 37, 64, 77, 117

Cyrus the Great: 37(fn.52)

Dagio: 63

Dahia: 29

Daima: 114

Daju: 5, 6, 6(fn.6), 8, 12, 16, 18, 22-42, 22(fn.44), 23(fns.15, 16, 18, 19), 24(fn.21), 27(fn.45), 27(fn.52), 27(fn.54), 28(fn.58), 29, 29(fn.66-67, 71-72), 30, 30(fn.75,77), 31-42, 31(fn.6), 33, 33(fn.18), 34, 34(fn.25), 34(fn.29), 35, 36, 36(fn.45), 43, 44, 45, 51, 53(fn.98), 64, 64(fns.54,60), 72(fn.128), 75(fn.3), 87(fn.9), 91, 110, 112, 118, 118(fn.19), 128, 131, 139-140

Daju Hills: 27, 34, 113(fn.1)

Daju King-Lists: 40-42

Daju Sections: 24

Dak, son of Nyikango: 75

Dakin al-Funjawi: 88(fn.18)

Dakka: 116

Dala Afno (Dali Afnu, Afuno): 44, 70, 75, 91

Dala Gumami, Mai: 72

Dalatawa: 44

Dali: 31, 51, 54, 62-63, 71, 71(fn.118), 75, 75(fn.7), 76, 84, 87, 91, 93, 93(fn.10), 97(fn.45), 112(fn.26), 139

Dalloni, M: 119(fn.42), 130

Damergu: 47, 47(fn.46)

Danagla: 117

D’Anania, Giovanni Lorenzo: 63-64, 71

Danat, King: 29

Daoud al-Mireim, Sultan: 45

Dar Abo Dima: 51, 128

Dar Abo Uma: 51

Dar Birked: 89

Dar Dali (Daali): 62(fn.42), 75(fn.7)

Dar Dima: 75(fn.7)

Dar Erenga: 36(fn.41)

Dar Fertit (Fartit): 29, 112(fn.24)

Dar Fia: 87, 95

Dar Fur (see Darfur)

Dar Furnung: 43, 54, 64, 64(fn.60), 70, 72, 72(fn.129), 75, 86, 139

Dar al-Gharb: 75(fn.7)

Dar Hamid: 119

Dar Hawawir: 125

Dar Humr: 50, 50(fn.61)

Dar Kerne: 95

Dar Kobbé: 27(fn.45), 28(fn.65), 34(fn.25)

Dar Masalit: 30, 36(fn.41), 78(fn.14), 86

Dar Qimr (Gimr): 34(fn.25), 36(fn.41), 44, 45, 95

Dar al-Riah: 75(fn.7)

Dar Runga: 62(fn.42)

Dar Sila: 6(fn.6), 12, 23, 23(fn.18), 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 29(fn.72), 30, 34(fn.25), 36(fn.41), 45, 56

Dar Simiat: 33

Dar Sinyar: 44

Dar Tama: 27, 27(fn.45), 29(fn.72), 45, 79

Dar Tokonyawi: 75(fn.7)

Dar Tuar: 50, 34(fn.25), 50

Dar Uma: 75(fn.7)

Dar Wona: 29, 31, 93, 93(fn.10)

Dar Zaghawa: 33(fn.18), 50, 64(fn.53), 112, 112(fn.24)

Dar Ziyad: 44

Daranga Fur: 78(fn.14)

Darb al-Arba’in: 4, 5, 50, 60, 110, 112, 112(fn.25), 122(fn.6)

Dardai: 47, 47(fn.46), 48, 48(fn.51)

Darfur, Administrative Divisions: 75(fn.7)

Darfur, Geography of: 2-4

Darfur, Trade Routes: 4, 73, 77(fn.1)

Darsala: 47, 47(fn.46)

Date Palm Cultivation: 36, 48, 80(fn.2),

Daud Kubara ibn Sulayman: 129

Da’ud al-Mirayn: 77

Dawa: 57

Dawurd al-Miriri al-Modaddan, Sultan: 55

Daza Tubu: 16, 16(5), 34(fn.29), 45, 47, 137

Dazaga (Dazagada): 44(fn.13), 45

De Breuvery, J: 30, 50

De Cadalvène, E: 30, 50

De Lauture, PHS D’Escrayac: 87

De Medeiros, F.: 17

De Neufville, RL: 65, 65(fn.61), 66(fns.74,75), 67(fn.87), 68, 69(fn.100)

Debba: 31, 31(fn.4)

Debeira East: 67

Debeira West: 65, 65(fn.67)

Delil Bahar: 51, 63

Demagherim: 46(fn.27), 54

Dengkur: 34(fn.26)

Denham, D.: 72, 110(fn.3)

Derdekishia: 47-48

Dereiba Lakes: 34-36

Derihurti: 47

Dhu’l-Adh’ar: 39

Dhu al-Manar: 38

Dhu Nowas: 136

Dhu al-Qarnayn (see Alexander the Great)

Diab, Sultan: 45

Diffinarti: 68

Diffusionism: 8

Dilling: 75

Al-Dimashqi: 123

Al-Dinawari: 37

Dingwall, RG: 63, 65

Dinka: 128

Dionysus: 37(fn.50), 38

Dirku: 16

Dirma: 57

Divine Kingship: 35, 113, 139

Diyab: 49

Djelil al-Hilali: 84(fn.3), 85

Djourab: 132

Dolmens: 118(fn.27)

Donatism: 137

Dongola: 23, 43, 52(fn.86), 67(fn.86), 85, 117, 122(fn.6), 123, 129, 134

Dowda: 57, 57(fns.1-2), 60

Drums (see Nahas)

Dukkume, Malik: 87

Dulo Kuri: 57, 91-93

Dumont, Henri J.: 60(fn.18), 118-120

Dumua: 64(fn.60)

Durma: 57(fn.5)

Duros: 47

Edmonds, JM: 123, 125

Edwards, WN: 116(fn.1)

Egypt, Egyptians: 5, 7, 8, 11, 25, 33(fn.22), 38, 43, 52, 52(fn.79), 53, 54, 60, 63, 63(fn.47), 64, 71, 74, 88, 97, 110, 111(fn.12), 112, 112(fn.25), 113, 122(fn.6), 123, 123(fn.16), 125, 127, 128, 128(fn.67), 129, 131, 132, 134, 135

Eilai: 125

England, English: 54

Ennedi: 8, 27, 36(fn.39), 44, 44(fn.15), 46, 48(fn.54), 55, 77, 128, 128(fn.68), 137

Eparch: 38(fn.59)

Equatoria: 33(fn.12)

Erenga: 36(fn.41), 79

Errè: 45

Et-Terge Masalit: 78(fn.14)

Ethiopia: 37, 128(fn.68)

Eunuchs: 20, 57(fn.2), 62, 62(fn.42), 76

Evans-Pritchard, EE: 7, 75(fn.2)

Fara: 54

Faragab: 129

Farafra Oasis: 52(fn.80)

Faras: 38, 67, 69

Fashir: 75(fn.3), 89

Al-Fashir: 5, 9, 11, 11(fn.9), 34(fn.26), 45, 45(fn.23), 50, 62(fn.38), 63(fn.47), 69, 75(fn.3), 78(fn.14), 120(fn.46), 135

Fatimids: 52, 52(fn.79)

Fazughli: 27, 38, 128

Fazzan (Fezzan): 5, 20(fn.22), 45(fn.23), 48, 48(fn.51), 119(fn.41)

Felkin, RW: 34, 86, 87(fn.9), 114

Fella (Fellanga): 64(fn.60), 70

Fenikang: 75(fn.2)

Fentress, Elizabeth: 52

Ferti: 20

Fertit: 27, 27(fn.55), 30

Fez: 62(fn.36)

Fezzan (Fazzan): 63(fn.47), 73, 74, 119

Fiki Khalil: 54

Fiki Muhammad Tahir: 62(fn.38)

Fileil, Sultan: 30

Filga: 59, 94, 95

Fir: 27(fn.55)

Fira: 64(fn.53)

Firat: 27(fn.55)

Fisher, AGB: 111(fn.11), 112, 112(fn.26)

Fora: 51

Forang Aba: 71

Foranga Fur: 71

Forei: 95

Foucauld, Pére: 13

France, French: 13, 30, 30(fn.78), 34(fn.29), 48(fn.51), 63(fn.47), 65(fn.67), 73(fn.146)

Franciscans: 137

Frobenius, Leo: 135

Fuchs, P.: 72(fn.128)

Fugbu (Fugobo): 80(fn.3)

Fulani: 36(fn.44), 72, 119

Funj: 24(fns.21, 25), 25, 31(fn.4), 38, 38(fn.57), 51, 87, 88(fn.18), 89, 95, 112, 126, 128(fn.60), 129, 131

Funj Chronicle: 51, 126, 126(fn.44), 127, 131

Fur: 6-7, 11, 16, 17, 18, 27(fn.55), 28, 29(fn.71), 30, 31, 33, 34, 34(fn.25), 36, 45, 45(fn.18), 51, 53, 55, 57, 57(fn.2), 62, 64, 64(fns.53,54), 71, 71(fns.120,123), 75, 78(fn.14), 79, 86-109, 86(fn.7), 91(fn.5), 123, 139

Fur King-Lists: 97-109

Fur Language: 86, 86(fn.2), 94(fn.22)

Furnung Hills: 60, 60(fn.23), 119(fn.38)

Furogé (Feroge): 27, 27(fn.55), 29(fn.73), 30

Ga’afir Gurmun (Germun), King: 85

Gabir: 64

Gabri: 20

Gaéda: 44, 44(fn.15)

Gamburu: 69(fn.101), 72-73

Gami Kheir, Malik: 116(fn.1), 118

Gao: 110(fn.1)

Gaoga: 33, 110-112, 110(fn.1), 112(fns.21,24,26)

Garamentes: 115, 130

Garoumélé: 73, 73(fn.143)

Garu: 72(fn.135)

Gedaref: 50

Garstang, John: 62

Gath: 128

Gaya: 136(fn.32)

Gaza: 128

Gelti al-Naga: 130(fn.94)

Genealogy: 5, 11(fn.11), 12-15, 24, 47(fn.46), 53(fn.91), 84, 96(fn.41), 97, 111(fn.12), 128(fn.68)

Geneina: 86

Genies (Jinn): 62(fn.38)

German: 64(fn.57)

Gezira: 129(fn.78)

Ghabashat, Battle of: 89

Ghana: 22, 135

Gharbanin: 25(fn.29)

Ghazali: 67, 134

Ghudiyat Arabs: 87

Ghulam Allah ibn ‘Ayd: 28(fn.65)

Ghumsa: 46

Ghuzz: 74

Giants: 31(fn.4), 53-54, 73, 74, 123, 128, 128(fn.68)

Giggeri, Sultan: 88, 95

Gilgamesh: 37, 37(fn.50)

Gili: 78

Gillan, Angus: 7, 35, 35(fn.34)

Gillif Hills: 125

Gillo: 75

Ginsi: 87

Gitar, King: 28

Gitxsan: 15

Glass: 65-66, 65(fn.67)

Gnol: 23(fn.15)

Gobir: 135

Gog and Magog: 36, 36(fn.44)

Gogorma: 95

Gold: 71

Gordon-Alexander, LD: 96(fn.40)

Goths: 36(fn.44)

Greece, Greek: 7, 28(fn.65), 37, 38, 65(fn.67), 126(fn.44), 132, 135(fn.25), 137

Gros, René: 29, 44(fn.17)

Guanche: 130(fn.93)

Gula: 27(fn.55)

Gule: 128(fn.60)

Gunda: 47(fn.46)

Gura’an (Kura’an): 25, 34(fn.29), 56, 132, 137, 137(fn.37)

Gurli (Gerli): 95

Gurri: 95

Gurzil: 37(fn.53)

Haaland, R.: 114

Hababa, Habuba’at: 62(fn.38), 97

Habasha: 22, 23, 33(fn.22)

Hache à gorge axe: 125

Haddad: 113

Hafir: 120, 125, 125(fn.37), 130

Hajang Keingwo: 97, 97(fn.46)

Hajar Kudjuna: 25

Hajar Kujunung: 30,

Hajar Te’us: 28(fn.65)

Hajj ‘Ali: 50

Hajj Brahim Delil: 63

Ham, Hamites: 6-7, 8, 22, 25, 26, 38, 46, 125(fn.33), 128

Hamad ‘Abbas Himyar: 29(fn.73)

Hamaj (Hamej): 128, 128(fn.60)

Hamid bin Abdullah: 96(fn.41)

Hamid Ahmad: 28(fn.64)

Hammad bin Tamr: 119

Harim: 57(fn.2), 62(fn.42)

Harkhuf: 45(fn.21), 116

Harkilla: 135

Harut: 78

Hassaballah, General: 126

Al-Hassar, Sultan: 44

Hausa: 44, 70, 73(fn.143)

Hauya Hoe: 59, 113, 119

Hawara Berbers: 125, 125(fn.33)

Hawawir: 125, 125(fn.33),

Haycock, BG: 113

Haydaran, Battle of: 52

Haykal: 68

Hebrew, Hebrews: 36(fn.44), 128

Hebron: 65, 128

Helbou: 27(fn.31)

Helmolt, Dr.: 77(fn.9)

Henderson, KDD: 29

Henige, DP: 14, 84

Heracles: 37(fn.50)

Heraclius: 135

Herodotus: 11

Al-Hidjr: 28(fn.65)

Hijaz: 27(fn.53), 27(fn.54), 28(fn.65), 49, 78, 136

Hill, LG: 25

Hill Nubian: 120

Himyarites: 18, 26, 26(fns.38, 39), 29(fn.73), 38, 39, 38(fn.61), 49, 111(fn.12), 125(fn.33), 135, 136

Hobbs, Capt. HFC: 35, 35(fn.34)

Hobson, RL: 70

Hoes (see also Hauya hoes): 122, 122(fn.6)

Hoggar Mountains: 13, 20(fn.22),

Holt, PM: 48(fn.53), 51, 51(fn.74), 98

Holy Stones (see Stone Worship)

Houghton, AA: 65, 65(fn.61), 66(fns.74,75), 67(fn.87), 68, 69(fn.100)

Howara: 119

Hrbek, I: 63(fn.47), 71(fn.1244), 112

Huard, P.: 113, 132(fn.7), 134

Huddleston, Major HJ: 35

Hudud al-Alam: 132-134

Human Sacrifice: 78

Hummay, Sultan: 111(fn.12)

Hungarians: 74

Huns: 36(fn.44)

Hurreiz, Sayyid Hamed: 54

Husayn (Hussein) Abu Koda: 78(fn.14)

Husayn Morfaien, Sultan: 30

Ibadites: 137

Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahr: 129

Ibn Abi Zar of Fez: 125(fn.33)

Ibn al-‘Arabi: 23

Ibn Assafarani: 130,

Ibn Batuta: 64(fn.53)

Ibn Hazm: 38

Ibn Kathir: 37

Ibn Khaldun: 23, 38, 52, 52(fn.78)

Ibn Qutayba: 6

Ibn Sa’id: 22, 23, 37, 136

Ibn Selim al-Aswani: 37(fn.46), 62(fn.36), 126(fn.44), 127, 129(fn.78)

Ibn Shaddad: 52

Ibn al-Wardi: 33(fn.22)

Ibrahim (Pretender to the Fur Throne): 78(fn.14)

Ibrahim, Sultan (Fur): 5, 62(fn.38), 96, 116

Ibrahim, Sultan (Tunjur):

Ibrahim al-Dalil (see Dali)

Ibrahim Musa Muhammad: 7, 9, 9(fn.9), 68(fn.88), 70(fn.111)

Ibrahim bin ‘Uthman, Sultan: 110

Idris Aloma, Mai: 70, 70(fn.111), 71, 72-73, 75(fn.3), 123

Idris Ja’l: 87

Idris Katargarmabe (Katarkanabi), Sultan: 112

Al-Idrisi, Muhammad: 17, 22, 33, 45(fn.25), 111, 112(fn.20), 137

Ifriqsun bin Tubba Dhu al-Manar: 38

Ihaggaren Tuareg: 13

Illo: 136

Imam Ahmad: 47

Imatong Hills: 33(fn.12)

India, Indian: 63, 63(fn.47)

Iriba Plateau: 77,

Irima: 64(fn.53)

Iron, Iron-working: 33, 59(fn.13), 62, 70, 93, 113-115, 114(fns.12,16), 119-120, 120(fn.43), 122, 123, 123(fn.16), 140

Irtet: 116

Irtt: 116,

Isabatan: 13

‘Isawi bin Janqal: 89

Islam, Islamization: 11, 12, 18, 28(fn.65), 34, 36(fn.44), 44, 48, 50, 53(fn.90), 55, 62(fn.38), 69, 70-71, 71(fn.124), 72(fn.128), 73, 86-87, 86(fn.7), 89, 95, 97, 110, 111(fn.12), 112, 117, 117(fn.14), 118, 127, 135-136, 139

Isma’il Ayyub Pasha: 75(fn.7), 103-104

Israel: 128

Italy, Italians: 34(fn.29), 54, 63(fn.47),65(fn.67), 110(fn.1)

Iya Basi: 78(fn.14)

Ja’aliin Arabs: 25, 26(fn.39), 28(fn.65), 45, 119

Jackson, HC: 124, 124(fn.32), 125(fn.37)

Jacobites: 137

Jallaba Hawawir: 125(fn.33)

Jalut: 13(fn.25

Janakhira: 27(fn.55)

Janqal (Jongol), Sultan: 88, 88(fn.18)

Japheth: 36(fn.44)

Jarma: 56

Jawami’a: 96-97, 96(fn.41), 129

Jayli: 51

Jebel ‘Abd al-Hadi – see Jebel Haraza

Jebel Adadi: 95, 95(fn.31)

Jebel Afara: 96(fn.38)

Jebel Aress: 48

Jebel Au: 18

Jebel al-Azib: 129

Jebel Bayt al-Nahas: 129

Jebel Belbeldi: 130(fn.94)

Jebel Burgu: 28(fn.65)

Jebel Doba: 31

Jebel Eisa: 60, 118

Jebel Ferti: 59

Jebel Foga: 21, 91, 91(fn.3), 93, 95

Jebel Forei: 93

Jebel Gelli: 50(fn.63)

Jebel Gidera: 36(fn.41)

Jebel Gurgi: 54

Jebel Haraza: 33, 123, 123(fn.12), 129, 129, 129(fn.77), 130-131, 130(fns.87,94), 131

Jebel Hileila: 33,

Jebel al-Hosh: 125

Jebel Hurayz (Harayz, Hereiz): 43, 48-9

Jebel Irau: 126

Jebel Jung: 64(fn.53)

Jebel Kaboija: 117

Jebel Kadama: 45

Jebel Kadjanan: 30

Jebel Kadjano: 25

Jebel Kajanan: 30

Jebel Karshul: 130

Jebel Katul: 129

Jebel Keima: 16, 31(fn.6), 93

Jebel Kerbi: 60

Jebel Kilwa: 28, 30, 31, 33

Jebel Kurkeila: 130

Jebel Kwon: 135

Jebel Liguri: 23

Jebel Mailo: 53

Jebel Maman: 127(fn.58)

Jebel Marra: 1, 7, 9, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 27(fn.55), 28, 28(fn.65), 29(fn.66), 31, 33, 34, 36, 36(fn.41), 38, 45, 51, 53, 54, 57(fn.5), 62(fn.42), 66, 78(fn.14), 86, 87-90, 91, 93-95, 94(fn.21), 112, 119(fn.38), 128, 131, 139

Jebel Masa: 59, 72(fn.129)

Jebel Meidob – See Meidob Hills

Jebel Mogran: 117

Jebel Mojalla: 95

Jebel Moya: 130

Jebel Mun: 79

Jebel Mutarrak (Mutarrig): 59-60

Jebel Nami: 54, 94, 95, 97,

Jebel Omori: 113(fn.1)

Jebel Otash: 36

Jebel al-Raqta: 125

Jebel Shalasi: 130

Jebel Si: 16, 20, 53, 54(fn.100), 57, 57(fn.5), 75, 75(fn.3), 86

Jebel Siab: 118

Jebel Silga: 33

Jebel Suruj: 88(fn.18)

Jebel Tageru: 125, 128-129

Jebel Taqali: 50, 50(fn.64)

Jebel Teiga: 60, 122(fn.6)

Jebel Tika: 95

Jebel Tréya (J. Thurraya): 77-78

Jebel Udru: 117

Jebel Um Kardos: 30, 53(fn.98)

Jebel Umm Qubu: 125

Jebel Wara: 33

Jebel Zankor – See Zankor

Jebel Zureiq: 21

Jebelein: 31(fn.4)

Jebelawi (Jebala, Jebelowi) Fur: 86, 87, 89

Jerash: 65, 65(fn.67)

Jernudd, B: 86

Jesus Christ (Nabi Isa): 136

Jews, Judaism: 15, 26(fn.38), 115, 136, 137

Jil Shikomeni: 111

Jinn-s: 79, 117

Joshua: 128

Juba II: 110(fn.3)

Juhayna Arabs: 129

Jukun: 26, 27, 135

Jungraithmayr, H.: 25, 29(fn.67)

Jupiter Ammon: 37(fn.54)

Jur: 23(fn.15)

Jura: 124

Kababish Arabs: 130(fn.96)

Kabbashi: 28

Kabkabiya: 28(fn.65), 88, 90

Kabushiya: 37(fn.46), 129(fn.78)

Kachifor, Sultan: 30

Kadama: 43, 55, 77, 77(fn.6)

Kaderu: 129(fn.78)

Kadmul: 47(fn.45), 48

Kadugli: 23, 23(fn.15), 75

Kagiddi – see Shelkota

Kai: 47

Kaiga: 112

Kaitinga: 25, 29(fn.71)

Kaga: 117

Kaja: 116(fn.4), 117

Kaja Seruj: 122, 123, 127

Kajawi: 123

Kalak Tanjak: 78

Kalamsiya: 38, 38(fn.60)

Kalck, Pierre: 112, 112(fn.26)

Kalga: 34

Kalge: 87(fn.9)

Kalokitting: 66(fn.76)

Kamadugu: 72

Kamal Yunis: 68(fn.88), 69(fn.101)

Kamala Keira: 97

Kamdirto: 119(fn.37)

Kamni: 96(fn.44)

Kamteinyi, Sultan: 28, 33

Kanem: 7, 12, 16, 22, 23, 26, 26(fn.39), 33, 44, 44(fn.8), 44(fn.13), 45, 46, 46(fn.27), 47, 47(fn.46), 48, 53, 56, 62, 63, 63(fn.47), 67(fn.86), 70, 72, 72(fn.130), 73(fn.143), 74, 80, 80(fn.1), 81, 84, 85, 111, 111(fns.11,12), 112, 118, 118(fn.24), 120, 122(fn.6), 128, 135, 136

Kanembu: 44, 44(fn.8), 46, 74, 80(fn.3), 111, 111(fns.11,12), 112, 119-120

Kano: 63, 77(fn.1)

Kanuri: 11, 16, 22(fn.4), 23, 28(fn.65), 44, 44(fn.13), 45, 46, 47, 47(fn.43), 54, 61(fn.33), 72(fn.135), 73(fn.142), 111, 111(fns.11,12), 112, 119, 128, 136

Kapteijns, Lidwien: 27

Kara: 27(fn.55)

Karakit Fur: 7, 86, 86(fn.4)

Karanga: 45, 77

Karanog: 124(fn.25)

Karkour-Nourène Massif: 44

Kas (Kusayr), King: 85

Kashemereh: 77

Kashémerém: 43

Kashmara: 25, 77

Kassala: 50, 52, 127(fn.58), 129(fn.78)

Kassifurogé, King: 30, 53(fn.98)

Katsina: 137

Kauara (Kawra) Pass: 20-21, 57

Kawar: 16, 22, 33, 45, 45(fn.25), 45(fn.25), 46, 46(fn.26), 47, 47(fn.46), 54, 120, 136

Kawka: 22

Kayra Fur: 10, 11, 11(fn.11), 12, 17, 18, 24, 29(fn.66), 31, 34(fn.25), 38, 43, 43(fn.3), 49, 50, 51, 55(fn.111), 59, 59(fn.15), 63, 64, 66, 69, 70, 75, 75(fn.3), 84-85, 86-109, 88(fn.21), 91(fn.2), 97(fn.45), 112, 120(fn.46), 131, 139-140

Kebeleh: 18-20, 18(fn.17)

Kedir, King: 27. 28

Kedrou: 129, 129(fn.78)

Kel Innek: 130

Kel Rela: 14, 14(fn.29)

Kella: 14

Kenen (Khanem), King: 85

Kenzi-Dongola: 120

Kerakirit: 75(fn.3)

Kerne: 78

Kerker: 60, 60(fn.18), 65, 118, 119-120, 122(fn.6)

Kerkur: 118(fn.27)

Kernak Wells: 125

Al-Kerri: 75, 75(fn.3), 126

Kersah: 129, 129(fn.78)

Khalaf, Sultan: 29, 29(fn.71), 30

Khamis Mubaju: 31(fn.9)

Kharadjites: 137

Khartoum: 8,

Khazars: 36(fn.44)

Kheir Ullah: 43

Khor Gadein: 123, 130

Khor al-Sidr: 125

Khouz: 73, 74, 128(fn.68)

Khujali bin ‘Abd al-Rahman, Faki: 88

Khuzam Arabs: 72(fn.128)

Khuzaym (Khoués), King: 85

Kilwa: 10

Kinin (see also Tuareg): 34(fn.29), 128

Kira: 47

Kirati (Kurata) Tunjur: 44, 47

Kirsch, JHI: 77

Kisra: 135, 135(fn.25)

Kitab Dali – see Law, Pre-Islamic

Knoblecher, Ignaz: 51(fn.74)

Kobbé: 4, 5

Kobbé Zaghawa: 88

Kobe: 94

Koc Col: 75

Kodoï: 45

Koenig, Dr A-M.: 29(fn.66), 30(fn.78), 88(fn.18), 100

Kolge: 88, 94(fn.21)

Koman: 128(fn.60)

Konda (Kidney feast): 97

Konnoso: 8

Konyunga Fur: 34(fn.25)

Kor, King: 29, 29(fn.66), 51

Kora (Korakwa): 7, 75(fn.3), 86(fn.4)

Kora Mountains: 54

Koran: 36(fn.44), 37, 50, 73, 89, 97

Kordofan: 23, 24, 24(fn.25), 25, 27, 27(fn.55), 28, 28(fn.58), 28(fn.65), 30(fn.78), 34, 49, 50, 50(fn.60), 50(fn.64), 52, 53, 64(fn.54), 66(fn.75), 70, 75, 82, 85, 87-90, 87(fn.9), 96(fn.41), 101, 110, 114(fn.12), 116(fn.4), 117, 117(fn.10), 118(fn.19), 119-120, 120(fns.46,48), 122, 123, 123(fn.12), 124-125, 125(fn.33), 127-131, 129(fn.86), 130(fn.96), 132, 135

Korkurma (Korgorma): 94(fn.21)

Koro Toro: 113, 132, 132(fns.5,7), 134-135, 134(fn.14), 140

Koro Toro Radiocarbon Dates: 138

Koseru (Kaseru), Sultan: 33

Kotoko: 63, 111(fn.11)

Kotor-Furi: 47(fn.46)

Kourdé: 77

Kreish: 8

Kropácek, L: 53, 72, 123

Kufic: 46(fn.37)

Kufra (Koufra): 4, 22, 26(fn.39), 31(fn.5), 77

Kujunung: 28

Kuka: 33, 59, 111-12, 111(fn.11)

Kuli (Kulli): 86, 88

Kulu: 64

Kulubnarti: 38

Kundanga: 78(fn.14)

Kunjara Fur: 45(fn.18), 62, 75(fn.7), 85, 86, 89-90, 97, 139

Kurds: 74

Kuroma, King: 51

Kurra: 59(fn.9)

Kurru: 47, 68, 123, 123(fns.15,16), 127

Kuru (Kurru), King: 28(fn.64), 31, 43, 84, 87, 93, 93(fn.10), 139

Kusbur (Kosber), King: 16, 28, 29, 31

Kush (Cush): 22, 23, 47, 113, 116(fn.4), 119, 123(fn.16), 127

Kush al-Wagilah (Kushah, Kus): 123

Kusi: 59

Kuttum: 9, 29(fn.71), 43, 54(fn.100), 119(fn.38)

Kutul: 117

Kwawang, Kunijwok: 75

Lagowa: 24

Lake Chad: 5, 26, 28(fn.65), 31(fn.5), 72(fn.129), 74, 111(fn.9), 114, 130, 132

Lake Esan: 35

Lake Fitri: 33, 45, 55(fn.111), 56, 110, 111, 111(fn.9), 111(fn.11), 112

Lampen, GD: 117

Lamtuna: 137

Lange, D: 73(fn.142), 110

Lango: 33(fn.12)

Largeau, Colonel: 6(fn.6), 73(fn.146)

Larymore, Constance: 136

Last, Murray: 22

Law, Islamic: 71, 71(fn.118,123)

Law, Pre-Islamic: 71, 71(fns.118,121)

Le Rouvreur, Albert: 36(fn.41)

Lebeuf, JP: 74, 77

Lemba: 15

Leo Africanus: 33, 110-112, 112(fns.20,21,25), 113, 137

Leucaethiopes: 16

Lewicki, T.: 22

Al-Libei, Sultan: 44

Libya, Libyans: 17, 34(fn.29), 37, 37(fn.53), 97

Libyan Desert: 117

Liguri: 23, 24

Litham: 43(fn.3), 45, 45(fn.25), 64(fn.53), 96(fn.44)

Locust Wizards: 34(fn.25)

Lol: 23(fn.15)

Lotuko: 33(fn.12)

Low, Victor: 12, 24,

Luniya Mountains: 136-137

Luwai ibn Ghalib: 26(fn.39)

Luxor: 38

Lwel: 75

Ma’at: 38

Maba: 44, 45, 74, 77(fn.9)

Mabo: 118(fn.28)

Macedonians: 37(fn.51)

Machina: 72

MacIntosh, EH: 27(fn.54), 30, 31,

MacMichael, Harold A.: 5, 12, 16, 22, 24, 27, 29(fn.71), 38(fn.57), 43, 43(fn.6), 49, 49(fns.55, 58), 52(fn.86), 53, 57(fn.5), 60, 62(fn.38), 64(fns.53,54,60), 65, 65(fn.61), 66, 66(fn.75), 67, 68, 70, 72(fn.129), 78(fn.14), 79, 85, 86, 96(fn.40), 116, 117, 120(fn.46), 128, 129(fns.77,86), 130, 130(fn.87)

Mace-heads: 130(fn.87)

Madala: 55

Madeyq: 68(fn.97)

Madi: 33(fn.12)

Magharba: 62, 62(fn.36), 63(fn.47), 70(fn.111)

Maghreb, (Maghrab, Maghrib): 20, 26(fn.38), 38, 39, 52, 62, 62(fn.36), 125(fn.33)

Magumi (Magomi: 16, 111, 111(fns.11,12)

Magyars: 36(fn.44)

Mahamid Arabs: 45, 89

Mahas: 117

Mahdiyya: 11(fn.10), 28, 36(fn.39), 87, 96, 116,

Mahmud al-Samarkandi: 24(fn.25)

Mahram: 16(fn.7)

Mai, King: 28

Mak Husayn: 38

Maiduguri: 74

Mailo Fugo Jurto: 30(fn.74),

Majala: 94

Majians: 128(fn.68)

Makada: 48

Makuria: 123, 140

Malakal: 31(fn.4)

Maledinga: 134

Malha City: 118, 119-120

Malha Crater: 116, 116(fn.1), 118, 118(fn.20), 119-120

Mali: 5, 115, 135

Malik al-Dubban: 97

Malik Kissinga Dora: 97

Malikite Mandab: 71, 71(fn.118)

Al-Mallagi: 125

Malumba: 136(fn.32)

Malwal: 23(fn.15)

Mamluks: 5, 62(fn.36), 129

Manawashi, Battle of: 62(fn.38), 96

Al-Mandar: 95

Mandara: 23, 46, 54, 63, 135-136, 136(fn.32)

Mandara Chronicle: 136, 137

Manjil: 38, 38(fn.57)

Al-Mansur Qala’un, Sultan: 52

Mao: 44, 45, 67(fn.86), 114, 118, 118(fn.24), 119-120, 119(fns.36,42), 120

Maqdum: 36, 36(fn.41)

Al-Maqrizi (Makrizi): 23, 126(fn.44)

Maranda: 22

Marawiyyun: 22

Ma’rib: 26(fn.38), 52(fn.78)

Masalit: 25, 43(fn.3), 64, 78(fn.14), 87

Masmaj: 55

Al-Mas’udi: 39

Matrilineal Succession: 46, 55, 56, 116, 118, 130, 130(fn.93)

Mauny, R: 112(fn.26), 134

Maydon, Major: 117

Mayram: 61(fn.33)

Mayri: 51

Mayringa Fur: 51

McCall, DF: 135, 135(fn.25)

Mecca: 28, 55, 62(fn.42), 71(fn.124), 72, 87, 136

Medes: 37(fn.52)

Meidob Hills, Meidobis: 18, 33(fn.18), 60, 60(fn.18), 116-121, 116(fn.4), 119(fn.38), 120(fns.46,48), 121, 122(fn.6), 128

Meidobi Burial Customs: 117(fn.11)

Meidobi King-Lists: 121

Meidobi Religion: 117-118, 117(fn.14)

Meidobi Sections: 116

Melik – see Malik

Memmi: 63

Merbo: 9

Merga: 46

Meroë, Meroitic: 8, 25, 26, 31, 31(fn.4), 46, 48, 54, 62, 112(fn.21), 113-115, 113(fn.1), 119, 122, 122(fn.6), 123, 124, 124(fn.29), 125, 127, 127(fns.51,56), 130, 132, 134-135, 140

Merri: 35, 36, 36(fn.45)

Michelmore, APG: 72(fn.129)

Missirya (Messiriya) Arabs: 50(fn.61), 72(fn.128)

Mihrab: 61, 66, 68-69

Mima (Mimi): 8, 25, 45, 55, 64, 64(fns.53,54)

Minbar: 68

Minos: 38(fn.58)

Mira: 50

Miri: 33

Misr Muhammad: 49(fn.59)

Mitnet al-Jawwala: 125

Moab: 128

Mockler-Ferryman, Major: 136

Modat, Captain: 112

El-Moghraby, Asim I.: 60(fn.18), 118-120,

Molu: 86, 87(fn.9)

Morocco: 14(fn.29)

Mohammed, Ibrahim Musa: 17, 69, 69(fn.101), 91(fn.5), 96(fn.40), 113, 120(fn.44)

Mondo: 44(fn.8), 80(fn.1), 81, 84, 85

Mongo-Sila: 23, 24

Mongols: 36(fn.44), 50

Morga: 63

Moro: 31(fn.5), 33(fn.12)

Moses: 37, 37(fn.51)

Muglad: 29

Al-Muhallabi: 22, 22(fn.4)

Muhamid Arabs: 55

Muhammad (Daju King): 29

Muhammad (Prophet): 28(fn.65), 71(fn.124), 110, 136

Muhammad ‘Ali: 30(fn.78), 62(fn.36), 73

Muhammad Bakhit, Sultan: 30

Muhammad Bello, Sultan: 36(fn.44)

Muhammad Bulad, Sultan: 27

Muhammad Bulat, Sultan: 88

Muhammad Dawra, Sultan: 88-89, 88(fn.23), 95-96

Muhammad Fadl, Sultan: 96

Muhammad Gunkul, Sultan (see Janqal)

Muhammad al-Hasin, Sultan: 49

Muhammad Husayn, Sultan: 95-96

Muhammad Ibrahim: 52(fn.77),

Muhammad Idris bin Katarkamabe, Mai: 70

Muhammad al-Ja’ali: 50(fn.64)

Muhammad Sayah: 118

Muhammad al-Shayb, Sultan: 44

Muhammad al-Shinqiti: 78(fn.15)

Muhammad bin Tamr: 119

Muhammad Tayrab, Sultan: 55(fn.111), 64(fn.54), 75(fn.3), 89-90, 95, 96, 97, 120(fn.46)

Muhammad Wad Tom, Shaykh: 129(fn.75)

Muhammad Yanbar: 119, 119(fn.36)

Al-Mu’izz ibn Badis: 52

Mujuf: 55

Mukarra (Mukurru): 37(fn.46), 46, 46(fn.31), 46(fn.35), 47, 47(fn.46), 52, 56, 127, 134

Mundara: 130

Munio: 46, 54

Al-Mur, Sultan: 55(fn.111)

Murdock, George Peter: 13

Murgi: 64(fn.54)

Murra: 95

Murtafal: 31(fn.6)

Murtal: 97

Musa, Sultan: 88, 94, 94(fn.21), 96, 96(fn.39)

Musa ‘Anqarib: 88-89

Musa Tanjar: 45, 45(fn.18)

Musa Um Ruddus, Shartai: 54(fn.100)

Musaba’at: 30(fn.78), 33, 49, 84-85, 84(fn.3), 85, 87-89, 97, 101, 103, 123, 131

Mustafa, Sultan: 24

Musulat: 63

Mutansir: 52, 52(fn.79)

Muwalih: 125

Muweileh: 125

Nachtigal, Gustav: 5, 13, 28, 28(fn.65), 31, 34, 44, 44(fn.8), 44(fn.13), 47, 47(fn.43), 49, 50, 53, 53(fn.91), 54, 55(fn.111), 57(fn.2), 57(fn.5), 71, 71(fn.121), 73, 75(fn.3), 75(fn.7), 77, 78(fns.14-15), 80(fn.1), 87(fn.9), 88, 91, 96, 102, 111, 118, 120(fn.46), 131

Nafer, King: 29

Nahas: 62, 62(fn.38), 87, 118

Na-Madu, King: 118-119

Nanku: 64(fn.53)

Napata: 26, 113, 127

Nari: 33

Nas Far’aon: 27, 27(fn.54)

Nassara (Nazarene): 73, 132, 140

Negib Effendi Yunis, Yuzbashi: 118(fn.19)

Nejran: 136

Newbold, D: 16, 61(fn.31), 117, 122, 122(fn.2), 123, 123(fn.13), 124, 124(fn.29), 125, 127(fn.57), 129, 129(fns.74,86), 130(fns.92,94)

N’Gazargamu: 72-73

Ngok Dinka: 23

Nguru: 73

Niamaton: 79

Nieke, Margaret R.: 11

Niger: 115

Niger (River): 110(fns.1,3), 136

Nigeria: 7, 13, 27, 44, 113, 114, 132, 136(fn.32)

Nikki: 136

Nilo-Saharan Language Group: 86

Nisba: 54

Njamena: 23

Nkole: 14

Noah: 28(fn.65), 128

Nobatia: 38

Nobiin: 120

Nok Culture: 114

Northern Rhodesia: 13

Noyo: 94

Nuba: 22, 23, 27(fn.55), 33, 33(fn.22), 50, 117, 118(fn.19), 122, 128-130, 136

Nuba Hills: 27, 120, 128

Nubia, Nubians: 11, 38, 43, 43(fn.6), 44(fn.13), 46, 46(fn.31), 46(fn.37), 47, 50, 52, 52(fn.86), 56, 64(fn.54), 65, 66, 67(fn.86), 68-69, 69(fn.102), 74, 97, 110, 112, 112(fn.21), 116-117, 118, 120(fn.48), 122-123, 123(fn.16), 124(fn.29), 126(fn.44), 129, 130-131, 132, 132(fns.6,7), 134-135, 137(fn.37), 139-140

Nubian Language: 116(fn.4), 120, 130(fn.92), 131

Nuer: 34(fn.26)

Nuh: 22

Nukheila: 22(fn.1), 127(fn.57)

Numan Fedda: 97(fn.45)

Nupe: 135

Nur Angara: 62(fn.38)

Nuri: 123(fn.16)

Nuwabiya: 123

Al-Nuwayri: 52

Nyala: 23, 24, 27, 27(fn.52), 28, 62, 62(fn.38), 75, 86

Nyèri: 45

Nyidor, Reth: 75

Nyikango: 75, 75(fn.5)

Nyolge (Nyalgulgule): 23, 23(fns.15, 19), 24, 29

Al-Obeid: 75, 88(fn.18)

O’Fahey, RS: 46(fn.31), 50, 56, 61(fn.33), 64(fn.57), 112, 112(fn.25)

Ogot, Bethwell A: 134-135

Ogra: 64

Olderogge, DA: 6

Omar Kissifurogé – see ‘Umar Kissifurogé

Omdurman: 62(fn.38), 116, 117

Oral Tradition: 10-15, 31(fn.6), 51(fn.69), 74, 75-76, 113, 129, 135, 139-140

Órre Baya: 57, 57(fn.2), 60, 95

Órre De: 57(fn.2), 60

Osiris: 8(fn.15)

Ostrich Eggs (decorative): 34, 34(fn.26), 36

Ottomans: 5, 24(fn.25), 74

Ounianga: 77

Ouogayi: 73(fn.148)

Oxyrinchus: 43(fn.6)

Paçir: 75, 75(fn.3)

Pahlavi: 135(fn.25)

Palestine: 65, 68, 128, 128(fn.68)

Palmer, HR: 7, 8, 11, 12, 16, 33, 46(fn.32), 48, 53(fn.90), 55, 72, 80(fn.1), 112, 112(fn.20), 128, 129, 135, 136, 137

Papadopoullos, T.: 135

Papyrus: 116(fn.1)

Parthians: 26(fn.38), 36(fn.44)

Patwac: 75

Pelpelle: 89

Penn, AED: 122-123, 122(fn.7), 126-127

Perari Kalga: 34

Perron, Dr.: 5

Persia, Persians: 26(fn.38), 37, 37(fn.52), 132, 134-135, 135(fns.21,25)

Petherick, J.: 52

Petracek, Karel: 119(fn.34)

Philae: 8, 33

Phoenicians: 115

Pilgrim Bottles: 124, 124(fn.29), 125, 127, 129, 129(fn.75)

“Platform of Audience”: 60, 61, 62, 65, 119

Pleiades: 78(fn.13),

Pliny the Elder: 16, 110(fn.3)

Pomponious Mela: 16

Pontiphar: 49(fn.58)

Potagos, Panyotis: 23

Pottery: 70, 122(fn.7), 123, 124, 124(fn.32), 132, 132(fn.5), 134, 134(fn.13), 140

Pre-Islamic Religion: 34, 86-87, 87(fn.9), 96(fn.38), 97, 117-119, 117(fn.14), 123, 136, 137

Prisons: 66, 66(fn.76), 93

Prophecy: 35

Ptolemy, Ptolemies, Ptolemaic Period: 16, 38, 43(fn.6), 127

Qalaun, Sultan: 129

Al-Qalqashandi: 111(fn.12)

Qaqu: 22

Qarri (Querri, Gerri): 122, 125-127, 126(fn.44), 127(fn.46), 131

Qayrawan: 52, 125(fn.33)

Qays ‘Aylan: 38

Qelti al-Adusa: 129, 129(fn.73)

Qibla: 95

Qihayf, Battle of: 89

Qimr: 36(fn.43), 88

Qubba-s: 36(fn.41), 69, 95, 96

Quran – see Koran

Quraysh: 26(fn.39), 50, 50(fn.64), 102, 111(fn.12)

Radcliffe-Brown, AR: 7-8

Al-Rahad: 50

Rahaman: 26(fn.38)

Red Sea: 38, 63(fn.47)

Redjem: 118(fn.27)

Reisner, George A: 123

Reth: 75, 75(fn.2)

Reygasse, Maurice: 13-14, 20(fn.21), 118(fn.27)

Richards, Audrey I: 13

Rifa’a: 51

Rikabiya Ashraf: 130

Rizayqat Arabs: 89

Rizik (Rézik), King: 85

Ro-Kuri Region: 53, 95

Robinson, AE: 28, 29(fn.66), 38(fn.58)

Rodd, Francis R.: 130

Rome, Romans: 14, 26(fn.38), 37, 37(fn.52), 74, 114, 135, 137

Ronya: 59

Rosen, Georg: 77(fn.9)

Royal Platform: 59

Royna: 59(fn.12)

Rugman, Lady: 66-67

Rwanda: 115

Ryan, Bimbashi: 124(fn.32)

Sa’ad, Sultan: 44

Sabaloka Gorge: 126

Sabula: 57

Sabun: 75(fn.7), 91

Saccae: 63

Sadaqah: 97

Safia: 130

Sagava: 63

Saifawa Mai-s: 71

Salah, Sultan: 29

Salf (Zalf), King: 30

Salih (prophet): 28, 28(fn.65)

Salih ibn ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Abbas: 28(fn.65),

Salt Collection, Salt Trade: 116, 118, 120

Salt, Sir Henry: 86(fn.2)

Salua: 94

Al-Samarkandi: 50

Samarra: 65(fn.67)

Sambei: 27, 34(fn.25)

Sambella (Sambellanga): 64(fn.60)

Sania Kiri: 57

Samna: 33

San’a: 15

Sanam: 123(fn.16)

Sandstone Rings: 129–130, 130(fn.87)

Sanhaj Berbers (Sanhaja): 48, 125(fn.33), 128, 128(fn.68)

Sania: 123

Santandrea, P. Stefano: 29(fn.73)

Sanussis: 34(fn.29), 73, 73(fn.146), 74, 128(fn.68)

Sao: 31(fn.5), 63, 72, 111(fn.11)

Sarsfield-Hall, EG: 87, 117(fn.14)

Sassanids, Sassanians: 26(fn.38), 135

Sau: 55

Sa’ud: 28(fn.65)

Savonnier: 80(fn.2)

Sawwar bin Wa’il bin Himyar: 125(fn.33)

Sayf ibn Dhu Yazan: 26(fn.38), 111(fn.12)

Sayfawa: 16(fn.7), 111, 111(fns.11,12)

Schmidt, Peter R: 14

Scythians: 36(fn.44)

Sebakh, King: 129

Selatia: 62(fn.38)

Seleukos I Nikator: 37(fn.51)

Seligman, CG: 6, 7, 75(fn.2), 130(fn.87)

Selima Oasis: 46, 46(fn.37), 134

Seliquer, Captain: 132

Sendi Suttera, Iya Basi: 89

Serbung Masalit: 87

Serengiti: 60(fn.18), 118, 119

Sergitti: 79

Serra East: 68(fn.97)

Serra West: 67

Shabaka, King: 129(fn.79)

Shadow Sultan (see Kamni)

Shaffai Boggarmi, Dardai: 48(fn.51)

Shaheinab: 8

Shari’a – See Law, Islamic

Shartai: 34(fn.25)

Shatt: 23, 23(fn.15), 24, 29

Shau al-Dorsid, Sultan: 16, 27, 30, 30(fn.74), 44(fn.15), 48, 50, 51, 53-54, 56, 57-64, 57(fn.5), 59(fn.15), 61(fn.32), 62(fns.36-37), 70(fn.111), 72, 75, 75(fn.3), 84-85, 87, 96(fn.41)

Shaw, WBK: 123-124, 124(fn.25), 127(fn.57)

Shelkota Meidob: 116, 116(fn.4), 121

Shendi: 27, 27(fn.53), 28(fn.65), 30(fn.78), 125(fn.37)

Sherkayla: 50

Shilluk: 8(fn.15), 34(fn.26), 75, 75(fn.2), 123

Shimir: 55

Shinnie, Peter: 11, 13, 67, 67(fn.86), 73(fn.144), 74, 113, 113(fn.1), 127, 127(fn.56), 132, 135

Shirim: 88

Shoba: 90

Showaia: 96(fn.38)

Showunga Tunjur: 59

Shu (Egyptian God): 54

Shuqayr, Naum; 89

Shuwa Arabs: 44

Si Dallanga: 54

Siesa: 71

Sigato: 119

Sikar: 91

Simiat Hills: 33

Sinnar (Sennar): 5, 27, 27(fn.55), 28(fn.65), 30(fn.78), 38(fn.58), 43, 87, 88(fn.18), 89(fn.28), 126, 126(fn.44), 129

Sira al-Hilaliya: 49

Sitting Burial: 31(fn.5), 119(fn.42)

Sira al-Hilaliyya: 49

Sirma: 59

Slatin Pasha, Rudolf: 1, 29, 51, 78(fn.14)

Slaves, Slavery: 27(fn.55), 34, 71, 87-89, 96, 120(fn.46), 140

Snakes in Religious Rites: 78-79

Soba: 62(fn.36), 65(fn.67), 66, 122, 123, 124, 124(fn.29), 126-127, 126(fn.44), 127(fns.47,56), 131

Sobat River: 31(fn.4), 75

Solomon: 39

Songhay: 135

Songs: 80

Sopo River: 23

South Africa: 15

South Sudan: 35

Spain, Spanish: 54, 110, 137

Spaulding, Jay: 50, 64(fn.57), 112, 112(fn.25)

Stevenson, RC: 23

Stewart, Andrew: 38

Stone Circles: 118(fn.27), 124, 129

Stone Worship: 61(fn.30), 72, 72(fn.129), 86, 87(fn.9), 117-119, 139

Suakin: 127(fn.58)

Subhanin: 25, 25(fn.29)

Sudan Notes and Records: 7, 8

Sudan Political Service: 7, 8

Sufyan, King: 85

Sufyan al-Thawri: 37

Sulayman (founder of Bilia Bidayat): 48

Sulayman al-Abyad: 89

Sulayman Solong (Sliman, Solongdungo), Sultan: 43, 55(fn.111), 59, 59(fn.15), 70, 70(fn.111), 78(fn.14), 87-88, 89, 93, 93(fn.10), 94-96, 96(fn.41), 118, 120(fn.46), 131, 139

Sun Worship: 77(fn.9)

Sunghor (Sungor): 36(fn.41)

Suni Valley: 94

Supreme Court of Canada: 14-15, 15(fn.33)

Syria. Syrian: 50, 68

Taberber: 28(fn.64)

Taboos: 96(fn.38)

Tabun, Shartai: 31

Tagabo Hills: 116-119, 119(fn.36), 119(fn.38)

Tahir, Basi: 28

Tahrak, King: 129

Taiserbo: 31(fn.5)

Taitok: 14, 14(fn.29)

Tageru Hills: 128

Taharqa, King: 129(fn.79)

Tajia (Tagia): 38(fns.57-58)

Tajuwa: 22-23, 33, 112(fn.20)

Takaki (Tekaki): 66(fn.76), 71(fn.120)

Tari: 134

Al-Taka: 129, 129(fn.78),

Takamat: 13-14

Tama: 27(fn.31), 36(fn.41), 45(fn.21)

Tamachek: 45(fn.25)

Tamurkwa (Tamurka) Fur: 86, 86(fn.4), 87

Tanit: 14

Tanjak: 55

Tanjikei: 36(fn.41)

Tanzania: 10, 115,

Tar Lis (Tarlis): 112

Tari: 132

Taruga: 114

Tartari: 135

Tatars: 36(fn.44)

Al-Tayeb, Shaykh: 29(fn.66), 99

Tchertcher Mountains: 128(fn.68)

Tebeldi Trees: 3-4, p.3 (fn.5)

Teda: 16, 16(fn.5), 22, 22(fn.4), 34(fn.29), 45, 47, 47(fn.45), 48, 48(fn.47), 119, 128

Tedagada: 45

Tedjeri (Tejeri): 119(fn.41)

Teiga Plateau: 117

Tamaragha Doka, Shaykh: 129(fn.81)

Temeh: 45(fn.21)

Ten Tribes of Israel: 36(fn.44)

Termit: 113

Terninga, Sultan: 27

Teqaqi: 71

Tesseti Dynasty: 116

Thamud: 28(fn.65)

Thelwall, Robin: 117, 120

Thurro: 75

Thutmosis III: 46, 46(fn.35), 134

Thutmosis IV: 8

Tibesti (Tu): 5, 8, 16, 20, 31(fn.5), 45, 45(fn.23), 46(fn.32), 47, 47(fn.46), 48, 48(fn.51), 54, 64(fn.58), 113, 119, 128(fn.68), 130, 136-137

Tibet: 35

Tidikelt: 14(fn.29)

Tidn-Dal Language: 116

Tié: 67(fn.86), 73, 73(fn.144), 74

Tifinagh: 14, 70, 70(fn.108)

Tilho, Commandant: 77, 132, 132(fn.4)

Timsah: 28(fn.64)

Tin Hinan: 13-14 13(fn.25), 14(fn.29)

Tine: 88, 94(fn.21)

Tirga umm sot: 33, 33(fn.18),

Tit: 20(fn.21)

Tiv: 13

Togoland: 5

Togonye, Togoinye: 34, 34(fn.25)

Tong Kilo: 94, 97(fn.46)

Tong Kuri: 93

Tongoingi (Togoingi): 34(fn.25)

Tora: 16-21, 31, 33, 44, 53, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 72, 90, 91, 91(fn.5), 94, 95, 95(fn.31), 97, 119, 123, 126, 127, 128, 128(fn.68), 131

Toronga Kuroma: 16, 17-18

Torti Meidob: 116

Toschka: 134

Tounjour Wells: 132, 132(fn.6)

Tow: 54

Transmogrification: 86,

Treinen-Claustre, F: 134

Tréya (see Jebel Tréya)

Trigger, Bruce: 8, 120

Tripoli: 4, 60, 63(fn.47), 70(fn.111), 77, 77(fn.1), 117, 137

Tuareg (see also Kinin): 13-14, 34(fn.29), 36(fn.44), 43(fn.3), 45, 46(fn.32), 64(fn.53), 128, 130, 130(fns.93,96)

Tubba Kings: 38, 111(fn.12)

Tubiana, J.: 43, 63

Tubu (Tibu, Tibbu): 16, 27(fn.54), 34(fn.29), 44, 44(fn.8), 45, 46, 46(fn.27, 30, 31), 47(fn.46), 48(fn.51), 49, 56, 64(fn.53), 75(fn.3), 117, 130, 137, 139, 140

Tubu Genealogy: 47(fn.46)

Tukl: 20, 61(fn.31), 65-66, 69

Tumaghera: 45-48, 45(fn.25), 46(fn.26), 46(fn.31, 32), 47-48, 47(fn.43), 47(fn.46), 48(fn.51), 54, 113, 140

Tumaghera of Tibesti, Sections: 47, 47(fn.46)

Tumam Arabs: 8

Tumsah (see Tunsam)

Tuna: 59

Tunis: 20, 36(fn.41), 44, 49, 50, 52, 63, 77(fn.1), 80

Tunis (Kanem): 80(fn.1)

Tunisia: 20(fn.22), 52, 73, 74

Al-Tunisi, Muhammad ‘Umar: 5, 27(fn.55), 28(fn.65), 37(fn.54), 43, 57(fn.2), 64(fn.53), 72(fn.134), 77(fn.9), 120(fn.46)

Tunjur: 5, 10, 12, 16, 18, 25, 26, 28, 28(fn.64), 28(fn.65), 29(fn.71), 30, 30(fn.74), 31, 33, 34(fn.25), 36(fn.41), 43-85, 43(fn.6), 44(fns.8, 15), 45(fn.18), 45(fn.19), 46(fn.31), 47(fn.46), 48(fn.47), 48(fn.53), 48(fn.54), 51(fn.71), 52(fn.86), 53(fn.90), 55(fn.111), 57(fns.2,5), 59(fn.15), 62(fn.37), 62(fn.42), 63(fn.47), 72(fn.128), 75(fn.3), 77(fn.6), 80(fns.1,2), 84(fn.3), 87, 88, 88(fn.21), 91, 95, 97, 111, 111(fn.11), 112, 113, 118, 119, 120(fn.46), 131, 132, 132(fn.6), 134, 139

Tunjur, Sultan: 30, 43

Tunjur-Fur: 43, 64(fn.60), 70

Tunjur of Kanem, Sections: 44(fn.13)

Tunjur King-Lists: 81-85

Tunjur Language: 44(fn.8), 63, 64(fn.54)

Tunjur Sections (Darfur): 43

Tunjur Wara: 59

Tunsam (Tumsah), Sultan: 28(fn.64), 31, 49, 70, 84, 87, 89, 93, 93(fns.8,10), 139

Tura: 47

Turco-Egyptians: 12, 62(fn.36)

Turi: 54, 57(fn.1)

Turks (see also Ottomans, Turco-Egyptians): 36(fn.44), 63, 70(fn.111), 74

Turkish Language: 74, 77(fn.9)

Turra: 16, 18, 27, 53, 57, 59, 69, 70, 91(fns.2,3), 93(fn.8), 95-97, 96(fn.43), 97(fn.45), 97(fns.46,47), 99

Turra Hills: 91

Turti: 35

Turrti Dynasty: 118, 121

Turuj: 8, 27(fn.55), 33

Turza: 120(fn.46)

Al-Tuwaysha: 119

Ubangi River: 110(fn.3)

Udal, John O.: 75, 75(fn.3)

Uddu: 86

Ufa, King: 29

Uganda: 14, 18

Um Bura: 64(fn.53)

Um Bus Masalit: 78(fn.14)

Um Daraj (Durraj): 129-130

Um Kurdoos: 28

Umangawi: 78(fn.14)

‘Umar, Daju King: 28

‘Umar, Tunjur Sultan: 77

‘Umar ‘Ali: 45

‘Umar Kissifurogé: 28, 29-30, 33

‘Umar Lel, Sultan: 27, 89, 95

‘Umar ibn Muhammad Dawra – see Muhammad Dawra

Umm Kiddada: 119

Umm Harraz: 94

Umm Harot: 125

Umm Shaluba: 73(fn.148), 77

Ummayads: 48, 49, 51

Umunga Fur: 33

Upper Nile Province: 34(fn.26)

Uri: 27, 28(fn.64), 44, 56, 57, 57(fns.2,5), 59, 60-64, 60(fn.23), 60(fn.24), 61(fn.30), 62(fn.37), 63(fns.46,47), 64(fn.58), 65(fn.65), 68-69, 70, 70(fn.111), 72, 73, 74, 93, 112, 112(fn.21), 119, 119(fn.38), 122(fn.6), 139

Urimellis: 64

Urti Meidob: 116, 121

Venda: 15

Vansleb, JM: 64, 112(fn.25)

Vantini, G: 134

Vatican: 137

Veil – see Litham

Venice, Venetian: 63, 63(fns.47,49)

Vienna Manuscript: 51(fn.74)

Vogel, Dr. Edward: 78

Wadai: 5, 8, 21, 25, 26, 27, 27(fns.54,55), 28, 28(fn.65), 28(fn.65), 33(fn.18), 34, 36(fn.41), 43, 44, 45, 45(fn.21), 46, 48, 48(fn.53), 48(fn.54), 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57(fn.2), 59, 62, 64(fns.53,54), 71, 72(fns.128,129), 74, 75(fns.3,7), 77-79, 77(fns.1,6), 83, 86, 88-89, 95, 110, 111, 111(fn.11), 112(fn.24), 120(fn.46), 128, 132, 134, 135, 140

Wadai, Aboriginal groups: 25

Wadi Abu Dom: 134

Wadi Abu Hashim: 125

Wadi Abu Sibaa: 124

Wadi al-Anaj: 127(fn.57)

Wadi Barei: 94(fn.21), 95

Wadi Golonut: 118

Wadi Halfa: 8, 68(fn.97)

Wadi Hawar (Howar): 4, 9, 47, 125

Wadi Howa: 77

Wadi Jeldama: 95

Wadi Jugtera: 64(fn.53)

Wadi Magrur: 117

Wadi al-Melik (Milk): 4, 117, 122(fn.6), 123, 125, 127

Wadi al-Mukaddam (Muqaddam): 117, 125

Wadi al-Sabt: 38

Wadi Tunsam: 93

Wadi Umm Shaluba: 44

Wadi Uri: 64(fn.58)

Wahb bin Munabbih: 6, 37, 37(fn.52)

Al-Wahwah: 37(fn.46)

Walool: 126

Walz, Terrence: 54

Wamato: 119(fn.37)

Wandala: 136(fn.32)

Wansborough, John: 11

Wara: 33(fn.18), 43, 45, 55, 59, 74, 77-79, 77(fn.6)

Wastani: 36(fn.41)

Wathku: 23

Wau: 23(fn.15)

Wawat: 8

Western Field Force: 1-2

White Nile: 31(fn.4), 50

Wickens, GE: 18-20

Wirdato Meidob: 116, 118

“Wise Stranger” (see also Ahmad al-Ma’qur): 10, 28(fn.65), 29(fn.73), 46, 48, 49-52, 50(fn.64), 56, 87, 119

X-Group: 124(fn.29)

Yahia: 27(fn.31)

Yame: 28(fn.65), 43

Yao: 111(fn.11)

Ya’qub ‘Arus, Sultan: 88

Ya’qub Bok Doro, Sultan: 30

Al-Ya’qubi: 22, 128

Yaqut bin ‘Abd Allah al-Hamawi: 22(fn.4)

Yasir: 39

Yemen: 25, 26, 26(fn.38), 29(fn.73), 37, 38, 49, 111(fn.12), 125(fn.33), 136

Yér: 27(fn.55)

Y’nk: 128

Yusuf, Prince: 89

Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar (Dhu Nuwas): 26(fn.38), 136

Zaghawa: 22, 22(fn.4), 23, 23(fn.8), 25, 27, 29(fn.71), 36(fn.41), 49(fn.55), 50(fn.67), 63-64, 64(fn.53), 72(fn.128), 77, 88, 89, 112(fn.20), 114(fn.16), 119, 136

Zaghay: 23

Zakaria: 69

Zalaf, King: 28, 29

Zalingei: 86

Zanata Berbers: 49,

Al-Zanati, Khalifa: 49

Zanj: 22, 23, 23(fn.8)

Zankor: 66(fn.75), 122-123, 122(fns.2,6), 123(fn.13), 127, 127(fns.53,56), 130, 131, 134

Zarroug, Mohi al-Din Abdalla: 127

Zayd: 36(fn.41), 51

Zayadiya Arabs: 36(fn.41), 51

Zayn al-‘Abidin de Tunis: 77(fn.9)

Zeltner, Jean-Claude: 44

Zenata: 128(fn.68)

Zeugatania: 137

Zeus Ammon: 37-38

Zhylarz, Ernest: 46(fn.35), 120(fn.48)

Ziegert, H: 9

Zingani: 137(fn.37)

Al-Zubayr Pasha: 11(fn.10), 12, 62(fn.38), 87, 96

Zurla: 63

A Nuer Pyramid: Upper Nile Province, South Sudan

Posted on March 30, 2001 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

March, 2001

Over the last century, a great deal has been discovered about the pyramids of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. We know something of the technique used to build them, we are fairly confident of their purpose and we have certain bureaucratic records shedding light on some aspects of the organization of the work-force involved. What often seems to elude us is the motivation of the workers who endured back-breaking labour and, no doubt, many untimely deaths. What also seems strange is the rapidity with which the Egyptians moved from building rather modest monuments to the immense works of the Third and Fourth Dynasties. These developments seem to be inextricably tied to the processes of social unification and state formation. In the Nuer pyramid of Ngundeng we have an interesting parallel from recent times of a decentralized society with no prior experience of cooperative labour or monument building suddenly uniting to build an impressive and well-made structure. This little known work from the southern reaches of the Nile can shed some light on the processes involved in the transformation of Egyptian society some 4,500 years earlier.

The Nuer are one of the largest groups of Nilotic peoples in the South Sudan. As with other Nilotes, their origins and history are as yet poorly understood. A traditional political system is difficult to identify within Nuer society, which anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard once described as “organized anarchy.” The leopard-skin chief is a figure of priestly rather than political authority, and Nuer tended to organize under central leadership only when faced with an unusual outside threat. Even then, the unification of different Nuer groups under a single individual was extremely rare. Evans-Pritchard, whose work on the Nuer was long a staple of college anthropology courses, tended to overemphasize the egalitarianism of Nuer society, ignoring the emergence of a so-called “aristocratic” class of Nuers.

The Nuer prophet Ngundeng was born sometime between 1850 and 1860, and was a member of a leopard-skin clan of the Lou Nuer. Members of such a clan were often referred to as kuaar muon, or earth-priests, as they were felt to have a mystical relationship with the soil. Since the prosperity of all Nuer was closely tied to the earth, such figures occupied an unusual position as potential mediators between various factions of the Nuer, who were habitually involved with blood-feuds and other mutual antagonisms. Ngundeng is usually thought to have been of Dinka descent, the Dinka being the largest of the Nilotic tribes of the South Sudan. Ngundeng spoke Dinka fluently, and was familiar with Dinka manners and customs. As other young Nuer men learned to hunt and fish, Ngundeng spent his days fasting, mumbling incantations and speaking in tongues, earning as well a reputation for being able to self-levitate and to transform himself into a goat. It is said that, as a youth, he deprived anyone who displeased him of the power of speech (save his mother, who was immune), and as a result many of his village neighbors moved to more remote parts. In his early days as a prophet, Ngundeng was said to live for weeks in the bush by himself, surviving on animal and human excrement. He later developed a taste for re-cooked ashes. Evans-Pritchard considered him a genuine psychotic, but nevertheless, Ngundeng’s growing reputation brought him an unusual amount of wealth and wives. It should be noted that the eating of unclean food was also characteristic of the Judaic prophets, and is related to an inversion of normal modes of behavior that helps set the prophet apart from the ordinary individual.

When his first son was born, Ngundeng announced that the particular spirit that the particular spirit that possessed him was called Dengkur, “Deng” being a Dinka word for God, and “kur” being a Nuer term for angry.

At a time just prior to the construction of the pyramid the Gaajok Nuer women were enduring a period of general infertility. In return for curing these women of their barrenness, usually by spitting on them (a traditional means of bestowing blessings in many parts of the Sudan), Ngundeng accepted payment in the form of ivory tusks, beads and cattle. At the same time, smallpox was striking the Nuer, and their cattle were afflicted with rinderpest. Ngundeng came up with the idea of burying the plagues beneath a huge mound that would contain them. Such an idea was revolutionary for the Nuer, who were entirely unaccustomed to extensive or sustained cooperative labour.

The work, which began about 1870, was carried out in three stages: first was the construction of huts for the workers, and while these were being built Ngundeng required payment for his services in grass, timber or labour. This phase lasted one winter season. The second phase lasted two years, and consisted of the accumulation of grain and corn, usually brought to the village by any visitor of passer-by who did not wish to incur the wrath of Ngundeng. When the granaries were full, Ngundeng went into seclusion, fasting for seven days, followed by passing into a trance for three days. At this time word went out for the Nuer to congregate at Ngundeng’s village. The Nuer, forgetting all their customary blood feuds, gathered from points all over the South Sudan until, so it is said, the plain was black with people. After exhorting the crowd for an entire night under a full moon, Ngundeng carried the first load of earth to the site of the mound. For four years, thousands of Nuer worked under his supervision constructing the Bie Dengkur, the mound of Dengkur.

The construction of large mounds built of ash, cattle dung, cotton soil and clay was not without precedent in the South Sudan, though it had not been known among the Nuer previous to Ngundeng’s time. These works are variously said to have been made as monuments to the prophets who ordered their construction, or as burial mounds for the prophets, who were buried, sometimes alive, either beside or beneath them. The model for their shape appears to be the only non-domestic structure traditionally built in the South Sudan, the cattle hut. Two very prominent Dinka mounds can be mentioned in this regard; being those of Ayong Dit and Pwom Ayeuil. The first is built north of Malakal, and remains, like the other, an important shrine. This mound, known as Yiek Ayong, is said to have been built over the body of Ayong Dit, who was bricked up by his own orders in his cattle hut with his wife and eight favorite bulls. A ceremony was held every eight years, during which the mound was repaired and eight bulls sacrificed.

The second mound, known as Pwom Ayeuil (the mound of Ayeuil), is situated on the island formed by the Bahr al-Zeraf and the Bahr al-Jabal. The mound is the work of the Luac Dinka, who are known to have been driven from this area in 1820, and must therefore predate this event, making it at least 180 years old. Beside this monument, which is now much weathered and reduced in height by years of heavy rain, is the grave of Ayeuil Longar, the reputed ancestor of no less than five sections of the Dinka. Traditional tales tell of the many deaths of workers on the mound and the incorporation of their corpses into the structure. Other tales tell of human bodies being used as props in the scaffolding, the individuals being buried alive in the construction of the mound. The Dinka word for these mounds, yik, is also used in describing the mound of Dengkur, suggesting a direct relationship between the Ngundeng project and the earlier Dinka mounds.
The mound of Dengkur was some 300 feet in circumference and 50 to 60 feet high, surrounded by a row of elephant tusks. In form it was a perfect cone; the term “pyramid” is the one applied to it by British colonial administrators. Other tusks were buried within the centre of the mound, along with the horns of a white bull, the entrails of a goat, and various bones. The use of elephant tusks was more than decorative; in Nuer cosmology, elephants possess a spiritual power linked to the destiny of men and were in some ways regarded as cousins to the Nuer. At the peak of the mound was a spear decorated with an ostrich egg and ostrich feathers.

In the years following the completion of the Bie Dengkur, Arab slavers twice attacked the area and carried off all the people and ivory they could, but the mound was kept in good repair and served as a rallying point for Nuer warriors. At some point during this difficult period, Ngundeng had an elaborate brass pipe made for him by an Anuak craftsman. The manufacture of this object was kept secret until one morning the astonished Nuer observed the pipe sitting by itself at the peak of the mound with smoke issuing from its bowl. The pipe quickly assumed its own magic, being said to render its possessor invulnerable, as well as serving as a death-dealing weapon, reputedly felling both men and cattle at a mere wave. Ngundeng let it be known that the pipe would play a major role in ridding Nuer country of the hated “Turks,” as Ottoman, Egyptian and British forces were all known. Ngundeng died in 1906, before the final struggle between the “Turks” and the Nuer.

Ngundeng had become the father of twin sons, Gwek and Lil, in 1883, but it was initially felt that the spirit of Dengkur had passed to his eldest son, Reth. It was Gwek, however, who appeared to have been possessed by Dengkur, speaking in tongues, standing on his head atop the mound, and allegedly transforming himself into a goat. Goats were normally associated with women and cattle with men; the transformation into a goat is again a type of behavioral inversion associated with sexual ambiguity. The matter of Gwek’s status was sealed when Gwek was spotted smoking the brass pipe on top of the mound, for the pipe had not been seen since Ngundeng’s death, presumably having accompanied him to the spirit world. The name “Gwek” means “frog,” and was said to have been given to him as a result of Ngundeng feeding Gwek’s mother frogs as a method of increasing her fertility. Those who knew the adult Gwek felt the name was especially suited to this short, squat, large-headed individual who was known for drooling at the mouth. Quite likely Gwek was an epileptic, experiencing seizures almost daily, during which he would shake, foam at the mouth and scream at the top of his lungs, quite often while standing atop the mound. The Nuer did not haphazardly appoint madmen or epileptics (gwan noka) to positions of authority. Symptoms of epilepsy could only be regarded as signs of prophethood when they were accompanied by a perceived success in curing barrenness, healing, rain-making, divining the future, stopping epidemics and leading raids. The sociologist Max Weber classed such people as “charismatic berserks.”

No one ever saw Gwek climbing or descending the mound; one British officer making a visit to the village thought that Gwek would go up in the night and descend the next night, but he was unable to observe him doing either, despite his best efforts. Climbing the mound was no easy feat, as another British officer later found out. The sides were exceptionally smooth with no handholds. After reaching the top with the assistance of a native trooper, the officer described his descent as “an involuntary and painful slide.”
Although the Anglo-Egyptian army had taken control of the Sudan in 1898, it was not until 1916 that patrols were sent into Nuer country in the Upper Nile province. The Nuer prophets were noted by the administration as having been responsible for leading raids against neighboring tribes, a practice that continued into the 1940s. By 1918, Gwek was leading large raids against the Dinka and even massacred a company of the 9th Sudanese Regiment. Gwek normally went into battle carrying his pipe and a magical fishing spear (normally a ritual object associated with the Dinka) and leading a white bull – an animal that was especially associated with rain-making ceremonies and accompanied Nuer prophets on raids against the Dinka. A government patrol in 1918 met Gwek’s advance on them with a burst of machine-gun fire. The bull was killed with its head pointing towards the Nuer, a signal for immediate retreat.

HC Jackson, then Deputy Governor of Upper Nile province, visited the mound in 1921 with a small escort of native police. Gwek refused to see him, and the small group was soon surrounded by a large number of angry warriors. With little chance of being able to fight their way out, Jackson defused the situation by breaking out his canvas field bath and having an impromptu bath, much to the amusement of the warriors.

Relations between Gwek and the government deteriorated, however, as courts and a native police force were established, greatly reducing both Gwek’s authority and his income. The situation grew worse as the government proposed building a road through Nuer country, connecting it with the territory of their traditional rivals, the Dinka. Over 20 years earlier, Ngundeng had made a prophecy that the Turks would defeat the Nuer in battle many times before making “a great white path” to the Nuer border. At that point a plant would sprout atop the mound of Dengkur. When it reached the height of a man, the Nuer would rise up and drive the Turks out forever. Soon hundreds of bulls were being sacrificed at the base of the mound and warriors began to arrive from all over Nuer land, including forces under the leadership of two other prophets, Char Koryom and Pok Karajok. In 1927, District Commissioner Captain V.H. Fergusson was allegedly murdered along with a Greek merchant and a number or Dinka bearers by a group of Nuer, an action that resulted in an order to arrest Gwek. The perceived threat from the Nuer prophets was even raised in the British House of Commons, and Gwek and Pok Karajok were immortalized in a few lines from the satirical Punch magazine:

I fear that Messsrs. Pok and Gwek
Will shortly get it in the neck
And that an overwhelming shock
Is due to Messrs. Gwek and Pok

Then let us mourn the bitter wreck
In store for Messrs. Pok and Gwek
When we administer the knock
To Mr. Gwek and Mr. Pok.

The eventual advance of a large force of government troops succeeded in dispersing the Nuer. When the patrol reached the mound, which by this time was recognized by the government as a symbol of Nuer resistance, a group of engineers spent a week digging a tunnel into the base of the mound, in which they place a charge of high explosives. The Nuer warriors were assembled for a display of government power and told to watch the mound closely, for it would vanish on a signal from the British leader of the patrol. The attempt to destroy the mound was a failure, however. As Percy Coriat, the Nuer-speaking officer involved described it, “a puff of white smoke and a few lumps of earth tumbling down the side was all they saw.” The mound was attacked by the Royal Air Force in 1927, but bombs failed to destroy it. Gwek remained at large and raids and other disturbances continued. In January 1929, another government column was dispatched to the pyramid.

Percy Coriat climbing the “pyramid,” 1928

Arriving at 5:30 in the morning, they found large numbers of spear-carrying warriors dancing at the base of the mound. Magic water was given to the warriors, who were told that it would render them immune to bullets and taxes, while reeds were given out in the understanding that they would be magically transformed into guns once the battle began.
The column formed a square and began firing over the heads of the warriors in an effort to provoke a charge. The shots had their desired effect and soon the Nuer were rapidly advancing, singing and driving Gwek’s white bull before them. When they had reached 120 yards from the square the government troops opened a withering fire that broke the charge. Gwek’s body and pipe were found beside the slain white bull. The prophet had got closer to the square than anyone else. Though the action wasn’t quite the “Battle of the Pyramids” fought between Napoleon and the Mamluks, it nevertheless had as great an impact on the Nuer of the South Sudan, ending for the most part all resistance to the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium government.

After the battle, the British hung Gwek’s body in a tree so that all the Nuer could see that he was truly dead. Gwek’s pipe wound up in the hands of District Commissioner Alban, who liked to shock the local Nuer by having a smoke from it. Eventually it was destroyed in a fire, but the pieces were recovered and presented to the Khartoum Museum.
The ruined mound stood for many years, with the Nuer prevented by the government from effecting any repairs. As late as 1940, a plague of locusts prompted Gwek’s twin brother, Lil, to request that the mound be “closed up” in order to enclose and bury the plague. Permission was refused. The Bie Dengkur after its Partial Demolition by Government Forces.

In conclusion, we can see some similarities and differences between the Bie Dengkur and the Old Kingdom pyramids:

1/ The Egyptian pyramids were built at the instigation of a divine (or semi-divine) king, while the Nuer mound was built under the direction of a prophet who acted as a spokesman for God.

2/ In time, the pyramids of the Old Kingdom came to symbolize the over-concentration of power and wealth in one individual’s hands leading to resentment and the looting of these structures as early as the First Intermediate Period. The mound of Dengkur, however, came to serve as both a symbol of Nuer resistance to outside aggression and as a means of controlling some of the more inimical elements of nature.

3/ The Egyptian works served as funerary monuments for the benefit of one individual, while the mound of Dengkur was rather more functional, serving to bury plague and disease for the benefit of the entire community.

4/ Both works assisted, intentionally or not, in the unification of fractious but otherwise homogenous peoples and in the mass organization of labour. In this sense, the pyramids of Egypt were vitally important in the formation of a powerful state; the inspiration of Ngundeng might likewise have enabled the Nuer to assume a politically dominant position in the South Sudan had a more advanced culture not interfered at a vital point in their development of a proto-state.

Bibliography

Alban, A.H.: “Gwek’s pipe and pyramid,” Sudan Notes and Records 23(1), pp. 200-201.

Biedelman, T.O.: “Nuer priests and prophets: charisma, power and authority among the Nuer,” in: T.O. Biedelman (ed.), The Translation of Culture, London, pp. 375-415.

Burton, J.W.: “A note on Nuer prophets,” Sudan Notes and Records 54, pp.95-107.

Coriat, Percival: “Gwek the witch-doctor and the pyramid of Dengkur,” Sudan Notes and Records 22(2), 1939, pp.221-37.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E.: “Customs and beliefs relating to twins among the Nilotic Nuer,” Uganda Journal, 1936, pp.230-38.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E.: The Nuer, Oxford, 1940

Greuel, P.J.: “The Leopard-skin chief: An examination of political power among the Nuer,” American Anthropologist 73, 1971, pp.115-20.

Howell, P.P.: “Pyramids in the Upper Nile Region,” Man 48, 1948, pp.52-53.

Jackson, H.C.: Sudan Days and Ways, MacMillan and Co., London, 1954.

Johnson, Douglas H.: “Foretelling Peace and War: Modern Interpretations of Ngundeng’s Prophecies in the Southern Sudan,” in: M.W. Daly (ed.): Modernization in the Sudan: Essays in Honor of Richard Hill, Lilian Barber Press, New York, 1985

Johnson, Douglas H.: Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Clarendon Press, 1997

Kelly, Raymond C.: The Nuer Conquest: The Structure and Development of an Expansionist System, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1985

Kingdon, F.D.: “The Western Nuer Patrol,” Sudan Notes and Records 32, 1945, pp. 77-84.

Stigand, G.H.: “Warrior classes of the Nuers,” Sudan Notes and Records 1, 1918, pp.116-18.

Thomas, L.: “The Nuer Patrol, 1927-28,” in D. Lavin (ed.), The Condominium Remembered: Proceedings of the Durham Sudan Historical Records Conference 1982, Vol. 1, Durham, 1991, pp. 108-110.

A transcript of this lecture was first published in Proceedings of the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Graduate Students’ Annual Symposia 1998-2000, Benben Publications for the University of Toronto, 2001, pp. 201-210.

The Circassian Qubba-s of Abbas Avenue, Khartoum: Governors and Soldiers in 19th Century Sudan

Posted on March 16, 2001 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor
Canadian Institute of International Affairs

Nordic Journal of African Studies 10(1), Helsinki, 2001

Abstract:
Departing from two qubba-s, beehive-like tombs from the 19th century in the centre of Khartoum, the author portrays the complicated sequence of power politics in Egypt and in the Sudan, which ‘explains’ the existence of those two burial monuments in an area where most such monuments were destroyed after the Mahdi’s conquest in 1885. These qubba-s are grave monuments of two nineteenth century Circassian governors-general of the Sudan in the service of Viceroy Muhammad ‘Ali and his descendants. In the qubba-s can be seen the passing of an extraordinary age of Circassian prominence in the Nile Valley. Several events contributed to the end of the Circassian importance in international affairs in general and in Egypt in particular, including (a) the elimination of Mamluk recruitment; (b) the conquest of a divided Circassia by Russia; (c) the exile of many Circassians to Turkey, Jordan, and other points in the Middle East; (d) the growth of Arab nationalism in Egypt and other parts of the Ottoman Empire; and (e) the momentous changes in the power structure of the Ottoman government that culminated in the revolution of the Young Turks.

INTRODUCTION

Passed every day by thousands of people in the downtown core of Khartoum are a pair of qubba-s, or large, beehive-shaped tombs. Surrounded today by modern office towers, their quiet and dusty façades barely invite a second glance, and they are probably taken by most passers-by to be tombs of a pair of local shaykh-s, as the qubba-style monument is almost universally associated with Islamic saints in the Sudan. In reality, however, these structures are not religious in nature, but are rather reminders of the great variety of people who arrived in the Sudan in the nineteenth century, some to rule, some to exploit, some to develop and some to colonize. Drawn from Europe, the Maghrab, the Caucasus, the Middle East and even Central Asia, most of these individuals came voluntarily to participate in the opening of this vast country, while others arrived on orders or even in chains as prisoners in forced exile. Notable among these were the many Circassian military men in Egyptian service, often rising from slavery to assume vitally important positions in the Sudanese administration.

The qubba-s on ‘Abbas Avenue are almost unique examples of ‘secular’ monuments of this type in the Sudan as they mark the burials of two nineteenth century Circassian governors-general of the Sudan in the service of Muhammad ‘Ali and his descendants. Many examples of qubba-s devoted to Sudanese holy men are surrounded by subsidiary burials as followers and even later generations hope to partake in the baraka of the shaykh through burial close to his monument. Mimicking this pattern of burials, the secular qubba-s of ‘Abbas Avenue are likewise accompanied by a number of subsidiary graves, including those of a pair of notable native Sudanese officers of the Egyptian army who pursued service as far afield as Greece, the Crimea and Mexico.

After the abandonment of Khartoum following the Mahdi’s conquest in 1885 and the subsequent demolition of all major buildings for materials for the new ‘Islamic’ capital of Omdurman across the White Nile, the Circassian qubba-s became virtually the only intact remnants of the pre-Mahdist Sudanese capital. It would seem logical to assume that these tombs evaded destruction by the religiously inspired Mahdists through their resemblance to the tombs of Islamic holy men, but the reasons for their survival may be much more complex.

1. THE CIRCASSIANS

The Circassians (also known as Cherkess and Adyghe) who occupied the western half of the north Caucasus are among the most ancient of the region’s innumerable ethnic and linguistic groups. By the tenth to thirteenth centuries AD the Circassians began to consolidate themselves on the Black Sea coast, trading with Byzantium and the Mediterranean merchant cities. Among the products dealt were highly prized Circassian slaves, the women esteemed for their beauty and the young men for their military prowess (Allen, 1970). Nominally Christian with many pagan traditions, the Circassians turned to Islam (introduced by Crimean Tatars) in the 17th and early 18th centuries as a reaction to the Russian threat from the north. The Circassians were politically tied to the Ottoman Empire, but disunity amongst the various tribes allowed Russia to militarily penetrate their homeland. In the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople (Edirme), the Ottoman Empire gave up all claims on the fertile Circassian homeland, but in the 1830s a sense of national identity was formed with British and Ottoman encouragement. Foreign intervention on behalf of the Circassians seemed possible during the early stages of the Crimean War, but eventually the Allies (Britain, France and Turkey) decided to make a landing on the Crimean peninsula rather than the Black Sea coast, despite Turkish support for military intervention in the Caucasus. Major Russian operations resumed in 1862, and after 35 years of nearly constant warfare, Circassian resistance collapsed in 1864, with four to five hundred thousand Circassians being driven from their lands into ships destined for Turkey. Heirs to a proud warrior tradition, some Circassian chiefs were said to have ridden their horse into the Black Sea, drowning themselves in full warrior’s regalia. By 1866 as many as one million Circassians had been driven from their homes, many perishing of disease, exposure and starvation in the process. [2] A last effort to retake Circassia came in 1877, when large numbers of Circassians joined in the Ottoman invasion of the Black Sea coast; though initially successful, the attempt was eventually abandoned (Allen and Muratoff 1953). A large Circassian diaspora emerged from this catastrophe, in which the Circassians were dispersed to communities in Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Palestine, though the displaced Circassians continued to have great success in the armed forces and royal guards of their adopted countries. The Circassian homeland was eventually broken into three autonomous republics, Adygea, Karachai-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria, in each of which the Circassians now form a small minority (Habjoka 1972).

To explain the burial of two Circassian military men in religious-style tombs in Khartoum we must first briefly look back to Egypt in 1260 AD, when the powerful class of military slaves known as Mamluks seized power from their masters and created their own unique dynasty. The Mamluks were not Egyptians themselves, but were instead purchased as boys from dealers in the Caucasus mountains, Turkestan, and even Mongolia. They were succeeded in power not by their own children, but by new slaves imported from far beyond Egypt. In 1382, the Circassian faction of Mamluks from the North Caucasus gained dominance and spent the next 135 years battling each other while terrorizing and pillaging their hapless Egyptian subjects. The Ottoman invasion of 1517 did not end Mamluk authority as expected, but in many cases only supplied the Mamluks with a new series of Ottoman governors to bully and torment.

The end of this system of misgovernment arrived in the person of Muhammad ‘Ali at the head of 10,000 Albanian troops in a combined Ottoman-British invasion of French-occupied Egypt. Seizing power in 1803, Muhammad ‘Ali followed a policy of massacres against the Mamluks while also cutting off the supply of new slaves from Circassia and Georgia.

By 1811, Muhammad ‘Ali had succeeded in destroying the Mamluks as an institution, but the resilient Circassians continued to wield considerable control and influence in Egyptian affairs for the next 70 years, although they were now under the vigilant eye of the Viceroy and his successors. Culturally aligned to the Ottoman Turks through their shared use of Turkish rather than Arabic, the Circassians formed part of a Turko-Circassian elite in Egypt that enjoyed a monopoly on force and the major state offices despite their small numbers. Probably only 1% of the population at the beginning of the 19th century, the supply of fresh Circassian slaves began to diminish under the Viceroy’s rule, and the children of Turko-Circassians began to be raised as Arabic-speaking Egyptians.

Growing numbers of native Egyptian administrators and the concurrent growth of Arabic as the language of government meant that by the 1870s the term ‘Turko-Circassian’ had lost much of its ethnic meaning, instead indicating more of a socio-economic class. The use of Ottoman Turkish in government had long kept Egyptians from public office, but long after the use of Arabic and French had become common in many ministries, the Egyptian Army retained Turkish as the language of command, allowing the Turko-Circassians some leverage in keeping a lingering grip on their previous monopoly on force. [3] The development of a nascent Egyptian nationalism behind Ahmad ‘Urabi was in large part a response to the entrenchment of the wealthy, land-holding Turko-Circassian elite, but many Circassians realized that their grip on Egypt was highly tenuous, and the Circassian nobles and officers split into Ottoman and ‘Urabist factions. With the ‘Urabist nationalists in power, a number of Circassian staff officers attempted a coup in 1882 designed to preserve the old order. The rising was thwarted and the officers were sentenced to exile in the Sudan (later commuted to exile in Turkey by Khedive Tawfiq, a virtual non-punishment) (Cole 1993: 237-238).

Some few hundred Mamluks escaped Muhammad ‘Ali’s wrath by fleeing to the Sudan, and in an effort to eliminate these and to acquire at the same time large numbers of black slaves to swell the ranks of his army, Muhammad ‘Ali sent his son Isma’il to the Sudan at the head of a large invasion force in 1820. Isma’il was also entrusted with the task of exploiting the supposed gold fields of Sinnar. The army was a motley collection of Turkish troops, Bedouin, Bosnians, Magharba volunteers and Bashi-Bazouks, [4] loosely disciplined irregulars (mostly Albanians, Circassians, Kurds and Slavs). The army also included a battery of field artillery, which was to prove decisive in several engagements ahead.

2. THE TURKO-EGYPTIAN CONQUEST OF THE SUDAN

The advance of Isma’il’s force was unopposed until they reached the land of the Sha’iqiya, along the Nile in the region between Korti and the fourth cataract. Proud and warlike, the Sha’iqiya courageously but futilely charged the Egyptian guns in two battles in December 1820. Heavy Sha’iqiya losses on the battlefield were followed by the brutal mutilation of many of the civilian population by Turkish troops. Despite this, the surviving Sha’iqi warriors were recruited into Turkish service and remained among the most effective instruments of force available to the regime until its demise 65 years later.
Reaching Sinnar on the Blue Nile in June 1821, a detachment under the Viceroy’s capable son Ibrahim Pasha received the submission of King Badi IV, ruler of the now decrepit Funj empire. The conquest of Fur-ruled Kordofan was entrusted to Muhammad ‘Ali’s son-in-law, the Daftardar Muhammad Bey Khusraw. [5] Again Turkish guns laid waste to the chain-mailed cavalry of the Fur governor and his Arab allies at the battle of Bara. Only the outbreak of an anti-Ottoman rebellion on the Greek island of Morea prevented a further invasion of Darfur itself.

Turkish troops throughout the new territories were immediately put to the task of enslaving tens of thousands of the Viceroy’s new subjects (as well as their neighbors) and shipping them to Cairo. Isma’il was constantly spurred on by his father, who was desperate to fill the ranks of the nizam al-jadid, his new army of black slaves and Egyptian fellahin (agricultural peasants). Muhammad ‘Ali stated these recruits were ‘worth even more than jewels’ (Douin 1944: 277-285).

Massive new tax levies were instituted to compensate for the failure of the Turks to discover the long rumoured gold sources of Sinnar and Kordofan. While the early years of the occupation might be termed ‘rule by razzia,’ there were exceptional administrators such as ‘Abdin Bey al-Arna’ut (‘the Albanian’), who made many improvements as governor of Dongola (1821-26). The stability of Dongola was unusual, however, as rebellion flickered throughout the new Egyptian territories.

On an inspection tour of Shendi in 1822, Isma’il made insulting and unreasonable demands for slaves and cash from the Ja’aliyin mek (king), Nimr Muhammad. Mek Nimr responded by uniting with his cousin Mek Musa’ad to brutally kill Isma’il and his entourage. With Muhammad ‘Ali’s new heir Ibrahim needed in Egypt to deal with rebellious fellahin, the suppression of the Arab revolt that followed Isma’il’s death was left to the Daftardar, Muhammad Bey Khusraw, who accomplished the task through massacres and relentless cruelty towards the rebels and the innocent alike. Before being relieved in 1824, the atrocities carried out by the Daftardar in Sudan coloured Sudanese attitudes towards the ‘Turks’ for the remainder of their administration. Muhammad Bey Khusraw was eventually judged a liability by his father-in-law, the Viceroy, and was poisoned on the Viceroy’s orders in 1833.

The administration of the Turko-Egyptian regime changed little with the arrival of a new governor for Sinnar and Berber at the head of a regiment of the nizam al-jadid. ‘Uthman Jarkas al-Birinji was a middle-aged Circassian Mamluk of the Viceroy’s household who attempted to revive the Mamluk style once in Sudan by recruiting fourteen other Mamluks as a personal bodyguard. These efforts brought admonishment from the Viceroy, and ‘Uthman’s brutal attempts to collect the excessive taxes drove the all-important cultivators of the fertile Gezira region into the desert to perish of starvation and disease.

After ‘Uthman’s sudden death in 1823 he was replaced by a Kurd, the Mamluk Mahu Bey Urfali. Mahu accomplished much in his single year as governor, pacifying the country, suspending tax collection for three years, decentralizing the administration and restoring discipline to the marauding troops. Nevertheless, the Viceroy desired another hand at the helm, and installed ‘Ali Kurshid Agha as the Sudan’s first hikimdar (governor-general) in 1826.

Ali Kurshid was given wide powers, but discovered his new domain was already in ruins after only five years of Turko-Egyptian rule. The hikimdar’s rule, which lasted until 1838, was characterized by a number of important developments, including the establishment of Khartoum as the new capital of the Sudan, the introduction of a number of new crops, the growing cultivation of cotton, and the revival of the Gezira region. ‘Ali Kurshid also worked hard at organizing the slave trade and mounted numerous raids on the Shilluk, the Dinkas and the Hadendowa, many of which met fierce resistance (Hill 1959; Udal 1998; Douin 1944).Qubba of Ahmad Pasha Abu Adhan (McGregor)

3. THE QUBBA OF AHMAD PASHA ABU ADHAN

Muhammad ‘Ali’s conquest of the Sudan gave ambitious Circassians a new field in which to resume their ruling ways at some distance from the ever-suspicious Viceroy while still being officially engaged in his service. The qubba-s in downtown Khartoum memorialize two such men.

The first of these is Ahmad Pasha Abu Adhan, Governor-General of the Sudan from 1839 to 1843. Brought to Egypt as a Circassian slave, Ahmad Pasha was a career soldier who fought under Muhammad ‘Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, in Arabia, Syria and Greece. After serving as Egypt’s Minister of War, Ahmad Pasha’s first task as Governor-General was an eight-month campaign undertaken in 1840 to subjugate the Hadendowa tribe of the Beja in the east part of the Sudan. Taking Kassala following heavy fighting, Ahmad Pasha then embarked on a large raid into the Blue Nile area in search of slaves for Muhammad ‘Ali’s army. According to one source, his force of nearly 5,000 men and artillery was soundly routed by a desperate charge of spear-carrying tribesmen at Kormuk (Paton 1863: 227-231). In 1843 Muhammad ‘Ali ordered the preparation of a large force to invade Darfur, an independent sultanate west of the Sudan, but the operation was called off at the last minute because Muhammad ‘Ali began to suspect Ahmad Pasha of treasonous activities.
While governor, Ahmad Pasha made a number of innovations in the administration of the Sudan, including the development of the manufacturing sector of the country, the imposition of a levy of slaves upon each taxable person, and a crackdown on government corruption, especially among the Coptic financial clerks who used the mysteries of accounting to fleece their Turkish masters. The Governor-General was especially popular with the black troops of the Egyptian army, which eventually caused Muhammad ‘Ali to regard him as a threat to his own rule. The Viceroy could well recall that it was his own popularity with the Albanian troops serving in Egypt that enabled him to seize control, though Muhammad ‘Ali would later take pains to eliminate his unruly supporters by sending them off to fight in expeditionary forces accompanied by letters to their commanders advising them that these men were to considered ‘expendable.’

When rumours began to circulate that the Governor-General was negotiating with the Ottoman sultan to separate the Sudan from Egypt, Ahmad Pasha was ordered back to Cairo. The Governor-General apparently decided instead to take a fatal dose of poison in Khartoum, though rumours held that the poison had been administered by Muhammad ‘Ali’s messenger. The Governor-General’s family was detained in Khartoum for a year afterwards in an attempt to suppress speculation, and the whole incident was regarded as something of a scandal in Istanbul. [6]

Qubba of Musa Pasha Hamdi (McGregor)

4. THE QUBBA OF MUSA PASHA HAMDI

The Western qubba on ‘Abbas Avenue is that of Musa Pasha Hamdi, Governor-General of the Sudan from 1862 to 1865. Musa Hamdi was a Circassian soldier of long experience in the Sudan. His career began when he was sold as a slave in the Cairo market to a Turk. Enrolled in the army, Musa Hamdi was captured in a campaign against the Syrians, but succeeded in escaping. Musa Hamdi progressed quickly through the ranks due to a combination of cunning and ruthlessness, and despite being dismissed at one point for his inhumane treatment of prisoners (an accomplishment at a time when taxes were collected through beatings and conscripts were transported in chains), Musa Hamdi was soon appointed to a succession of important posts. When made Governor-General, Musa Hamdi brought with him a reputation for cruelty demonstrated in campaigns against the Beja in the eastern Sudan. Although several of his predecessors had taken steps against the Sudan’s immense trade in slaves, Musa Hamdi allowed the slave trade to resume unhindered. Taxation was also raised to unsustainable levels and it was not long before the Sudan’s administration became a net drain on the Cairo treasury. In the south the Governor-General came into conflict with several of the often-large private slave armies created by Nubian and Arab traders and slavers from the north Sudan. A successful raid on Abyssinia resulted in Musa Hamdi’s promotion to the third grade of pasha (Rumeli beylerbeyi), but a later expedition against the Nuba of Southern Kordofan ended in defeat for the Governor-General. Musa Hamdi solved the problem of a large and under-utilized army in the Sudan by loaning regular troops to slave-raiders in the South. The Governor-General’s short rule ended with his death from smallpox in Khartoum in 1865. His successor defamed him as ‘a drunkard, a gambler, and a thief,’ though it was the practice for new governors to denigrate their predecessors so as to make their own regimes shine in comparison. Samuel Baker, who knew the Governor-General, described Musa Hamdi as ‘a rather exaggerated specimen of Turkish authorities in general, combining the worst of oriental failings with the brutality of a wild animal’ (Baker 1877: 8). HA MacMichael, a later Governor-General of the Sudan, remarked of Musa Hamdi that ‘murder and torture were no more to him than pastimes’ (MacMichael 1922: 429).

5. THE TOMB OF MUHAMMAD BEY ALMAS

As mentioned above, Islamic qubba-s are typically surrounded by the graves of followers and descendants of the shaykh within, a pattern followed by the monuments of ‘Abbas Avenue, which are accompanied by a handful of lesser burials. Among these is that of Muhammad Bey Almas (or al-Maz). A Dinka from the south Sudan, Muhammad Almas entered the Turkish-Egyptian army as a common soldier in 1834 and eventually rose to the rank of commissioned officer.

Far from the Sudan, the manipulations of the French emperor Napoleon III in Mexico were to have an unforeseen effect on the lives of Almas and many of his fellow Sudanese comrades-in-arms. Napoleon III committed a large number of French troops in 1862 to support the ambitious attempt to place a Hapsburg royal on the throne of Mexico, but Yellow Fever and malaria proved devastating to the French troops. The French Emperor was increasingly involved financially with Egypt, and his request for the loan of black troops used to such conditions for use in the most fever-ridden areas was met with approval. By January 1863 Muhammad Almas was on his way to Mexico as second-in-command of 447 Sudanese soldiers, assuming command of the regiment shortly after the death of its commanding officer, Binbashi Jubarat Allah.

The Sudanese proved very effective fighters and became highly popular with their French allies. [7] Almas was personally decorated by the Hapsburg Arch-Duke Maximillian with the order of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, a singularly unusual distinction for a Muslim officer. A much-reduced Sudanese force embarked for the return to Egypt in 1867, stopping along the way for a review by Napoleon III in Paris. Almas was decorated with the cross of Officer of the Legion of Honour by the French emperor,and was further promoted upon his return to Egypt. The Mexican veterans proved a remarkably durable lot, serving as the most reliable troops under successive governors of the Sudan. Gordon gave the highest commands to Mexican veterans in his defence of Khartoum, and several served long enough to participate in Kitchener’s 1899 conquest of the Mahdist forces at Omdurman. [8]

6. THE TOMB OF ADHAM PASHA AL-‘ARIFI

A second military burial at the site is that of Adham Pasha al-‘Arifi (commonly called al-Taqalawi). Born in the Nuba hills of Southern Kordofan, al-‘Arifi, probably a Nuba in origin, was one of the first black Sudanese to be taken to Egypt for a military education. After his training, al-‘Arifi fought in Muhammad ‘Ali’s campaigns in Syria before serving as second in command of a regiment of Sudanese troops (the 9th) sent to the Crimea in 1853 as part of the Ottoman expeditionary force. After fighting the Russians, al-‘Arifi returned to the Sudan in 1862, where he embarked on a tax-collecting campaign in the Fazughli mountains of the Blue Nile region. In 1865 Cairo issued orders for a battalion to be formed from black troops stationed in Kassala for the relief of the Sudanese battalion already in Mexico. The Kassala garrison mutinied, and al-‘Arifi was placed in command of one of three columns sent to suppress the mutineers. Al-‘Arifi persuaded the garrison to surrender, but they were then executed to a man, despite Al-‘Arifi’s protests. His own role in the affair nevertheless brought al-‘Arifi promotion and eventually the post of acting Governor-General in 1872 while serving as commanding officer of all troops in the Sudan (Hill 1967: 27).

Several other tombs are found on the site, including that of the wife of Mari Bey. Mari Bey (also known as Békir Agha, and Békir Bey) was a Corsican adventurer who claimed to have served under Napoleon as a colonel, though others insisted he was only a drummer; hence his nickname, ‘Le Colonel Tapin’. Appointed an instructor in Muhammad ‘Ali’s army, Mari Bey campaigned against the Wahhabites in Arabia and against the Greeks in Morea. By 1834 he was on the staff of Ahmad Pasha in Arabia. While serving as a prefect of police in Cairo in 1853 he fell into disfavour with ‘Abbas I and was temporarily exiled to Khartoum, where his wife died and was buried beside the qubba of his old commander, Ahmad Pasha.

The last tomb on the site belongs to Ibrahim Bey Marzouk, an Egyptian writer who appears to have been of some influence in Khartoum, having once served on a commission of inquiry regarding government corruption.

7. THE QUBBA-S

The Sudanese Qubba in its most basic beehive form – Northern Dongola Reach, Nubia (Sudan Archaeological Research Society – Northern Dongola Reach Survey)

Qubba-s are found mainly along the Blue Nile and the Nile north of Khartoum, though isolated examples are found through most of Muslim Sudan. The qubba is always a holy place, and the fenced area around it is also haram, a sanctuary where a traveler’s goods can be left safely and without interference. The qubba-s are sites of local pilgrimage on holy days, or on occasions when it is necessary to make a special request from the saint. A solemn oath may also be sworn at a qubba belonging to a family ancestor.

More complex examples from Wad Madani on the Blue Nile (Photo – David Love)

The qubba of Ahmad Pasha, the earlier of the two on ‘Abbas Avenue, represents the beginning of the last phase of development of Sudanese qubba-s, using a cube foundation with a beehive cupola, the two being mediated by a polygon in the middle. In the ‘Abbas Avenue examples and in another qubba at Mekali (that of Al-Shaykh ‘Abd Allah al-Halengi) each of the foundation corners supports a phallic-shaped column. This type of ornament evolved into a more elaborate small dome supported by four open arches, as in the Mahdi’s tomb and others in Omdurman (as-Sadig 1966; Humudi 1977: 107-116).

How did these small burial structures on ‘Abbas Avenue come to be the last remnants of pre-Mahdist Khartoum? Their outward appearance as religious sanctuaries does not appear sufficient reason when the historical record is examined. The tombs were those of major figures in the hated Turko-Egyptian regime, and while the vast majority of the Mahdists were illiterate tribesmen from the west Sudan, the identity of the occupants of these qubba-s would have been no mystery to Islamic scholars such as the Mahdi or to the many former members of the Turko-Egyptian regime who had fallen in with the Mahdists, and who would know the true nature of the tombs’ occupants or at least be able to read the inscriptions found there. Islamic associations were not alone enough to prevent the destruction of a structure by the Mahdists: the Great Mosque of Khartoum was dismantled for building materials shortly after the Mahdist victory, and it is further known that the Mahdists destroyed the qubba of al-Hasan al-Mirghani (1810-69) in Kassala because of his son’s opposition to the Mahdi and his successor, the Khalifa. In these circumstances it is all the more puzzling as to why these two ‘secular’ qubba-s, representative of the cruelty and extortion of the Turko-Egyptian regime, should have survived the abandonment and destruction of the rest of the city.

The Qubba Tomb of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, Omdurman

It is suggested that, given the structural similarity between the ‘Abbas Avenue qubba-s and the much grander tomb of the Mahdi in Omdurman, that the Circassian qubba-s served as architectural models for the tomb of the Mahdi, who died very shortly after the fall of Khartoum. As the rest of Khartoum was dismantled, these qubba-s were spared the fate of the rest of the city through their association (however tenuous) with the Mahdi. These tombs, representative of the old order, could owe their preservation to the sanctity of the man who forever destroyed that old order in the Sudan.

What, then, was the legacy of these Circassian governors and their fellow Ottomans during Egypt’s 19th century rule in the Sudan? Before his fateful return to Khartoum, General Gordon insisted in an interview in 1884 (in the Pall Mall Gazette) that ‘all that was needed in order to restore law and order in the Sudan was to promise the Sudanese that in future no Turks or Circassians should be allowed to exploit them and ruin their country’. Lord Cromer, who devised the Condominium government of Britain and Egypt that ruled the Sudan after 1899, described the Turko-Circassian administration of the Sudan as ‘the worst form of misgovernment’. George Schuster, a prominent member of Sudan’s government in the 1920’s, described the regime as ‘one of the blackest stories of misadministration in human history – a record of corruption by Government officials, of slave trading, of local wars and complete civil disorder.’ [9]

Egyptian views of the Turko-Circassian legacy in Sudan vary; some have focused on
Egypt’s ‘civilizing mission’, some have disclaimed Egyptian involvement in what was in reality an Ottoman Turkish administration, and still others have blamed the ills of the administration on the Europeans introduced to the Sudan government by Khedive Isma’il in the 1870’s. Sudanese scholars have used Egyptian correspondence of the period to reject any notion of Egypt carrying out a ‘civilizing mission’ above and beyond the exploitation of Sudanese resources and peoples, and further emphatically dispose of the idea that the Sudanese umma required Egyptian guidance in religious affairs (Warburg 1992).

While the Turko-Circassians did open the Sudan to world markets and created a centralized administration, the devastation wrought by a brutal and wasteful slave trade, the consequent depopulation of viable economic areas, and the use of forced labour on over-ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to exploit the country’s natural resources meant that the Sudan’s financial books were doomed to drown in red ink even before corrupt administrators of each level of government took their take of the official revenues.

8. CONCLUSION

The small collection of qubba-s and graves on ‘Abbas Avenue are an important monument to the vast changes that came to the Middle East and North Africa in the 19th century. In the qubba-s we may see the passing of an extraordinary age of Circassian prominence in the Nile Valley. Among the events that conspired to bring an end to Circassian importance in international affairs in general and their prominence in Egypt in particular were;

a) the elimination of Mamluk recruitment
b) the conquest of a divided Circassia by Russia
c) the exile of many Circassians to Turkey, Jordan, and other points in the Middle East
d) the growth of Arab nationalism in Egypt and other parts of the Ottoman Empire
e) the momentous changes in the power structure of the Ottoman government that culminated in the revolution of the Young Turks. [10]

On the other hand, we may see in the careers of the two Sudanese officers the entry of the black tribes of the south Sudan onto the modern international scene. Born into a world where most people rarely ventured far from their village, these Nuba, Dinkas, Shilluks and others represented their little known peoples with distinction in such far-flung places as Syria, Russia, France and Mexico.

Though they, like the Circassians, began their Egyptian service as slaves, they were pioneers in the transition of power in the Sudan from the varied ‘Turk’ races of the Ottoman empire to the Sudanese nationalists who would eventually guide the Sudan to independence.

Notes

[AIS Update – December 2016] – The author made several visits to the site in the 1980s and 1990s, which was, at the time, close to a road sign that read “Abbas Avenue.” It was later learned that the avenue had been renamed al-Baladiya Avenue at some point after independence, though apparently the old road signs had not been removed. The qubba-s can be found on al-Baladiya (formerly Abbas) between al-Qasr Avenue and Babiker Badri Street. The author regrets the mistake.
The precise figures have been the subject of some dispute; see Henze (1992: 103-104).
For the role of the Circassian elite in a changing 19th century Egyptian society, see Abu-Lughod (1967: 325-344).
Turkish: basibozuk, literally ‘crack-brained.’ Lively accounts of service in such units can be found, for example, in Money (1857) and Vizetelly (1897).
The Daftardar was the Egyptian government Intendant of Finance.
Hill 1967: 41-42. For details of the controversy, see Santi and Hill (1980: 87-89) and Hill (1956: 83-87).
The Sudanese and French were only part of a polyglot force that included Austrians, Belgians, Mexicans, Legionnaires and Martinicans.
A full history of the Mexican campaign is given in Hill and Hogg (1995). A colourful first-hand account can be found in Jifun (1896). See also Ravert and Dellard (1894: 43-53, 104-23, 176-85, 230-45, 272-85).
Gordon is quoted in Daniel (1966: 426). For British views of the Turko-Egyptian regime, see Schuster (1979) and MacMichael (1934: Ch. 3).
The post-Communist efforts to unite the Circassian diaspora are described in Smith (1998 : 92-95).

REFERENCES

Abu-Lughod, I. ‘The Transformation of the Egyptian Elite: Prelude to the ‘Urabi revolt’.
Middle East Journal, Summer 1967: 325-344.

Allen, W. E. D. 1970. Russian embassies to the Georgian kings (1589-1605). Volume 1. Cambridge: Haklyut Society.

Allen, W. E. D. and Muratoff, P. 1953. Caucasian battlefields: A history of the wars on the Turco-Circassian border, 1828-1921. Cambridge.

as-Sadig, S. O. 1966. The Domed Tombs of Eastern Sudan: Their functional, cultural and psychological values. Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Khartoum.

Baker, S. W. 1877. The Albert N’yanza. London.

Broxup, M. E. (ed.) 1992. The North Caucasus barrier: The Russian advance towards the Muslim world. London.

Cole, J. R. 1993. Social and cultural origins of Egypt’s ‘Urabi movement. Princeton, New Jersey.

Daniel, N. 1996. Islam, Europe and Empire. Edinburgh.

Douin, G. 1944. Histoire du Soudan Égyptien, Vol.1, La Pénétration, 1820-22. Cairo.

Habjoka, S. M. 1972. Heroes and Emperors in Circassian History. Beirut.

Henze, P. B. 1992. “Circassian resistance to Russia,” In: The North Caucasus barrier: The
Russian advance towards the Muslim world, Marie Bennigsen Broxup (ed.). London.

Hill, R. 1956. ‘Death of a Governor-General,’ Sudan Notes and Records 37.

Hill R. 1959. Egypt in the Sudan, 1820-1881. Oxford.

Hill, R. 1967. Biographical Dictionary of the Sudan, 2nd ed., Oxford

Hill, R. and Hogg, P. 1995. A Black Corps d’Élite: An Egyptian Sudanese conscript battalion with the French army in Mexico, 1863-1867, and its survivors in subsequent African history. Michigan: East Lansing.

Humudi, S. T. 1977. ‘Arab and Islamic origins of the tomb and enclave in the Sudan.’ Sudan Notes and Records 58: 107-116.

Jifun, A. (Translation: Bey, P. W. M.) 1896. ‘The Story of Ali Jifun,’ The Cornhill Magazine, new series 1. London.

MacMichael, H. A. 1922. History of the Arabs of the Sudan, Vol. II.1934

MacMichael, H.A., 1934. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. London.

Money, E. 1857. Twelve Months with the Bashi-Bazouks. London.

Paton, A. A. 1863. A History of the Egyptian Revolution, Vol.II. London.

Ravert and Dellard 1894. ‘Historique du Bataillon Nègre Égyptien au Mexique (1863-1867).’
Revue d’Égypte I.

Santi, P. and Hill, R. (eds.) 1980. The Europeans in the Sudan, 1834-1878. Oxford.

Schuster, G. 1979. Private work and public causes. Wales: Cowbridge.

Smith, S. 1998. Allah’s Mountains: Politics and war in the Russian Caucasus. London.

Udal, J. O. 1998. The Nile in Darkness: Conquest and Exploration, 1504-1862. Wilby:
Norwich.

Vizetelly, E. 1897. The Reminiscences of a Bashi-Bazouk. Bristol: Arrowsmith.

Warburg, G. R. 1992. Historical discord in the Nile Valley. London

The Christian Fortifications of Nubia

Posted on May 12, 1995 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

May 12, 1995

Introduction

Parts of Nubia are a virtual open-air museum of mediaeval fortifications where successive generations and cultures have left samples of military architecture ranging from walled villages to imposing castles. Many of these works belong to the Islamic/Turkish period; most of the earlier Christian works were rebuilt or heavily modified in this era, adding to the difficulties of cultural identification. In this, the Muslims were only following the pattern set by the Christians, who had in their time rebuilt Pharaonic, Kushite, Meroitic and Roman structures.

Christian Nubia c.500 C.E.

Unfortunately, these important works have received scant attention from professional archaeologists. Proper surveys are rare and full-scale excavations almost unheard of. Our knowledge of many of these sites relies upon the observations of civil and military officials of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium who, with varying degrees of skill, attempted to date the ruins they came across on the basis of ceramic remains or brick-types. It is therefore entirely possible that upon closer investigation many of the sites identified in this paper may belong to other periods than those cited, and may likewise possess designs and features dissimilar to those described.

In examining the Christian sites, it is useful to keep in mind the various roles which the fortifications in Nubia could fulfill:

Control of river-traffic
Demarcation of political boundaries
Refuge for local populations in times of attack or upheaval
Housing for military and civil administrators
Symbolic value as symbols of government prestige
Customs house
Storage of government taxes and revenues
Internment of civil or political prisoners

This paper will examine the Christian sites by type of fortification:

1/ Walled settlements

2/ a) 2-storey houses; b) Blockhouses

3/ Re-used fortifications

4/ Forts/Castles of the Christian Kingdoms

a) Nobatia; b) Makuria; c) Alwa

Walled Settlements

The earliest of the Christian period walled settlements are notable for the strength of their walls and the apparent planning involved in their construction as fortified towns. This type is exclusively found in the northern extremes of Nubia, and its development is likely a response to the proximity of Egyptian military power and the raiding of regional nomads.

The sites, which include Kalabsha, Sabagura, Shaykh Da’ud and Ikhmindi, are characterized by large square or rectangular plans, enclosed by a massive stone wall equipped with bastions, corner towers and fortified gateways. [1] Stone and brick were both used in these defenses. [2]

The walled settlement in points further south is usually less elaborate, consisting of a dry stone wall that follows the terrain or the outline of a pre-existing village. Near Gemai a small settlement of 30 dwellings at Mugufil Island uses its position on a high bluff and a stone wall one meter in width for defence. [3] Close to the Second Cataract, in the Sarkamatto District, the village of Debba brought 70 houses together on a 20 meter high rock outcrop with dry stone walls. [4]

In the Dal district there are two major sites, Tiine and Sheeragi. [5] Tiine is a Late Christian settlement, built on a steeply rising island slope. The east side falls away in a sheer cliff. A semi-circular series of walls adapt to the contour of the hill, creating numerous small enclosures. The repetition of walls down the sloping face provided added defensive protection and a buffer against rock falling from higher levels of the site. Sheeragi also occupies a granite outcrop. Within a stone wall are dozens of houses and two larger works made of granite and schist, which may be the remains of a two-storey house.

South of the Second Cataract, on the island of Gergetti, a small community of 11 houses possessed a well-built double wall, the inner of rough stone and the outer of brick with a finished surface. The plan is in the form of an elongated hexagon, with bastions at the angles. The entrances were built with a zig-zag design and sloping ramps. [6] At Kitfogga (Ferka West), a fortified village uses the natural crest of the hilltop for the plan of its stone-walls. A church and smaller stone dwelling enclosures fill the interior. [7] At nearby Ferkinarti Island (also known as Diffinarti) is a walled village with possible traces of a two-storey house. [8]

Two-Storey Houses

The characteristics of the two-storey house have been clearly defined by Adams:

They are always two storeys high, square or nearly square in plan, and stoutly built; usually of mud-brick but occasionally with a mud brick supper storey resting on a stone-built lower storey. The ground-floor rooms are mostly blind cellars, accessible only from above, while the upper-storey rooms exhibit the typical arrangement of Christian Nubian living quarters. Rarely if ever is there an internal stairway connecting the upper and lower storeys. Many of the buildings lack any ground level access; they were reached originally by means of ladders leading to doorways a the level of the upper storey. [9]

From the evidence of ceramic remains and earlier levels of construction underneath the two-storey houses, it appears that these works are typically Late Christian, mostly of the 13^th century. The two-storey house is common in the last Christian occupation phase of many settlements, and was often converted to other uses in the Islamic period.

The construction of sturdy two-storey buildings was made possible in Nubia through the use of brick vaulting, which was highly suitable for supporting upper stories of some weight. The walls are at least 80 cm. thick and are entirely constructed of brick, with the exception of several examples that use granite blocks in the lower courses. Doorways are present at the ground level, but these are in all cases but one post-Christian modifications.

Unique storage crypts are common to these structures, entered only through hatchways in the upper floor and often possessing their own brick vaulting. Secret crypts are often found cleverly concealed in the walls and other spaces of the building.

Most of the known two-storey houses can be found in the stretch of Nubia between Qasr Ibrim and Ferkinarti, though other examples can be found in the Letti Basin area. Some of the more notable examples of two-storey houses are found (from north to south) at:

Abkanarti One example on a rock-shelf, elevated over the village and outside its defensive walls. [10]

Kasanarti A late addition to the settlement and the village’s only apparent public building, the two-storey house at Kasanarti may have served as a combination watchtower and granary. [11] The structure is unusual, as it is joined on at least three side by contemporary structures. [12]

Gemai The two-storey house at Gemai is our lone example of such a structure with a ground-floor entrance and a stairway to the upper level. [13] Evidently the entrance was regarded as a mistake, for it was walled up at an early point in its occupation. [14]

Murshid West A number of two-storey mud-brick buildings are found here, amidst a town-site built on a rocky outcrop. In their lower storey they consist of typical vaulted chambers with hatchway entrances from the upper floor. [15]

Kulme (or Kulma) This site consists of three small, steep-sided islands in the Second Cataract, two of which bear two-storey houses. In earlier times the three islands may have formed a single site. In one of these well-preserved mud-brick structures a Greek inscription was found. [16]

Diffi Another fortified island site near Kulme. Here a series of two-storey houses on the tops of rocky outcrops face the main channel on the east. [17]

The purpose of the two-storey houses is not as clear as it might seem at first. Adams has noted a conspicuous lack of domestic evidence (mastaba-s, fireplaces, buried pots in the floor, etc.) and the absence of accumulated dwelling refuse [18] despite a clear similarity between the upper floor plan and the plan of contemporary Nubian houses.

Use as a communal storehouse or granary has been suggested [19], but again there is little evidence for such use of these buildings other than their suitability. Nevertheless, the design and popularity of these works suggests that they were intended to protect goods from attack and make access as difficult as possible for those unfamiliar with the design.

A curious feature is that the ratio of two-storey houses to settlement population size is widely inconsistent, with some tiny communities having a number of examples, while larger towns may only have one. This would seem to out-rule their use as civic buildings or feudal-style residences. While in continuous use as watchtowers, the two-storey house were probably reserved for emergency use by the community. The number of such structures may reflect the prosperity rather than the size of the community.

Warrior Types in Christian Nubia (Osprey)

Blockhouses

The structures referred to here as “blockhouse” fortifications are not clearly distinct from the two-storey house, and are in most cases an elaboration of this basic structure.

The blockhouse of Meinarti is a larger version of the two-storey house and dates to the late Christian period (1200-1250 C.E.). [20] Potsherds are scarce on this site and the dating is reliant upon a painted Greek inscription. The blockhouse was built on the remains of an early monastery and served in part as a watchtower replacement for the monastery’s older tower. The building’s 15 room interior is labyrinthine, with some chambers accessible only through hatchways, or by crawling on one’s hands and knees. Adams, who excavated the site, emphasised the obvious defensive role of this structure with its metre-thick walls, and suggested a function as a community storehouse. [21] Most of the second storey was destroyed during this building’s use as a British gun emplacement in the Mahdiyya period. At Ushinarti is a very similar “blockhouse” with a labyrinth-type plan and secret chambers. [22]

Further south, in the Sai Island region, are a number of structures that outwardly resemble the Blockhouse-type, but lack the complex interior. These are found at Kayend [23], and on Nilwatti Island, where there are seven towers set out along the rock-crest. All have square plans and stone-and-brick construction. [24]

Re-Used Fortifications

Nubia was already an ancient land at the time the Christian kingdoms emerged and was wealthy in useful ruins, many of which were finely preserved. In many cases the Christians inherited fortified sites on hilltops from their military predecessors, such as at Jabal Adda and Qasr Ibrim, where Meroitic fortifications were re-used..

The Middle Kingdom fortress at Serra was re-occupied in late Christian times. Four churches and a pair of two-storey houses were built, but the ancient walls required only minor repairs. Askut was similarly occupied in the Late Christian period. The New Kingdom fortress at Jabal Sahaba was damaged byy wind erosion at the time of its early Christian occupation and was later built over by rough stone huts in the late Christian period, when a new stone wall was built round the plateau. [25]

Forts of the Christian Kingdoms

Kingdom of Nobatia

Jabal Adda: The Late Christian occupants of Jabal Adda relied mostly upon the Meroitic-era wall for defense, adding a new stone gate and making minor repairs. [26] The so-called “palace” may have had a defensive intent, as well as serving as a royal residence. Some of the ruins may represent a pair of two-storey houses. [27] The fortress was taken by the Mamluks in 1276 C.E.

Qasr Ibrim: This natural citadel had been fortified and later rebuilt by Taharqa (25^th Dynasty), the Meroites and the Romans by the time the Christians re-occupied it and transformed Taharqa’s chapel into a Christian chapel. Three massive structures of the two-storey/blockhouse type were found here, but were removed by excavators without properly documenting the structures. [28]

Unlike most of the other forts of Nubia, we have historical evidence of Qasr Ibrim’s military role in the Christian era. An attack upon the castle in 957 C.E. was recorded by Yahya ibn Sa’id:

In that year the Kinig of Nubia came again up to Aswan and ravaged it. He killed and took prisoners. The armies of Egypt rushed against him by land and river. They killed and took prisoner, many of whom came from the Nuba [country]. Many others withdrew defeated and he [the King of Egypt] conquered their castle called Ibrim. [29]

In retaliation for a Nubian raid in 1172, an Ayyubid army under Shams al-Dawla Turan Shah laid siege to Ibrim, which fell after only three days. The town was laid waste and passed temporarily into Muslim hands.

Kulubnarti: The remaining ruins at Kulubnarti are those of a kourfa, an Islamic defensive work consisting of a dwelling, a courtyard and a strongly walled tower. [30] This complex seems to have expanded from a Late Christian two-storey house. [31] There are four other two-storey houses on the island. [32]

The Second Cataract: The defensive works of the Second Cataract region are alluded to by Salim al-Aswani (quoted by al-Maqrizi in his Khitat): “These mountains are the fortresses where the inhabitants of Maris take refuge.” [33] A large number of the villages here were fortified, the irregular shape of their walls indicating they were late additions. [34]

Significant Christian forts are found at Tanujur Island and Susinarti. The former is simple in plan, consisting of a dry stone wall around the peak of a small hill and mud=brick structures within. [35] Susinarti is far better built and designed – here a triangular wall faces onto the Nile in the south, the other two arms running up the side of the hill to a large tower-keep. Towers dominate the other two corners. Both of these forts rely unpn ceramic remains for their Christian period dating.

South of Dal, in the Kosha West district, is the Christian fort of Diffi, with a rectangular enclosure wall (80 x 40 cm.). Stone and brick are used in the construction. [36]

Kingdom of Makuria

Sai Island: This highly strategic island at the southern end of the Dal Cataract is the site of another constantly re-built fort, from Napatans through to the Turks. Vercoutter, the excavator, believes the fort may have been a very late Christian stronghold against the Arabs, [37] but points out that the late Christian dating relies upon its similarities to other Christian forts in the Nile Valley.

Khandak and Bakhit: Crawford suggests that the Fung-era fort at Khandak was built on the ruins of a Christian fort. A rough stone set of walls with semi-circular towers has been rebuilt with wall extensions and buttresses of unburnt brick. [38] A similar fort is at Bakhit, where 18 semi-circular towers are set at the corners and at regular intervals along the wall. [39] Lepsius identified Bakhit as a Christian site with a small church in the centre. The main walls are 30 feet thick and consist of rough stone on a core of unburnt mud-brick. The plan is rectangular and the whole site is covered with Christian potsherds.

Old Dongola: As capital of Makuria, Dongola was an extremely important Christian site, but not one possessed of natural defenses. As might be expected, it was necessary to respond with some innovative military architecture, a point driven home by the destructive Arab raid of 652 C.E., in which ‘Abdallah ibn Sa’d’s catapults destroyed the cathedral and most of the town. [40] a large amount of material from the “Church of Stone Pavement” appears to have found its way into the new defenses. [41] The implementation of the Baqt Treaty allowed the Christians time to construct an elaborate system of defenses, with a walled rampart near the river and bastions resting on a solid platform. [42] Semi-circular towers are spaced along the walls, mounted on granite foundations. The presence of many buildings outside the main walls may be explained by the existence of a series of outlying walls, as may have been described by Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (c. 905 C.E.), who says Dongola possessed seven walls in his time. [43]

The defenses of Dongola were likely badly damaged in the Mamluk expeditions against King Dawud (1276 C.E.) and King Shenaun (1287, 1289 C.E.), [44] but were re-built in the post-Christian era. [45]

Al-Kab The two “castles” of al-Kab were first recorded in the 1820s by Caillaud and Linant de Bellefonds. The southern fort is a small post-Christian work, but the larger stone and brick structure to the north is one of a type of Christian fort that is also found at Bakhit and the Kubinat [46] (discussed below), and at Sai Island. [47] The mud-brick may have been a post-Christian restoration, but the entire work was in a ruinous condition by the early 19^th century. [48] The plan is that of an irregular rectangle and features six semi-circular bastions. The rocky interior was filled with circular stone dwellings.

Kuweib The area around modern Abu Hamid has been of strategic importance since at least the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom. As the terminus for caravan routes from the north and west, it is unsurprising to find a Christian fort in the area. Kuweib was also situated on a small jabal in order to survey the northern channel of the Nile as it passes around Mograt Island. The dating of this site relies upon the many sherds and Christian-style graves found around the complex. [49]

This site has used all its natural advantages to create a strong defensive work – mud-brick walls are built around cores of granite boulders and the main wall itself is not continuous, but often detaches to strengthen natural features. There are no clear remains of bastions or buttresses. [50]

Al-Koro Al-Koro is south of Abu Hamid, on the east side of the Nile, near modern Kedata. Governor Jackson first noted these stone ruins, suggesting that they were a monastery with a church converted to a mosque. The plan of the fort is rectangular, with towers at the north-west and south-west corners. An inner enclosure is accessible only from the outer enclosure, where stone foundations and mud-brick walls indicate intensive occupation. The outer walls are of stone with a core of red-brick rubble. [51]

Gandeisi Gandeisi Island is mid-way between Abu Hamid and Atbara. The fort is small and irregularly rectangular, with towers at each corner and two additional bastions along the north-west wall. This wall is 17 feet thick and is along the riverside, the direction from which the defenders apparently expected an attack. The “L”-shaped entrance is on the inland side. Christian pottery is scattered across the area. [52]

Baqeir This site near Gandeisi remained unnoticed until Crawford found the foundation stones in 1951. Most of the plan was severely eroded, but it appears to have included bastions at each corner and one each on the longer walls, with a superstructure of mud-brick. The site is either that of a very small fort (35 x 20m) or a highly defended house. [53]

Al-‘Usheir About 20 miles south of Baqeir is a fort that resembles al-Koro in having an inner enclosure accessible only from a large outer enclosure. A third enclosure seems to be a late addition and has no apparent entry to either of the older enclosures.

In front of the south wall and the south-east gate are the remains of a lower rampart and fire-step outside the main wall, a defensive device known from the Middle Kingdom forts in Nubia. On the flat ground east of the castle is a chevaux-de-frise of pointed stones [54] designed to impede a rushing force of attackers. Bastions, curiously constructed in layers, are set at irregular intervals on the main wall. Around the inner enclosure are a parapet-wall and parapet in the places where the approach is not protected by the steep cliff on the north and east sides. This enclosure must have served as the castle-keep.

The architect of the al-‘Usheir fortress displays a knowledge of mediaeval fortifications as practised in Europe and the Near East, though certain fundamentals had been in place since the construction of the Middle Kingdom forts. The Christian dating is provided by the many inscribed sherds on the site.

Jabal Nakharu This fortress on the west side of the Nile, north of Atbara, was discovered by Crawford in 1951. It occupies a ridge of limestone that controls the narrow river-road below. The fort is square and built of dry-stone, probably with bastions in each corner and in the middle of each outer wall. Cross-walls run down from the plateau to the softer earth on the river’s edge and may have been equipped with gates to regulate traffic. [55]

The dating of Jabal Nakharu must be regarded as tentative. The ruinous condition prevents determining whether the bastions were semi-circular (as in Christian forts) or rectangular (as in post-Christian works). Red bricks are not in evidence at the site and the collection of painted sherds made by Crawford was subsequently lost.

Fourth Cataract (The Kubinat): At a strategic point where the Nile is only 170 metres wide there is a pair of forts situated on opposite banks. The walls of both forts run uphill from the river to the tops of rocky bluffs. Rock outcrops are incorporated into the defenses, which are otherwise built of dry stone with interior mud-mortar. The bastions are not bonded in and may be late additions. Strangely, the fort on the north bank has no less than ten entrances, but the broken ground round the fort makes visibility from the walls difficult, so that, according to Titherington, the number of gates “may commemorate a disaster when some of the garrison got surprised outside and jammed round an insufficient gate.” [56]

The Kubinat site is an enormous work in a highly barren area – each fort encloses an area of about three acres. The walls are ten feet thick and about 18 to 20 feet high. [57] The forts and their environs are covered with Christian and imported Roman pot-sherds. Typical Christian red-brick is present, as are earlier bricks of Meroitic type.

Kingdom of Alwa

Querri The kingdom of Alwa seems not to have relied upon great fortifications, although some of the fortresses previously described as Makurian may have been works of Alwa, depending on when and where political boundaries were drawn. A system of defenses is noticeably lacking at the capital of Soba. Distance from powerful external threats and a highly mobile army may have sufficed to preserve Alwan power until the Arab migrations into the region began.

Querri is located on Jabal Irau, overlooking the Sixth Cataract. The site is quite large, consisting of 12 hectares of dwellings and enclosures surrounded by massive walls of dry stone. Red brick and Christian wall-engravings are common at the site, as well as Islamic potsherds of the 15^th and 16^th centuries. [58]

The Arab penetration of Alwa met with little local resistance. [59] The Funj Chronicle describes the final defeat of the “kings of Soba and Querri” by Umara Dunqas in league with Abdallah of the Qawasma Arabs. The Abdallab Arabs preserve a tradition that the Christian survivors of the attack on Soba made a last stand at Querri, which Chittick described as the Sabaloka Gorge site in the Sixth Cataract. [60] The story and the interpretation are open to dispute:

Apart from the questionable authenticity of the site, however, the Funj Chronicle is far from explicit about the religion of Alwa at the time of its overthrow. The only mention of Christianity is in that part of the text which is taken from the much earlier account of Abu Selim. Since contact with Alexandria had been broken in the fourteenth century, it seems quite possible that Alwa might have passed under Moslem rule, unbeknown to the outside world, long before its final downfall. [61]

Conclusion

Most of the fortified Nubian sites dealt with in this paper belong to the Late Christian period, when external threats from the north endangered the existence of the Christian kingdoms. The traditional reaction of the Nubians to raids from the north was dispersal or concentration of the population. The proliferation of fortified sites may have seen the balance shift in favour of the latter strategy in Late Christian times, when the expiry of the Baqt Treaty renewed the northern threat.

The Muslim invasions had been highly destructive in 641 and 651-2 C.E., when the Christian kingdoms lacked effective defensive works. The invasion of Shams al-Dawla in 1172-73 C.E. and the seizure of Qasr Ibrim was a reminder of the necessity for strong defensive works. Jabal Adda and Qasr Ibrim became important sites of authority in the Late Christian period, able to offer refuge to the civil population in a crisis. Many of the settlements of the Classic Christian population in Lower Nubia show no signs of occupation after the 12^th century [62], while Jabal Adda and Qasr Ibrim were the centers of an expanding population. The walled settlement of the early Christian period gave way to the two-storey building, which, despite its elusiveness of purpose, must have played a strong role as a watchtower, a secure place for the storage of goods and a temporary refuge for the local population. These towers were often a type of keep within a defensive wall, but there are cases of two-storey houses outside the town-walls.

A peculiar issue of the fortifications is the fact that so many of the watchtowers and defensive works were focused upstream [i.e. south], rather than towards the seemingly obvious threat from downstream Egypt. This suggests the Nubians’ most immediate security concerns were with populations or groups penetrating the kingdoms from other directions. The Nubian Christians desired control of the river trade and defenses against desert nomads. A strong defensive posture was not enough to deter the nomadic tribes, however:

The clashes which really and fatally exhausted Nubia were the raids on all, or a large part of, the Nile Valley, from the 10^th century onwards. These were by nomads, coming from the deserts east and west of the Nile. Beja, Rabiah and Juhaynah attacked from the east; Luwatah, Zaghawa and other tribes from the west. [63]

The mobility of the Arab and African tribes precluded the old tactic of population dispersal and inspired a new form of defensive architecture that included the two-storey house/blockhouse in Lower Nubia. Further south in Makuria, especially upriver from Dongola, a more centralized means of defense evolved in which the resources of the state were devoted to the construction of massive forts rather than the small-scale community defenses of the north.

The Late Christian emphasis on military rather than religious architecture may reflect, if not an increasing secularization of Nubian culture, at least a weakening of its Christian component. As fortifications grew larger and more complex, the great churches and cathedrals were no longer being built, replaced by ever-shrinking and impoverished religious architecture. The fort/castle became the symbol of authority, meeting the urgent needs of the present, rather than those of the hereafter.

The role of feudalization in Late Christian society is uncertain; for example, did the two-storey houses belong to feudal lords or the community at large? What role did the defenses south to the 6^th Cataract have in the governance or repression of the citizenry? Was command centralized or local? Were the commanders of defensive works of local origin or appointed by the King and his agents?

In the larger fortresses of the south we have no idea of the make-up or origin of the garrisons, or even if they had permanent garrisons at all. Some sites may have been intended as sanctuaries for the civil population, but would be largely ineffective without trained defenders capable of making sorties to secure supplies or disrupt offensive operations. Forts such as those of the Kubinat must have had permanent garrisons due to their isolated location, but the problem of supply must have been a difficult one.

The known history of the fortifications of Christian Nubia reveal that the most effective defense ever constructed by the Nubians was the Baqt Treaty negotiated with Egypt. At the time of its expiry, control of the Nile trade routes was rapidly diminishing in importance. The arrival of the Bani al-Kanz and their camel caravans brought an end to the prosperity of the Nile’s fortified customs houses as the caravans could set out from Egypt across unpatrolled desert routes, touching back upon the Nile wherever desired. The Mamluks, combining rapacity, ferocity and advanced military tactics, were more than a match for the Nubians. They penetrated the Christian defenses at will, taking Dongola in 1276 C.E. and again in 1289 C.E. Most telling is the record of the 33-day Mamluk pursuit of King Shenamun upriver from Dongola in which only Mamluk two soldiers died – one in combat while the other drowned. [64] Most effective of all, however, was the peaceful penetration of Christian Nubia by Muslims and their usurpation of the old inheritance system. Against this type of social transformation the great fortresses of Christian Nubia were helpless.

Notes

W.Y. Adams: Nubia – Corridor to Africa (2^nd ed.), Princeton N.J., 1984, p.493.
P.F. Velo: “Les Fouilles de la Mission Espagnole à Cheikh Daoud,” in Fouilles en Nubie (1959-61), Cairo, 1963, p.28.
A.J. Mills and H.A. Nordstrom: “The Archaeological Survey from Gemai to Dal – Preliminary Report on the Season 1964-65,” Kush 4, 1966, p.15.
A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 2, Les districts de Dal (rive gauche) et de Sarkamatto (rive droite), Paris, 1975, p.29.
Ibid, pp. 49, 57.
A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 6 – Le district d’Attab, Est et Ouest, Paris, 1977, p.32.
A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 3 – District de Ferka (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976, p.50.
Ibid, p.90; W.Y. Adams: “Castle-Houses of Late Medieval Nubia,” Archéolgie du Nil Moyen, vol. 6, 1994, p.14.
Ibid, p.11.
Ibid, p.13.
W.Y. Adams: “Sudan Antiquities Service Excavations in Nubia: Fourth Season, 1962-63,” Kush XII, 1964, p.222.
Adams, op cit, 1994, p.13.
Ibid, p.19.
Ibid, p.13, fn.2.
Mills and Nordstrom, op cit, 1966, p.14.
Vila – Fasc. 2, op cit, 1975, p.62.
Ibid, p.22.
Adams, op cit, 1994, p.36
Adams, op cit, 1964, p.222
Ibid, p.225.
Ibid, p.233.
G. Donner: “Preliminary report on the Excavations of the Finnish Nubia Expedition 1964-65,” Kush 15, 1967-68, p.233.
A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise), Fasc. 10 – Le District de Koyekka, Les districts de Morka et de Hamid – L’île Nilwatti, Paris, 1978, p.81.
Ibid, p.104.
T. Säve Söderbergh: “Preliminary Report of the Scandinavian Joint Expedition – Faras-Gemai, 1963-64, Kush 15, 1967-68, pp.235-37.
N.B. Millet: “Gebel Adda Preliminary Report, 1965-66,” JARCE 6, 1967, p.62.
Adams, op cit, 1994, p.13.
Ibid, p.13.
Vila – Fasc. 3, op cit, 1976, p.99
W.Y. Adams: Kulubnarti I – The Architectural Remains, Lexington Kentucky, 1994, pp.81-83.
Adams, op cit, 1984, p.518.
Adams, op cit, 1994, p.14.
The Excavations at Faras – A Contribution to the History of Christian Nubia, Bologna, 1970, p.113.
Adams, op cit, 1984, p.513.
“Antiquities of the Batn el Hajjar,” Kush 5, 1957, p.45.
A. Vila: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, aud Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise): Fasc. 4 – District de Mograkka (Est et Ouest); District de Kosha (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976, p.101.
J. Vercoutter: “Excavations at Sai, 1955-57 – A Preliminary Report,” Kush 6, 1958, pp.144-69.
O.G.S. Crawford: The Funj Kingdom of Sennar, Gloucester England, 1951, p.37.
Ibid, p.44.
Y.F. Hasan: The Arabs and the Sudan, Edinburgh, 1967, p.20.
Godlewski, op cit, 1991, p.109.
Ibid, p.107.
J. Vantini: Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia, Heidelberg, 1975, p.92.
J. Vantini: Christianity in the Sudan, Bologna, 1981, p.92.
Godlewski, op cit, 1991, p. 111.
Crawford, op cit, 1951, p.44.
Vercoutter, op cit, 1958, p.160, fn.72.
Crawford, op cit, 1951, p.50.
O.G. S. Crawford: Castles and Churches in the Middle Nile Region, SAS Occasional Papers, no.2, Khartoum, 1961, p.9.
Ibid, p.9.
ibid, pp.32-33.
Ibid, pp.29-30.
Ibid, p.30.
Ibid, p.22.
Ibid, p.18.
G.W. Titherington: “The Kubinat – Old Forts in the Fourth Cataract,” Sudan Notes and Records 22, 1939, p.270.
Ibid. p.269.
Mohi el-Din Abdalla Zarroug, The Kingdom of Alwa, Calgary, 1991, p.62.
Hasan, op cit, 1967, p.128.
H.N. Chittick, “Antiquities of the Batn el Hajjar,” Kush 5, 1957, p.272.
Adams, op cit, 1984, p.539.
Adams, op cit, 1984, p.511.
Vantini, op cit, 1970, p.267.
Hasan, op cit, 1976, p.115.

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Shinnie, Peter L.: “The University of Ghana Excavations at Debeira West, 1964,” Kush 13, 1965, pp.190-94.

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Vercoutter, J.: “Excavations at Sai, 1955-57 – A Preliminary Report,” Kush 6, 1958, pp.144-69.

Vila, André: La Prospection Archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, aud Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise):

Fasc. 2 Les districts de Daol (rive gauche) et de Sarkamatto (rive droite), Paris 1975

Fasc. 3 District de Ferka (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976

Fasc. 4 District de Mograkka (Est et Ouest); District de Kosha (Est et Ouest), Paris, 1976

Fasc. 6 Le district d’Attab, Est et Ouest, Paris, 1977

Fasc. 9 L’Ile d’Arnyatta, Le District d’Abri (est et Ouest); Le district de Tabaj (Est et Ouest), Paris 1978

Fasc. 10 Le district de Koyekka (rive droite); Les districts de Morka et de Hamid (rive gauche); L’Ile Nilwatti, Paris, 1978

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