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Sudan
Index
Arabs
In the early 1990s, the largest single category among the
Muslim peoples consisted of those speaking some form of Arabic.
Excluded were a small number of Arabic speakers originating in
Egypt and professing Coptic Christianity. In 1983 the people
identified as Arabs constituted nearly 40 percent of the total
Sudanese population and nearly 55 percent of the population of
the northern provinces. In some of these provinces (Al Khartum,
Ash Shamali, Al Awsat), they were overwhelmingly dominant. In
others (Kurdufan, Darfur), they were less so but made up a
majority. By 1990 Ash Sharqi State was probably largely Arab. It
should be emphasized, however, that the acquisition of Arabic as
a second language did not necessarily lead to the assumption of
Arab identity.
Despite common language, religion, and self-identification,
Arabs did not constitute a cohesive group. They were highly
differentiated in their modes of livelihood and ways of life.
Besides the major distinction dividing Arabs into sedentary and
nomadic, there was an old tradition that assigned them to tribes,
each said to have a common ancestor.
The two largest of the supratribal categories in the early
1990s were the Juhayna and the Jaali (or Jaalayin). The Juhayna
category consisted of tribes considered nomadic, although many
had become fully settled. The Jaali encompassed the riverine,
sedentary peoples from Dunqulah to just north of Khartoum and
members of this group who had moved elsewhere. Some of its groups
had become sedentary only in the twentieth century. Sudanese saw
the Jaali as primarily indigenous peoples who were gradually
arabized. Sudanese thought the Juhayna were less mixed, although
some Juhayna groups had become more diverse by absorbing
indigenous peoples. The Baqqara, for example, who moved south and
west and encountered the Negroid peoples of those areas were
scarcely to be distinguished from them.
A third supratribal division of some importance was the
Kawahla, consisting of thirteen tribes of varying size. Of these,
eight tribes and segments of the other five were found north and
west of Khartoum. There people were more heavily dependent on
pastoralism than were the segments of the other five tribes, who
lived on either side of the White Nile from south of Khartoum to
north of Kusti. This cluster of five groups (for practical
purposes independent tribes) exhibited a considerable degree of
self-awareness and cohesion in some circumstances, although that
had not precluded intertribal competition for local power and
status.
The ashraf (sing., sharif), who claim descent
from the Prophet Muhammad, were found in small groups (lineages)
scattered among other Arabs. Most of these lineages had been
founded by religious teachers or their descendants. A very small
group of descendants of the Funj Dynasty also claimed descent
from the Ummayyads, an early dynasty of caliphs based in present-
day Syria. That claim had little foundation, but it served to
separate from other Arabs a small group living on or between the
White Nile and the Blue Nile. The term ashraf was also
applied in Sudan to the family of Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid
Abd Allah, known as the Mahdi (1848-85; see
The Mahdiyah
, ch. 1).
The division into Jaali and Juhayna did not appear to have
significant effect on the ways in which individuals and groups
regarded each other. Conflicts between tribes generally arose
from competition for good grazing land, or from the competing
demands of nomadic and sedentary tribes on the environment. Among
nomadic and recently sedentary Arabs, tribes and subtribes
competed for local power
(see The Social Order
, this ch.).
Membership in tribal and subtribal units is generally by
birth, but individuals and groups may also join these units by
adoption, clientship, or a decision to live and behave in a
certain way. For example, when a sedentary Fur becomes a cattle
nomad, he is perceived as a Baqqara. Eventually the descendants
of such newcomers are regarded as belonging to the group by
birth.
Tribal and subtribal units divide the Arab ethnic category
vertically, but other distinctions cut across Arab society and
its tribal and subtribal components horizontally by differences
of social status and power. Still another division is that of
religious associations
(see Islamic Movements and Religious Orders
, this ch.).
Nubians
In the early 1990s, the Nubians were the second most
significant Muslim group in Sudan, their homeland being the Nile
River valley in far northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Other,
much smaller groups speaking a related language and claiming a
link with the Nile Nubians have been given local names, such as
the Birqid and the Meidab in Darfur State
(see
fig. 5). Almost
all Nile Nubians speak Arabic as a second language; some near
Dunqulah have been largely arabized and are referred to as
Dunqulah.
Figure 5. Principal Ethnolinguistic Groups, 1991
In the mid-1960s, in anticipation of the flooding of their
lands after the construction of the Aswan High Dam, 35,000 to
50,000 Nile Nubians resettled at Khashm al Qirbah on the Atbarah
River in what was then Kassala Province. It is not clear how many
Nubians remained in the Nile Valley. Even before the
resettlement, many had left the valley for varying lengths of
time to work in the towns, although most sought to maintain a
link with their traditional homeland. In the 1955-56 census, more
Nile Nubians were counted in Al Khartum Province than in the
Nubian country to the north. A similar pattern of work in the
towns was apparently followed by those resettled at Khashm al
Qirbah. Many Nubians there retained their tenancies, having kin
oversee the land and hiring non-Nubians to work it. The Nubians,
often with their families, worked in Khartoum, the town of
Kassala, and Port Sudan in jobs ranging from domestic service and
semi-skilled labor to teaching and civil service, which required
literacy. Despite their knowledge of Arabic and their devotion to
Islam, Nubians retained a considerable self-consciousness and
tended to maintain tightly knit communities of their own in the
towns.
Beja
The Beja probably have lived in the Red Sea Hills since
ancient times. Arab influence was not significant until a
millennium or so ago, but it has since led the Beja to adopt
Islam and genealogies that link them to Arab ancestors, to
arabize their names, and to include many Arabic terms in their
language. Although some Arabs figure in the ancestry of the Beja,
the group is mostly descended from an indigenous population, and
they have not become generally arabized. Their language
(Bedawiye) links them to Cushitic-speaking peoples farther south.
In the 1990s, most Beja belonged to one of four groups--the
Bisharin, the Amarar, the Hadendowa, and the Bani Amir. The
largest group was the Hadendowa, but the Bisharin had the most
territory, with settled tribes living on the Atbarah River in the
far south of the Beja range and nomads living in the north. A
good number of the Hadendowa were also settled and engaged in
agriculture, particularly in the coastal region near Tawkar, but
many remained nomads. The Amarar, living in the central part of
the Beja range, seemed to be largely nomads, as were the second
largest group, the Bani Amir, who lived along the border with
northern Ethiopia. The precise proportion of nomads in the Beja
population in the early 1990s was not known, but it was far
greater relatively than the nomadic component of the Arab
population. The Beja were characterized as conservative, proud,
and aloof even toward other Beja and very reticent in relations
with strangers. They were long reluctant to accept the authority
of central governments.
Fur
The Fur, ruled until 1916 by an independent sultanate and
oriented politically and culturally to peoples in Chad, were a
sedentary, cultivating group long settled on and around the Jabal
Marrah. Although the ruling dynasty and the peoples of the area
had long been Muslims, they have not been arabized. Livestock has
played a small part in the subsistence of most Fur. Those who
acquired a substantial herd of cattle could maintain it only by
living like the neighboring Baqqara Arabs, and those who
persisted in this pattern eventually came to be thought of as
Baqqara.
Zaghawa
Living on the plateau north of the Fur were the seminomadic
people calling themselves Beri and known to the Arabs as Zaghawa.
Large numbers of the group lived in Chad. Herders of cattle,
camels, sheep, and goats, the Zaghawa also gained a substantial
part of their livelihood by gathering wild grains and other
products. Cultivation had become increasingly important but
remained risky, and the people reverted to gathering in times of
drought. Converted to Islam, the Zaghawa nevertheless retain much
of their traditional religious orientation.
Masalit, Daju, and Berti
Of other peoples living in Darfur in the 1990s who spoke
Nilo-Saharan languages and were at least nominally Muslim, the
most important were the Masalit, Daju, and Berti. All were
primarily cultivators living in permanent villages, but they
practiced animal husbandry in varying degrees. The Masalit,
living on the Sudan-Chad border, were the largest group.
Historically under a minor sultanate, they were positioned
between the two dominant sultanates of the area, Darfur and Wadai
(in Chad). A part of the territory they occupied had been
formerly controlled by the Fur, but the Masalit gradually
encroached on it in the first half of the twentieth century in a
series of local skirmishes carried out by villages on both sides,
rather than the sultanates. In 1990-91 much of Darfur was in a
state of anarchy, with many villages being attacked. There were
many instances in which Masalit militias attacked Fur and other
villages
(see Western Sudan
, ch. 4).
The Berti consisted of two groups. One lived northeast of Al
Fashir; the other had migrated to eastern Darfur and western
Kurdufan provinces in the nineteenth century. The two Berti
groups did not seem to share a sense of common identity and
interest. Members of the western group, in addition to
cultivating subsistence crops and practicing animal husbandry,
gathered gum arabic for sale in local markets. The Berti tongue
had largely given way to Arabic as a home language.
The term Daju was a linguistic designation that was applied
to a number of groups scattered from western Kurdufan and
southwestern Darfur states to eastern Chad. These groups called
themselves by different names and exhibited no sense of common
identity.
West Africans
Living in Sudan in 1990 were nearly a million people of West
African origin. Together, West Africans who have become Sudanese
nationals and resident nonnationals from West Africa made up 6.5
percent of the Sudanese population. In the mid-1970s, West
Africans had been estimated at more than 10 percent of the
population of the northern provinces. Some were descendants of
persons who had arrived five generations or more earlier; others
were recent immigrants. Some had come in self-imposed exile,
unable to accommodate to the colonial power in their homeland.
Others had been pilgrims to Mecca, settling either en route or on
their return. Many came over decades in the course of the great
dispersion of the nomadic Fulani; others arrived, particularly
after World War II, as rural and urban laborers or to take up
land as peasant cultivators.
Nearly 60 percent of people included in the West African
category were said to be of Nigerian origin (locally called Borno
after the Nigerian emirate that was their homeland). Given Hausa
dominance in northern Nigeria and the widespread use of their
language there and elsewhere, some non-Hausa might also be called
Hausa and describe themselves as such. But the Hausa themselves,
particularly those long in Sudan, preferred to be called Takari.
The Fulani, even more widely dispersed throughout West Africa,
may have originated in states other than Nigeria. Typically, the
term applied to the Fulani in Sudan was Fallata, but Sudanese
also used that term for other West Africans.
The Fulani nomads were found in many parts of central Sudan
from Darfur to the Blue Nile, and they occasionally competed with
indigenous populations for pasturage. In Darfur groups of Fulani
origin adapted in various ways to the presence of the Baqqara
tribes. Some retained all aspects of their culture and language.
A few had become much like Baqqara in language and in other
respects, although they tended to retain their own breeds of
cattle and ways of handling them. Some of the Fulani groups in
the eastern states were sedentary, descendants of sedentary
Fulani of the ruling group in northern Nigeria.
Data as of June 1991
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