History of the Nuba

History of the Nuba, part I
History, part II History, part III
Introduction I. The name Nuba II. Kingdoms on the Nile III. The origins of the Nuba
Introduction
The Nuba are a group of peoples who share a common geography in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan Province, known as Jibal al-Nuba or Nuba Mountains. The origins of most Nuba peoples are obscure, but there is no doubt that they are Africans. They arrived to the area from various directions and in the course of thousands of years. Today there are over fifty Nuba tribes, who speak as many different languages. Their combined number is estimated at 2.5 million people.
Until the Egyptian occupation of Sudan during the nineteenth century, most Nuba tribes lived relatively isolated. Contiguous events that shaped their history are the short but extremely violent rule of the Mahdi and his successor, and colonial rule by the British. Sudan took its independence in 1956 and since the 1960s the Nuba have been at odds with their successive National Governments. From 1987 to 2001 the Nuba Mountains were a battle zone in one of the civil wars that continue to devastate the country.
Traditionally the Nuba are farmers, but they are now employed in all segments of society. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, labour migrants have formed large Nuba communities in the large cities of North Sudan, like El Obeid, Khartoum and Port Sudan. In the 1980s and 1990s, the migrants were joined by hundreds of thousands of people who fled from violence. Since fighting in the Nuba Mountains was officially ended in January 2002, many refugees are returning home.
The following brief history aims at providing a broad perspective on the history of the Nuba. I have drawn from many different sources, and consulted scientists considered to be expert in their field for the more remote history. For the most recent history I have relied largely on interviews with Nuba who were closely involved in the developemts leading to the war in the Nuba Mountains and eventually the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2004.
I. The name Nuba
For centuries, the geographical area where the Nuba tribes live has been known as Dar Nuba: the land of the Nuba. The Tegali Kingdom (a truly Nuba kingdom indeed) was known on its own accord, as were several individual hills, but to the Arab people living around the area, the people of the Mountains were all Nuba. The Europeans, relying on the Arabs for information, used the same name.
Until very recently the Nuba people themselves would rather use their tribal name and many didn’t really consider themselves to be Nuba. In the words of Yousif Kuwa Mekki:
It is one of the funniest things: when you were in the Nuba Mountains, you just knew your own tribe. We for example were Miri. So if we were asked: "Who are the Nuba?" we would try to say: "The other tribes - but not us." Only when we came out of the Nuba Mountains, to the north or south or west, we learned that we are all Nuba.1
Please note the word ‘try’ here: linguist and anthropologist A.C. Stevenson noticed that:
Some of the more educated are also shy of applying the term to themselves, they tend to reserve it for those they think of as rustic hill-dwellers: for them ‘Nuba’ is the reverse of a status symbol.2
An old theory supposes a relationship between the word ‘Nuba’ and the Archaic Egyption nbw [nebu], meaning ‘gold’. In ancient times the land south of Egypt produced a lot of gold and so the people were gold diggers; or the ‘land of gold’ would be called Nubia (which it wasn’t) and its people Nuba… Brief: lot’s of charming nonsense.3 And then there is A.J. Arkell’s expalantion:
The name of the Nuba apparently comes, like so many other tribal names in the Sudan (Berti, Berta, Burgu, etc-) from a word in their own language which means 'slaves'.4
Surely there is a connection: the Nuba were harassed by slave raiders for many centuries and to the Arabs ‘Nuba’ became nearly synonymous with ‘slave’. But since Arkell doesn’t mention in which of the many Nuba languages their name means ‘slave’, there is little we can say about his theory, except quoting anthropologist S.F. Nadel:
I will not attempt to trace the origin of this name or to speculate on its original meaning. Suffice to say that in none of the groups which I have studied is the term Nuba indigenous […]5
II. Kingdoms on the Nile
1. Nubia There are Nuba and there are Nubians and this is cause for great confusion. The Nuba are the different peoples living in the Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan. The Nubians today are a people who live along the Nile at the border between Egypt and Sudan. Many of them were relocated when the Nasser Dam was built. The Nubians are considered to be descendants of the great Nubian Kingdoms of Kush; Meroe; Nobatia; Makuria (Dongola) or Alodia (Alwa).
I will first run through Nubian history and then turn to the present insights on any connections between the Nuba of Kordofan and the Nubian Kingdoms.
The word ‘Nubia’ is used to describe the land along the Nile south of Egypt; divided into a ‘lower Nubia’ for the area between the first and the second cataract, and an ‘upper Nubia’ for the land beyond the second cataract. Historically however there never was any kingdom or tribe or civilisation by the name Nubia. The use of ‘Nubia’ for the region seems to originate with European atlas makers of the early renaissance who drew maps based on the work of the astrologist and geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus (90-168 AD).6
The earliest Egyptian kings (pre-dynastic and those of the first dynasties) referred to the people to their south as Ta Seti or ‘people of the bow’, for their skill as archers. The Ta Seti were well organised, and their civilisation was not unlike that of the first Egyptians. They disappeared however.
By the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2323-2150 BC), Egyptian references to Wawat, Irtjet, and Setju seem to identify different small kingdoms in Lower Nubia. They also mention Yam, a kingdom in upper Nubia. There was trade between Yam and Egypt.
While the Middle Kingdom replaced the Old Kingdom in Egypt (ca. 2134-2040 BC), political changes also took place in Upper Nubia. ‘Yam’ disappeared from Egyptian texts and was replaced by Kush, which the Egyptians described as ‘vile’ or ‘contemptible’. Kush became a major power in the south and it took over Lower Nubia around 1700 BC.
Chances turned again and the Egyptians of the New Kingdom (c.1532-1070 BC) crushed the Kush kingdom and its capital Kerma. By the end of the reign of Thutmose I in 1520 BC, all of Upper Nubia had been annexed. The Egyptians built a new administrative and religious centre at Napata; the Nubian elite adopted the worship of Egyptian gods and the hieroglyphic writing system. This way a lot of the ancient Egyptian culture was kept alive for many centuries while the power of Egypt slowly declined.
By 800 BC Egypt had fragmented into rival states, but in 747 BC the Kushite king Piankhy (Piyi) marched north from his capital at Napata and reunified Egypt. Kushite kings ruled both Nubia and Egypt until the invasion of an Assyrian army in 667 BC. The Nubian king fled back to Napata and was defeated decisively in 664 BC.
In 656 BC Psamtik I, founder of the 26th Saite Dynasty, reunited Egypt. In 591 BC his successor Psamtik II invaded Kush and sacked and burned Napata. The kings of Kush moved their capital to Meroë, where they continued to build temples to Nubian and Egyptian gods. The kings were buried in pyramid tombs. Meroë developed a new script and began to write in the Meroitic language, which has yet to be fully deciphered.
Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC. His empire was short lived and Egypt once again became a kingdom, under the Ptolemy Dynasty (306-30 BC). The Ptolemies were of Greek descent and in official records the people to the south are now referred to as Aethiopians: Greek for ‘burned faces’. This name, given to them by the first great historian Herodotus, was kept by the Romans, who took control over Egypt in 30 BC.
During the reign of the Ptolemies, Meroe prospered. The initial relationship with the Romans wasn’t that good. According to geographer Strabo (63 BC-24 AD), in 24 BC:
[the Aethiopians] attacked the Thebaïs and the garrison of the three cohorts at [Aswan], and by an unexpected onset took [Aswan] and Elephantine and Philae, and enslaved the inhabitants, and also pulled down the statues of Caesar.7
In 23 BC the Roman governor of Egypt, Petronius,
first compelled them to flee to Pselchis, an Ethiopian city, and sent ambassadors demanding the return of what they had taken, and the reasons why they had begun the war.
The Aethiopians didn’t respond, so in 22 BC Petronius attacked them at Pselchis. Defeating the Aethiopians there, he advanced to Premnis. He took the city and continued to the capital of the Aethiopians at Napata, which he sacked. After some more hostilities, the Aethiopians and the Romans came to a peace agreement, and trade between them flourished for several centuries.
Before turning to the Nuba, I want to stress once more that wherever Nubia is mentioned, we must remember that there are no historic sources from antiquity that use this name. For the word Nuba, it’s a different story.
2. The Nuba enter history Erastothenes (276 to 194 BC) is the first known author to mention a tribe called Nubae. We don’t have the original text, but Strabo was speaking on Erastothenes’ authority when he said:
[…] the parts on the left side of the course of the Nile, in Libya, are inhabited by Nubae, a large tribe, who, beginning at Meroë, extend as far as the bends of the river, and are not subject to the Aethiopians but are divided into several separate kingdoms.8
Erasthotenes is working his way downstream along the Nile, so he means that the Nubae lived between Meroe and Dongola.. It’s important that he makes a clear distinction between the Aethiopians and the Nubae.
I’ve already mentioned Claudius Ptolemaeus’ Geographica, that in c.150 AD places the Nubae south of Egypt. Contrary to what many people assume, he puts them east of the Nile. Ptolemaeus says the Nubae live to the far west of the Avalitae. Point is: Ptolemaeus is in this paragraph generally talking about the people east of the Nile, and he places the Avalitae to the African coast of the bay of Eden. Actually, Ptolemaeus mentions several tribes living between the Nubae and the river Nile.
Anyway: the Kings of Meroe no longer cared much for Lower Nubia., and neither did the Romans: Procopius of Caesarea (500-565 AD), relates how the Emperor Diocletian (245–312 AD) decided to withdraw Roman troops from Lower Nubia. Two nations to the south worried him though: the Blemmyae (Beja) to the southeast and the Nobatae to the southwest at a place called Premnis:
[…] so he persuaded these barbarians [the Nobatae] to move from their own habitations, and to settle along the River Nile […]. For in this way he thought that they would no longer harass the country about Pselchis at least, and that they would possess themselves of the land given them, as being their own, and would probably beat off the Blemmyae and the other barbarians. And since this pleased the Nobatae, they made the migration immediately, just as Diocletian directed them, and took possession of all the Roman cities and the land on both sides of the River beyond the city of Elephantine.9
Clearly the Nobatae are no subjects of Meroe. At this time, around 300 AD, Meroe’s power declined rapidly, weakened by the advance of people from both East and West.
In the east Axum was coming up. This Kingdom in what is today Ethiopia, reached the hight of its power under its first Christian ruler Ezana (330–356 AD). In an inscription found in Meroe, he announces:
I took the field against the Noba when the people of Noba revolted and did violence to the Mangurto; Hasa and Barya, and the Black Noba waged war on the Red Noba. I fought on the Takkaze [Atbara] at the ford of Kemalke. They fled, and I pursued the fugitives twenty-three days slaying them and capturing others and taking plunder; I burnt their towns, and seized their corn and their bronze and the dried meat and the images in their temples and destroyed the stocks of corn and cotton; and the enemy plunged into the river Seda [Blue Nile]. I arrived at the Kasu [Kush], slaying them and taking others prisoner at the junction of the rivers Seda and Takkaze. I dispatched troops up the Seda against their towns of Alwa and Daro; they slew and took prisoners and threw them into the water and they returned safe and sound. And I sent the troops down the Seda against the towns of straw of the Noba and Negues; the towns of masonry of the Kasu which the Noba had taken were Tabito, Fertoti; and they arrived at the territory of the Red Noba, and my people returned safe and sound after they had taken prisoners and slain others and had seized their plunder.10
Despite advances made by archaeologists and linguists in unravelling the complex situation around Meroe, it is still impossible to say what really happened. Apparently the Black Noba were the ones revolting; they attacked the neighbouring people, including the Red Noba and they took over some Kasu towns. But towns still held by the Kasu, were sacked just the same, and the Red Noba territory wasn’t spared by the Axumite armies either.
In the next few centuries three Christian Kingdoms emerged from the ruins of the Kushite Kingdom. The first one is Nobatia in Lower Nubia; there’s little doubt that Nobatia was established by the Nobatae mentioned by Procopius. The second one is Makuria, between the third cataract and somewhere between the fifth and the sixth; also known after its capital as Dongola, it could well have evolved from the part of the Kushite Kingdom that was taken over by the Black Noba. The third is Alodia to the South of Makuria; also known as Alwa, it could have been the remainder of the Kushite Kingdom. The rulers of these kingdoms were converted to Christianity by missionaries from different sects.
Nobatia was annexed by Makuria somewhere in the seventh century AD, probably just before the Muslim invasion of Egypt that commenced in 639 AD. The Muslims pushed southwards, but were halted by the army of the Makuria King, with whom they signed a treaty known as the Baqt, to which both parties seem to have kept for quite a long time. It wasn’t until the fourteenth century that Makuria collapsed, soon followed by Alodia, that was overtaken from the south by the newly emerging Funj empire.
The current state of understanding regarding the origin of the Nubians has been summarised by D. A. Welsby. After going through all the available information of historic sources and archeology, he concludes that:
In the sources we have a plethora of names which may refer to a single people, among them Nubae, Nobades, Nobates, Annoubades, Noba, Nouba and Red Noba. The significance of these names is unclear, they may be different names used loosely by our sources, Greek, Roman, Aksumite, Byzantine and Arab, for the same people, refer to sub-groups, or refer to different peoples altogether. Certainly archaeologically we cannot recognise different cultural assemblages to match each name, but we do not have a single culture covering the whole of the area occupied by these peoples. It is these people or peoples who coalesced into the three Nubian kingdoms first attested in the sixth century.
It is assumed that the Nubians gradually infiltrated the Kushite state, with or without the acquiescence of the Kushite rulers, and that, with the weakening of Kushite central authority, they were able to take over the reins of power and eclipse the Kushite ruling class. Another manifestation of this rise to prominence is the sudden appearance on the one hand of their traditional hand-made ceramics in the southern part of the middle Nile Valley, and the demise of the finer Kushite pottery as well as the apparent demise of the Kushite state and religious institutions, Kushite art, architecture, and literacy in the Meroitic language.
A graffito in Greek, carved on the wall of the former Temple of Isis at Philae some time after 537, reads ‘I, Theodosios, a Nubian’ (Nouba) and provides evidence for the name used by the Nubians to describe their ethnicity.11
3. The Nuba on the Nile and the Nuba in the Mountains. Of course it’s tempting to draw a line from the Nile south-eastward. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to provide the Nuba with an ancestry that goes well beyond the arrival of the Arab conquerors? Al right: the Nuba came to the Nile Kingdoms after the time of the Pharaohs, so we forget about Kush and the rule over Egypt… but three ancient Kingdoms that lasted from roughly 400 to 1600 BC wouldn’t be bad, would it?
Well, to begin with: for the majority of the Nuba tribes there is nothing to suggest a relationship with the Nuba on the Nile. No archaeological finds, no linguistic relationships. The only Nuba tribes that can be linked to the Nuba on the Nile, are those speaking one of the Nubian languages. In order to understand more about the relationship between the two groups, we need to look into linguistics classifications.
The basic idea behind linguistic classification is that people speaking the same language can drift apart, after which the language develops differently in the two groups. After so many hundreds of years this leads to the creation of two different languages. Linguists look at lexicological, grammatical and structural aspects of different languages to group them according to affiliation. With the help of standard word lists they can determine the level of proximity between two affiliated languages.
Researchers of the nineteenth century already acknowledged the linguistic affiliation between the Nuba on the Nile, several Nuba tribes in the Mountains and some scattered communities in Darfur.12 They all speak Nubian languages, classified with the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. For a long time, the burning question was: did the Nuba in the Mountains come from the Nile, or did the Nuba on the Nile come from the west?
Despite the Arab conquest of Egypt and the ensuing Islamisation, the people along the Nile in Lower Nubia retained their original language, known as Nubian, or Nobiin for linguists. Closely related to Nobiin is Dongolawi, spoken up the river around Dongola in present day Sudan. Nobiin and Dongolawi probably drifted apart about 1100 years ago – give or take a century or two. Their languages, and specially Nobiin, are considered to be remnants of Old-Nubian, spoken in the Chrsitian Kingdoms of Nobatia, Dongola and Alwa.
Both Nobiin and Dongolawi are related to the so-called Hill Nubian languages of the Nuba Mountains and Darfur. The tribes that speak Hill-Nubian include those of Dilling, Kadaru and Ghulfan; Wali, Karko, Habila, Debri and some tribes more to the West like Tabag and Abu Jinuk.13 Looking at their geographical dispersion, you can imagine them coming from the northeast, some entering the Nuba Mountains from the side of Kadaru, some moving on westward around the Nyimang hills.
This combines well with events at the Nile in the 13th century AD. After centuries of stability, Bedouin tribes driven south by the Mameluks14 , started raiding Makuria. To the east the Beja were harassing Egypt and the Mameluks decided that if Makuria couldn’t keep the Beja in check, it was time to take matters in their own hands. The region was completely destabilised and we can imagine the people from Makuria fleeing south, until they found refuge in the Nuba Mountains. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Well… to make a long story longer: linguistic evidence rules against it. Apart from Nobiin, Dongolawi and Hill-Nubian, there are two other Nubian language group: Birgid and Meidob, found further to the west scattered over Darfur (Meidob being extinct by now). Combining linguistic data from the different Nubian languages, J.H. Greenberg concluded that ‘to assume any split between Hill Nubian and Nile Nubian more recent than 2,500 years B.P. [before present] would be incorrect.’15
Of course we can’t give up a beautiful ancestry that easily: C. Herzog noticed that some Hill-Nubian languages have Christian words for days of the week, and other loan words too: the Nuba in Kordofan came from the Nile after all!16 But R. Thelwall wasn’t impressed:
We are very confident that Nobiin (and later Dongolawi) came to the Nile from a centre of dispersion in Darfur-Kordofan which they occupied and controlled for perhaps 4000 years. We know that there were Nubian speakers on the Nile at least as early as the 500s CE and probably much earlier. The fact that the Hill Nubian languages have words for the days of the week dating back to Christian Nubian indicates that these languages were in contact at least during the Christian Nubian period which probably covers 500 CE - 1400 CE. This does not necessarily mean that the Hill Nubians did more than expand from central Kordofan into the NubaMountains during the period of Nubian political dominance from Aswan to Kosti (at least). But given the location of the Hill Nubian speakers (Dair, Dilling, Karko etc) along the NE edge of the Mountains it appears that they were "incomers" settling among the existing Nyima and Temein groups who were there before them.17
It might be a disappointing conclusion for some Nuba, but by now no scholar would still argue that the Nuba in the Mountains are descendants of the Nubian Kingdoms. But let’s not linger with the Nubians any longer: there’s more to explore!
III. The origins of the Nuba
1. ‘We have always lived here.’ But if the Nuba didn’t come from the Nile, then were did they come from? Shall I just say that we have no idea where the Nuba people came from? It would not be far from the facts. S. F. Nadel puts it this way: We know little about the ancient history of the Nuba tribes. […] It often seems as if historical traditions had been cut short by the overpowering experience of the Mahdist regime (1881- 1898), which must have severed all links with a more distant […] past. In some tribes the tradition of past movements or previous places of settlement are summarized in one sentence: ‘we have always lived here.’ Other tribes have more definite and more illuminating traditions, which may even be supported by objective evidence. […] They shed no light on the question of the original home of the Nuba peoples, nor do they supply information as to when and how this area became the habitat of its large and varied population.18
There are simply neither written sources nor archaeological finds that can shed more light on what wanderings brought all the different Nuba tribes to their present place. Below we will see that for the groups that arrived most recently (within the past millennium or two) we have at least an idea of where they migrated from. But beyond that: nothing.
2. The classification of Nuba languages Maybe systematic archaeological research could shed more light on the origins of the Nuba people, but right now we will have to concentrate on linguistic findings. Linguistics is a complex field, not very sexy to be honest, but in many cases, it’s all we have. So we will first look at the classification of the different Nuba languages, and then move on to the question of who came to the Mountains at what time.
The Nuba Languages can be classified into members of two or perhaps three language families: Nilo-Saharan and Kordofanian. A. The Kordofanian languages consist of four groups located in the southern and eastern areas of the Nuba Mountains: Heiban, Talodi, Rashad and Katla. Kordofanian languages are considered a branch of the Niger-Congo family, which encompasses all Bantu languages, and in general most of the languages spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa. The only thing is: Kordofanian doesn’t resemble any of the other Niger-Congo languages closely. It constitutes a group of its own and geographically also, Kordofanian is isolated. In other words: we don’t have a clue as to how these Kordofanian speaking Nuba ended up in the Nuba Mountain. B. The Kadugli Group is located in the south east central fringe area near Kadugli. It was earlier classified as part of Kordofanian but is currently considered part of Nilo-Saharan. This is another large phylum: Dinka and Nuer are Nilo-Saharan languages, and so are many languages of Chad and Congo, as well as several languages spoken in Nigeria. C. The rest of the Nuba languages are classified as part of a major sub-group of Nilo-Saharan called Eastern Sudanic. They consist of Hill Nubian, Daju, Timein and Nyimang. The tribes speaking Eastern Sudanic languages can be found in the north western areas of the Mountains.
3. Linguistic settlement As we’ve just seen in the case of the Nubian speakers, shifts in related languages can tell us something about how long ago the speakers of those languages went their own way. Unfortunately this is not very exact, as Robin Thellwall explained to me: [the] reconstructions are based minimally on linguistic distance and extrapolated onto a fairly speculative time frame (glotto-chronology). Such a time framework is only a provisional and relative model to be tested against other evidence (archaeology, oral traditions, blood types, climate history, agricultural and animal husbandry terminology etc). This has not happened for the NubaMountains.19
However, for ‘The Linguistic Settlement of the Nuba in the Mountains’ Thelwall and Schadeberg20 analysed all the available data from the Nuba languages, and they came up with the following hypothesis regarding the relative chronology of the linguistic settlement of the Mountains: 1. Kordofanian language speakers came earlier than all the others 2. Nyimang; Temein and Kadugli language groups followed them 3. Daju speakers of Shatt and Liguri were next 4. Hill Nubian speakers – probably somewhere between 500 and 1400 AD 5. Daju speakers around Lagawa, who settled there relatively recently.
4. Kordofanian Heiban, Katla, Rashad and Talodi are the current names for the different groups of Kordofanian languages that cover the eastern half of the Nuba Mountains and a large part of the centre. Within the language group, differentiation has progressed much further than in the other Nuba language groups. According to R. Thelwall ‘the family has a time depth of a minimum of 6000 years.’21 This means that you would have to go back at least 6000 years in time to find all Kordofanian speakers speaking the same language. Kordofanian is classified with the Niger-Congo languages, and the nearest Niger-Congo speaking people would be found over the border of Sudan in southern Chad, in Central African Republic and in the Congo. The relationship between Kordofanian and the rest of Niger-Congo is not clear. The current subdivision of Kordofanian is as follows:
I. Heiban is spoken in a large area that has a geographical centre in the town of Heiban. It can be subdivided in an eastern section, with Kau and Werni in the south-east; a central section with Koalib, Laro, Heiban, Otoro, Shwai and Logol, and a western section with Moro and Tira.
For these tribes, memory doesn’t reach back far enough to retain any information about the origins of the people. We might learn that the Nuba of Kau, who became world-famous through the photographs of Leni Riefenstahl, have been living in their present location for at least 200 years. According to J. C. Faris: Oral traditions document that they were in place before the first Arab Movements into the area (c. 1800, see Cunnison, 1966: 3), and remains of surface habitation, genealogies, and linguistic separation from other of the Koalib-Moro language family all indicate an even greater time span.22 But what does this mean? It could be 500 years; 2000 years… we don’t know.
The Tira have an idea of where they came from, but their place of origin is still within the Nuba Mountains, and the time frame is also rather limited: According to their traditions, the Tira people […] came originally from a place called Rila, said to have been situated between Sheibun and Kadugli […]. They left for unknown reasons to settle on Tomboro hill, in the Moro massif. This tradition is corroborated by the Moro, who still remember that Tomboro […] was inhabited by Tira […] at the time when the Moro first settled in that region. Driven from Tombore by the Arabs, the Tira migrated east, a few groups to Tira Lomon, the rest to Tira el Akhdar. This final migration too place only three generations ago […]. When the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation arrived in Tira they found there already three Tira clans living, speaking the language of the immigrants and possessing an identical culture.23
In connection with Tira, it might be nice to include a story told by S. C. Dunn. Having researched gold washing practices in the Nuba Mountains, he writes that gold could be found mainly in Tira Mandi, with some small deposits in Dungur and Atoro. He also went to Sheibun, which was universally believed to be a place where gold was found… [At Jebel Shwai] Sheikh Naser, his son and several elders […] described to me roughly the position of the pits at Sheibun […]. An old Nuba who knew and had worked at Sheibun was provided as a guide; and I departed for Sheibun. During six hours of climbing around the group of little hills […] I had been led to a little hole on the hill side where some fine white clay had been extracted, to an old rain water pond, to the sites of the old villages and to some mounds of mountain debris. I then said that in my opinion there was not and never had been either gold or gold-washing at Sheibun; and the policemen with me said that was exactly what the Shawabna had told them privately the day before yesterday. [No one told me, because they] thought I would be angry.24 Sheibun did turn out to be the main market where the gold from Tira Mandi was sold though.
The Moro also have only a limited awareness of their history: The ancient home of the Moro people was on Lebu hill, in the western massif [of the Moro area]. Growing too numerous, the tribe [split: one] group remained in Lebu; the second moved to the northern edge of the massif […]; the third migrated to [Umm Dorein]. At that time the eastern massif was still uninhabited. Three or four generations ago the Moro began to settle there […]. This migration […] was prompted by the pressure of population and the search for new lanf, better protected from the Arab raiders.25
The Koalib have a tradition that says that: the northern Koalib lived originally in Kortala, side by side with [a tribe called] Nyemu. Arab (?) pressure drove the Nyemu to Jebel Dair, and some of the Koalib to their present habitat.26 In his 2003 Land Study, Simon Harragin writes: There is historical evidence that the Koalib were once resident on the plains much further west than their current position (Sagar, 1922: 138).27 Together with the Nyimang, the Koalib occupied the area around Dilling before Ghulfan and Kadaru drove a wedge between them. […] However, the historical claim mainly relies on oral history.28
II. Katla, which holds both Katla and Tima, is spoken in the hills southwest of Dilling. I didn’t even find any sources related to their origin.
III. Rashad can be divided into three languages: Tegali, spoken in the Tegali hills, the Rashad hills and the town of Rashad; Tagoi, spoken in Tagoi, Moreb and Tumale, and Tingal, also in the Tegali Hills.
The Nuba of the Tegali kingdom are basically the only ones to have a documented history that goes back beyond the 19th century. It doesn’t provide any clues however, to their origins. The founding stories of the kingdom speak of a ‘wise stranger’ coming to Tegali and starting a dynasty – a common theme in Sudanese traditions29 . I will gladly get back to the kingdom in the next chapter.
IV. Talodi is a group of languages mainly found in the southern part of the Mountains. It can be devided into Lafofa on the central Eliri range and some adjacent hills, and a large Talodi proper group that can be broken down into four groups: Talodi is spoken in Talodi town and on Jebel Talodi; Eliri on the southern Eliri range; Masakin, with Dagik and Ngile as two separate languages, is spoken in the Masakin hills; in Buram, Reikha and Daloka, and finally Tocho, branched into Acherun, Limun and Tocho.
The first Nuba people to hit the coffee tables in an impressive book by Leni Riefenstahl, were the Masakin Qisar, as she calls them. Reifenstahl stayed with the Masakin on several occasions, for weeks or months, but she doesn’t seem to have inquired after their origin. To her, they were ‘Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern’: people that might just as well have come from another star. And of course, in a sense, that is true. We don’t know where the Masakin came from, just as we don’t know where the other Nuba from the Talodi group originated.
5. Nyimang, Temein and Kadugli These three language groups are unique, like the Kordofanian languages, in the fact that they are only spoken in the Nuba Mountains. Judging from the large internal linguistic diversity within each group, the Nyimang, Temein and Kadugli speaking tribes might well have been in the Mountains for more than 2000 years.30 They seem to have come to the Nuba Mountains in tough times, with a lot of people on the move, losing touch with one another. In the words of Thellwal and Schadeberg: All three groups have a reasonably compact distribution within the NubaMountains: Kadugli along the southwestern edge, Temein to the West, and Nyimang to the north. This suggests outside origins and immigration from these respective directions. Assuming that equal internal diversity corresponds to some roughly consistent time depth we may argue that at this particular time in history conditions prevailed in the NubaMountains which resulted in population scattering and reduced inter-group communication. As it is more likely that such conditions originated outside the refuge area we may further speculate that migration to the NubaMountains and diversification occurred in close historical union.31
There is not an awful much to tell about the origins of each individual group, but let’s have a look at them anyway:
I. Nyimang is spoken by the people living on the seven hills of Nyimang: Salara, Tendiya, Kurmeti, Nitil, Fassu, Kelara and Kakara. It is also spoken by the people in the Mandal Hills and at Sobei, and by the more distantly related Afitti in Jebel Dair. The Nyimang call themselves Ama – ‘People’ – or ama mede kolat: people of the seven hills. Little is known about their origin, but S. F. Nadel reports that: the tribe [migrated] from a country ‘in the west’, ‘beyond Tima and Abu Ginuk’, whose name is given as Kugya.32 With R. C. Stevenson this becomes Kwuja or Kwija, which could be Kubja in the El Odaiya area. According to Stevenson the Nyimang: say that they settled first in the eastern hillsof the Nyimang range – Nitil, Kurmiti and Fassu – which they found unoccupied, and only later pushed westwards to Tendia and Salara. [At Salara] they claim to have found the Kunit (one of the Hill Nubian groups) there and to have driven them north after a severe struggle.33 The way the Hill Nubian tribes surround the Nyimang makes this scenario rather improbable. Stevenson remarks that it’s more likely that the Nyimang occupied a larger territory – stretching at least as far as Dilling, until the Hill Nubians arrived.
II. Temein is spoken in the Temein hills (north of Julud); the related Keiga and Teisei are found in Keiga Jirru (west of Debri) and Teisei um-Danab (north-east of Kadugli) respectively. There is nothing to tell about the origin of the Temein, except that: the people of Keiga Jirru claim to have migrated from Temein in the ‘distant past’, and this is supported by Temein tradition which relates that the people of both Keiga Jirru and Teisei-Umm-Danab migrated during a time of famine.34
III. Kadugli as a collective name is not really covering the large range of related languages that are grouped together here. Usually Kadugli is mentioned together with Katcha and Miri; they are so closely related that they could be considered dialects rather then separate languages. There are a number of Nuba languages put together with Kadugli-Miri-Katcha as ‘unclassified’ Nilo-Saharan languages: Tulishi, Kanga, Keiga, Korongo and Tumtum. They are clearly related to each other and to Kadugli-miri-Katcha, but the exact affiliation hasn’t been determined. R. C. Stevenson calls them the Kadugli-Krongo group: [‘the area covered by the group is very widespread; running along the south-west, its limits are Tullishi in the west and Kurondi in the south-east.] The most important hill ranges are Miri, Kadugli and Krongo, after two of which the group has been named.’ 35 In recent publications the group is referred to as the Kadu languages; I will use this term for convenience. The languages from north-west to south-east:
Tulishi is spoken around Jebel Tulishi, Lagawa, Kamdang and Dar El Kabira. Keiga at Jebel Demik (north of Miri): Ambong, Lubung and Tumuro Miri in Miri Bara, Miri Guwa, Luba etc.; all lie west of Kadugli. Kadugli is spoken in Kadugli and the in villages surrounding the town. Katcha is spoken in villages of Katcha, Tuna, Kafina, Dabakaya (Donga), Belanya, and Farouq, a short distance south of Kadugli and southeast of the Miri Hills. Kanga in Abu Sinun, Chiroro-Kursi, Kanga, Kufa-Lima, Krongo Abdalla Korongo towards the south in Tabanya, Toroji, Dar and Angolo; in Damaguto, Dimadragu and Dimodongo, and in Fama, Teis and Kua. Tumtum on Jebel Eliri: Karondi, Talassa and Tumtum
There is not much to tell about the origins of the people speaking one of the Kadu languages: no one knows where they came from. The linguistic and cultural affiliation among the different tribes is clear though. G. Baumann, who spent 18 months among the Miri people, doing research, says: The Miri form part of a larger cultural and linguistic unit known as the Kadugli-Krongo group. […] My own travels in the Kadugli-Krongo region produced a recurring impression of a common cultural heritage that encompassed not only linguistic affinity, but institutions, customs, verbal concepts, and sensitivities shared across boundaries. It is true that each of the Kadugli-Krongo communities has gone its own, different way in the processes of change over recent decades. [But] recent diversification has not as yet been able to obscure or supersede the shared cultural heritage of the neighbouring groups.36
Relationships between the communities are usually recognised by the people themselves, and some myths of origin exist, but only for movements within the Nuba Mountains. S. F. Nadel recorded for example that the people of Korongo: claim close cultural and linguistic affinity with [...] Tumtum on Jebel Talodi, Dere on Jebel Illiri, and three small hill groups in the west: Tesh, Fama and Shatt Safiya. [...] I have checked its truth in Talodi, Tesh and Fama. But the people of Shatt, as I discovered, have a different language and culture and are altogether of a different ethnic stock. The Korongo attribute this community of culture to the common origin of the today widely scattered groups. According to Korongo tradition, Jebel Tabuli, a large, now uninhabited, hill massif east of Korongo, was the ancient home of these different groups.37
Another example can be given for the people of Tulishi: The Tullishi people assert, with the rigidity of a dogma, that they have ‘always’ lived in their hills, unaffected by immigrations. […] The Tullishi people are fully aware of [the] affinity with Kamdang and Truj, but have no traditions of origin or past migrations which might attempt to explain this tribal kinship. They have such traditions with regard to the people of Miri (as also of Jebel Damik and Keiga), with whom they claim a common, or closely similar, language, and common clans. [They lived closely together once, but they split up after a dispute.] The Miri people, we may add, share the tradition of the ancient kinship of the two tribes.38 This is confirmed by G. Baumann, who writes: The mythical link with Tulishi is quite universally recalled […]. Formerly, the Tulishi people lived here on top of a hill called Igyol. [They did something wrong] so they migrated to present home. 39
And that’s it as far as these the Nyimang, the Temein and the Kadugli language speaking Nuba are concerned.
6. Hill Nubian As discussed at length above, the Hill Nubian speaking tribes came to the Mountains from the North, probably before 1400 AD. The different languages are classified as follows:
Ghulfan and Kadaru are grouped together. Ghulfan is spoken in Ghulfan Kurgul and Ghulfan Morung; Kadaru in the hill communites of Kadaru, Kururu, Kafir, Kurtala, Dabatna and Kuldaji. Dilling is spoken in the town and the surrounding villages Dair, in the western and southern parts of Jebel Dair Karko in the Karko Hills and Dulman; maybe also Abu Jinik and Tabaq. Wali in the Wali Hills
Thelwall and Schadeberg can’t say more as to why or when exactly the Hill Nubians migrated south: Whether this occurred due to pressure from Arab nomads as Arkell40 proposes, or whether an earlier date should be assumed is not clear. The relative closeness of the Hi1l Nubian dialects to each other does not suggest the presence of isolated Nubian communities in these hills for several millennia.41 It was probably a gradual process. R. C. Stevenson writes: Nubian speech was brought to the northern NubaMountains by tribal movements accelerated by the Arab influx during the past few centuries. In Rüppell’s time (mid 1820s) it was still spoken on the plains south of El Obeid.42
The most detailed account of how some of the Hill Nubians came to the Nuba Mountains is given by S. F. Nadel: The Warke, or Dilling people, have preserved very clear traditions of their origin and past history. Originally, these traditions state, the tribe was living at Abdel Baka in the Ghadayat, under the ‘Sultans’ of that Kingdom, The Ghadayat are said to have been of Fung origin, and ethnically related to the Warke. Later Arab attacks forced the latter to emigrate. They moved first to Boti (now known as Sungikai) , then to Shirma, or Jebel Tukuma (ten miles east of Dilling), and finally to Dilling. The Ghadayat, in their old home, are said to have become ‘like Arabs’, while the Warke ‘became Nuba’. The ancient link, however, survived in the political sphere; the Dilling people remained tributary to the Sultans of Abdel Baka and still recognize, symbolically, their suzerainty […] The genealogy of Dilling chiefs mentions ten who already resided in Dilling. Their relationship is not remembered, but we may assume that their reign embraces a period of no less, and probably more, than 100 years. The Dilling know of their close cultural and linguistic links with Kaduru and Ghulfan [...]. The most widely accepted tradition is this: that the people of Kaduru have lived together with the Warke in the Ghadayat, but later separated; that the Ghulfan groups are of Fung origin, but unknown home; and that a small, isolated group, akin to Dilling in language and culture, and living today on Jebel Tabak in Western Kordofan, had shared with the Warke their old home on Jebel Takuna, but afterwards migrated to its present habitat.43
7. The Daju speaking tribes The Daju speaking tribes came to the Nuba Mountains from the west, from a Daju Kingdom that we know conveniently little about. The Kingdom was based, as early perhaps as 1200 AD, in Jebel Marrah, a rain-fed mountain range in an otherwise arid country. The Daju controlled the area between southern Jebel Marra and the western edges of the Nuba Mountains. They were displaced by the Tunjur at the end of the fourteenth century, and left no records besides a list of kings that ends with King Kasi Furogé. The Daju were scattered by the Tunjur and we find them back in some isolated pockets across a wide area of Chad and Sudan, in the regions of Kordofan, Darfur, and Wadai.
Linguistically things don’t seem to be too complicated: following R.C. Stevenson44 we differentiate between Eastern and Western Daju. The Eastern Daju speakers all live in the Nuba Mountains. They are the Shatt in the Shatt Hills south-west of Kadugli (Shatt Damam, Shatt Safaia and Shat Tebeldia), and Liguri and Soburi in the hills north-east of the city. The Western Daju are more scattered. In Chad we find the Mongo in Dar Daju and the Sila in Dar Sila. In Sudan the Nyala around Nyala in Darfur; the Beigo (extinct) in southern Darfur; and the Njalgulgule in southern Sudan on the Sopo River. Also belonging to the Western Daju are the Daju living near Lagawa. and that brings us back to the Nuba Mountains.
Looking at the linguistic data, Robin Thelwall is convinced that the Eastern Daju languages separated from the others long ago, perhaps as much as 2000 years. The Shatt and Liguri have been in the Mountains much longer than the Lagawa, and because of the considerable linguistic distance between the Shatt and the Liguri, it is likely that their migration into the Nuba Mountains predates not only the Lagawa, but also the Nubian arrival in this area45 .
So linguistically it seems clear. Historically it’s a bit hazy though. There is no doubt that 250 years ago there were two people, Daju and Shatt, living in the area of Muglad west of the Nuba Mountains. K. D. D. Henderson, one of the first British district commissioners of Western Kordofan District, says the Daju and Shatt arrived there from Darfur around 1710.46 According to Ian Cunnison they were driven away by the Messyria: When [the Messeria Homr] reached where they are now, they found two pagan tribes: the Shatt and Daju in Muglad [Deinga]. Homr therefore drove the two tribes out of the area. Shatt escaped further south where they met the Ngok Dinka and were further driven west [...]. The Daju escaped [east] and settled among the Nuba.47
Henderson says the Messeria Baggara came to Muglad around the decade of 1765-1775,48 so we have a pretty exact indication of when the Daju came to Lagawa. But what about the Shatt? They went south until they met the Ngok Dinka and were driven west? Please, don’t let the name confuse you: these are not the Shatt in the Nuba Hills. The Ethnologue: Languages of the World explains: 'Caning' is their own name for themselves. 'Shatt' is applied by Arabic speakers to inhabitants of the Kordofan Hills. It means 'dispersed', 'scattered', and is applied to various groups. Distinct from Shatt (Thuri) in the Lwo group, or the Shatt dialect of Mundu.49 The last two groups are living in South Sudan, so that makes sense. It doesn’t explain however why Watkiss Lloyd, the first Governor of Kordofan, would report: The natives of [Shat el Safia, and Shat el Damman] say they formerly occupied the whole of Dar Homr, and this is confirmed by the Homr Arabs, who say there is still a small settlement of the same tribe at a place they call Shat, a few miles over our border.50 We must asume that he just listened to the wrong natives. And what to make of the reconstruction of the Daju and Shatt migration that R.C. Stevenson distilled from K.D.D. Henderson’s data? In his account, the Daju and the Shatt were migrating east together, reaching Muglad around 1710 and moving sort of leisurely towards the area west of Lagawa in the following decennia. From there some of them continued to Liguri and Soburi while others (the Shatt) settled south of Kadugli.51 Stevenson was a distinguished linguist; but somehow he didn’t realise that the differences between the Daju and the Shatt were too big for them to have come to the Nuba Mountains together.
And this, for now, brings me to the end of the investigation into the origins of the Nuba. The results can’t be called glorious, can they? (But the struggle is heroic.) In the next chapter we will focus on more substantial stories of the period before the Mahdiya.
History, part II History, part III
NOTES
1. Interviewed by N.op ‘t Ende; London, February 12 and 13, 2001 2. A.C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, pp. 3. 3. A.H. Keane already dismissed it in 1885: Ethnology of Egyptian Sudan; The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 14 (1885), pp. 101. 4. A. J. Arkell: A History of the Sudan to A.D. 1821, 1955. 5. S.F. Nadel: The Nuba, an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 2. 6. Claudius Ptolemy: Geography IV, ch.7. The strangest thing is that he locates the Nubae east of the Nile while the European maps invariably put Nubia to the west of the river. 7. Strabo: Geographica, book XVII;54 8. Strabo: Geographica, book XVII;2 9. Procopius: History of the Wars, c. 550 CE: Book I;19 10. Abbreviated text of the Ezana inscription 11. D. A. Welsby: The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia, 2002. 12. A. H. Keane for example: opus cit. 13. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984 14. Slave soldiers of the Ayyubid rulers who rose to high esteem and then rid themselves of their masters, founding the Mameluk Empire that dominated the Middle East for two centuries. 15. J. H. Greenberg: The Languages of Africa, 1963; Int. journal of American linguistics, 29, 1, part 2. 16. R. Herzog: Die Nubier, I957. 17. R. Thelwall: Nuba Languages and History: Who is related to who in and outside of the Nuba Mountains and did they come from anywhere else?; Nuba Vision, Volume 1, Issue 3, February 2002. 18. S.F. Nadel: The Nuba, an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 4-5. 19. R. Thelwall, private correspondence. 20. R. Thelwall and T. C. Schadeberg: The Linguistic Settlement of the Nuba Mountains; Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 5 (1983) 219-231 21. R. Thelwall: Nuba Languages and History […]; Nuba Vision, Volume 1, Issue 3, February 2002. 22.J. C. Faris: Nuba Personal Art, 1972, pp. 14. 23. S.F. Nadel: The Nuba, an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 176-177. 24. S. C. Dunn: Native Gold Washings in the Nuba Mountains Province; Sudan Notes and Records, VoL IV. No. 3, October 1921, pp. 143-144. 25. S.F. Nadel: The Nuba, an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 178 26. Idem, pp. 358. 27. J. W. Sagar: Notes on the History, Religion and Customs of the Nuba; Sudan Notes and records 5 (1922), pp. 137 - 156. 28. S. Harragin: Nuba Mountains Land and Natural Resources Study; Part I – Land Study, 2003. 29. J. J. Ewald: Experience and Speculation: History and Founding Stories in the Kingdom of Tagali, 1780- 1935; the International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol 18, No. 2 (1985), pp.265-287. 30. R. Thelwall: Nuba Languages and History […]; Nuba Vision, Volume 1, Issue 3, February 2002. 31. R. Thelwall and T. C. Schadeberg: The Linguistic Settlement of the Nuba Mountains; Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 5 (1983) 219-231 32. S.F. Nadel: The Nuba, an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 362. 33. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, pp. 85. 34. Idem, pp. 122. 35. R. C. Stevenson: A Survey of the Phonetics and Grammatical Structure of the Nuba Mountains Languages, with Particular Reference to Otoro, Katcha and Nyimang; Africa und Übersee 40 (1956), pp. 103. 36. G. Baumann: National Integration and Local Integrity, the Miri of the Nuba Mountains in the Sudan, 1987, pp. 22-24. 37. S.F. Nadel: The Nuba, an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 368. 38. Idem, pp. 319. 39. G. Baumann: opus cit., pp. 140 40. A. J. Arkell: A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821, 1955. 41. R. Thelwall and T. C. Schadeberg: The Linguistic Settlement of the Nuba Mountains; Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 5 (1983), pp. 219-231 42. R. C. Stevenson: Linguistic Research in the Nuba Mountains; Sudan Notes and Records 45 (1963), pp. 79-102. 43. S. F. Nadel: the Nuba, an anthropological study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan, 1947. 44. R. C. Stevenson: A survey of the phonetics and grammatical structure of the Nuba Mountains languages, with particular reference to Otoro, Katcha and Nyimang; Afrika und Übersee 40, 1956-7 45. R. Thelwall: Nuba Languages and History […]; Nuba Vision, Volume 1, Issue 3, February 2002. 46. K. D. D. Henderson: The Migration of the Messiria into South West Kordofan; Sudan Notes & Records 22/1, 1939 47. I. Cunnison: The Baggara Arabs: Power and Lineage in the Sudanese Nomadic Tribe, 1966 48. Idem, pp. 54 49. Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/. 50. Watkiss Lloyd: Notes on Kordofan Province; The Geographical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Mar. 1910) pp. 249 - 267 51. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, pp. 35-37
This text was written by the designer of the homepage, Nanne op 't Ende.

History of the Nuba, part II
History, part I History, part III
IV. Invasions of Kordofan V. The Turkiyya VI. The Mahdiya (1881- 1898) VII. The Condominium (1899 - 1953)
IV. Invasions of Kordofan
1. Sennar In a battle at Dongola in 652, the Makurian forces halted the Arab invasion of Nubia. The Baqt, a treaty concluded between the Arabs and the Makurians, allowed trade to flourish between Nubia and the Arab world for nearly seven hundred years. Caravan routes traversed the country from south to north and from west to east. The commerce attracted Arab merchants who settled among the indigenous people along the Nile. Arabs also found a place in the Red Sea Hills, where gold was found. Gradually, over a period of nearly a thousand years, the influence of the Arabic settlers grew. Intermarriage with indigenous elites and wealth from trade, rather than force, brought the Arabs to positions of esteem.
The slow process of Arabization and Islamization was hastened by the rise of the Funj Kingdom of Sennar.1 The Funj were Africans, who arrived in the area of ancient Alodia in 1504. Within decades, Sennar ruled over a large part of Northern Sudan. Its monarchy embraced Islam in 1523, inviting Muslim scholars and missionaries to spread the faith. Arab culture and social organisation became more and more dominant. Sennar thrived on trade along the caravan routes, on slaves and on the gold found in the realm of the kingdom. The influence of Sennar stretched at least into Southern Kordofan, and during the sixteenth and seventeenth century migration from the river towards the west brought the Arab influence into this province of Sennar. The first tribes that migrated during this period claim to be Arabs, but the genealogies they give are usually as creative as they are unlikely.2
For an uncertain period of time, but probably beginning in the latter half of the sixteenth century a part of Korodofan called the Ghudiyat was a province to Sennar. The ruling elite of the Ghudiyat was of Funj origin and resided at Abdel Baka. According to MacMichael, their rule was only predominant during a short period: from 1755 to 1768. But they remained where they were after the demise of Sennar.3 You may remember that the Warke, or people of Dilling, originated from there. At the time Nadel recorded the historic relations between the Warke and the Ghudiyat (around 1939), each new chief of Dilling still recognized the suzerainty of the Sultan of the Ghudiyat. At least ten generations of Dilling chiefs had travelled to Abdel Baka to receive the symbols of their authority from the Sultan.4 It is quite remarkable that this relationship survived into the twentieth century: Kordofan was taken from Sennar by the Darfurians; it was invaded by Arab nomads; Sennar itself was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and the Mahdi and the Khalifa ravaged Kordofan before it finally became part of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In ‘A Premise for Precolonial Nuba History’ J. Spaulding speculates that the same relationship existed between the Sultan and other tribes related to the Warke: the Kaduru, the Ghulfan and the Tabak.5 Nadel doesn’t mention it, but it would not be too far fetched to assume that more Nuba tribes, through the Ghudiyat, once were tributary to Sennar.
2. Keira For at least seven hundred years Jebel Marra in Southern Darfur was the centre of a Kingdom or Sultanate that was first dominated by the Daju (900-1400?), then by the Tunjur (1400?-1650) and eventually by the Fur (1650–1916). Politically the Kingdoms of Darfur were more influenced by developments to their west and north than by the situation at the Nile.6 Point of gravity for these developments is the Kanem-Bornu Empire centred around Lake Chad. Kanem-Borno was influential because for centuries it controlled the main route for trans-Sahara trade. The empire was first ruled by the Zaghawa, or Duguwa, until about 1075 AD the Sayfuwa took over. Succession was not a matter of conquest, but rather of one elite supplanting the other. As Islam followed the same trail as the caravans across the desert, the elites of Kanem-Borno were relatively early to convert to Islam. This played a major role in the power shift from Zhagawa to Sayfuwa.7
Now back to Darfur: the Daju are the first recorded people to have established a state around Jebel Marra. They are believed to have been related to the Zhagawa by some; they could also have been one of the Ouaddai tribes according to others.8 Whatever happened exactly: the power of the Daju Kingdom declined at a time when the Sayfuwa moved their capital from the east of Lake Chad to the west of it, possibly because of the rise of the Bilala Sultanate, in the late fourteenth century. The Daju were replaced by a people called the Tunjur. Their origin is even more obscure than that of the Daju. Some say the Tunjur came from the West, through Borno and Ouaddai.9 The Tunjur were Muslims or were converted to Islam during their reign in Darfur that lasted until about 1650 AD.
The Fur were a people living in the Tunjur realm and they probably didn’t have to fight very hard to gain control of the institutions. The Tunjur intermarried with the Fur and eventually the Fur became dominant. Their reign was known as the Keira Sultanate, founded by Suleiman Solongdungo around 1650.10 The Keira Sultanate lasted until 1916, when it was annexed to the Sudan by the British-Egyptian administration. The population in the Sultanate was made up of a large variety of ethnic groups that lived together without too many conflicts. The Keira rulers first settled the relationship with the Ouaddai to their west before turning their attention eastward. For several centuries they controlled at least part of Kordofan. Wes African Muslims performing the Hadj (pilgrimage to Mekka) started to trek through Keira towards the Nile. They crossed the river at Dongola and from there moved on to the Red Sea, to cross to Mekka by boat. This steady movement to and from Mekka, together with the trade (mainly in slaves) made Keira prosperous, and the Sultans were keen to protect the caravan routes. They also invited Arab merchants from both the western Islamic regions and the Nile region to settle in their territory. From time to time Keira and Sennar would be in conflict over Kordofan until 1784/5. Keira conquered the region and remained in control until the Egyptian Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha sent his forces south in 1821, in search of slaves for his army.
3. Tagali Both Sennar and Keira considered Kordofan as a province. Sennar was more influential in the south while Keira’s power was felt in northern Kordofan, and they contested each other for control over central Kordofan. Nothing indicates however that either state was able to exercise much authority. Apart from an occasional raid for slaves or a campaign to press home their demands for tribute, they left the people alone for most of the time. It is generally assumed that the indigenous population of Northern and Central Kordofan largely consisted of Nuba people, who either blended with the steadily arriving Arab settlers or withdrew to the sanctuary of the Nuba Mountains in the South.
There was one genuinely Nuba centre of power in Kordofan: the Kingdom of Tagali. It lies in the Tagali Hills, in the north eastern part of the Nuba Mountains. The first account about Tagali was given by J. Bruce. He spent some time in Sennar in 1772 and says there were several villages surrounding Sennar that were inhabited by slaves from the Nuba Mountains, taken mainly from Dair and Tagali. The Nuba formed Sennar’s infantry.11 The Funj Chronicles, written in the nineteenth century, shed more light on the nature of the Tagali Kingdom and its relationship to Sennar. Around 1650 Sultan Baadi II of Sennar attacked the Mek of Tagali because his people had robbed the pilgrim caravans to and from Mecca. Tagali yielded to Sennar and paid an annual tribute in slaves.12
The Tagali Kingdom grew more influential and from this time stems the expression that there are 99 Nuba hills: the Meks of Tagali were said to rule over 99 hills; this was giving them too much credit. But at the height of its power, in the first decades of the eighteenth century, Tagali had a great deal to say in surrounding hills like Rashad and Gadir, and it ruled over several Arab speaking tribes in the plains towards the east. Tagali also had control over the gold trade (that was centered in Sheibun) and it received tribute from some more distant tribes.13 While the reign of Sennar waned and was eventually ended by the invasion of the Turkish armies, the Meks of Tagali managed to maintain their authority into the time of the Condominium.
4. Baggara The next group of people to influence affairs in Kordofan were the Baggara. The Baggara tribes are cattle nomads who consider themselves Arabs and claim to be descendent from the Juhayna. I found it really difficult to get a clear idea of the origins of these Juhayna, their wanderings into the Sudan and the way they settled in Kordofan. The difficulties are explained by Yusuf Fadl Hassan: the Juhayna includes the Arabs of that name and other groups who tended to attach themselves to the Juhayna and became related to them by tracing their relations back to a mythical or semi-mythical common ancestry. The term Juhayna lost its true meaning and came to mean virtually Arab; it included practically all the nomads.14 For the sake of clarity I will describe some of the lines that were later pulled together by the common practice of the Arab inhabitants of Kordofan to trace their ancestry to Abdallah al-Juhani.
A. Juhayna The actual Juhayna came from the Arabian Peninsula to Egypt with the first wave of Arab conquests. From there they ventured into eastern Sudan, some settling among the Beja, others slowly moving west. Some Juhayna groups possibly came to eastern Sudan across the Red Sea. All this occurred over a longer period of time, from the ninth to the thirteenth century AD. By and large the Beja country had served as a highway through which many Arab tribesmen passed either from Egypt. or directly across the Red Sea on their way to the Nile.15
B. Judham West of the Nile a second route of migration took an increasing number of Arabs towards Darfur and North Kordofan. They followed the river up to Dongola, from where they turned south-westward on the Darb’ al-Arba’in [Forty Day’s Road] across the desert to Dar Fur. Among these, the Judham Arabs were predominant. As the plains of Darfur were slowly occupied by the first waves of immigrants, groups arriving later tracked on towards the west, entering the realms of the Kanem-Bornu Empire.16 In a letter to the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, dated 1391, the king of Bornu complains about the brutality of the Arabs, who pillage the country and sell off its people as slaves. He asks the Sultan to use his influence to end the atrocities.17 Whether this letter had the desired result the story doesn’t tell.
Among the Arabs settling in the plains of Darfur and Northern Kordofan we find the Kababish and the Fazara. The Kababish seem to be Arabs of mainly Judham origin who were later joined by other Arab tribes coming from the Nile. The Fazara are a northern Arab tribe that migrated to Egypt in the fourteenth century and from there continued into Sudan. Both Kababish and Fazara were later said to have descended from the Juhayna, but this is not very likely.18
C. Baggara Finally we get to the tribes that call themselves the Baggara. Around 1500 AD the plains of northern Darfur and northern Kordofan were occupied, and so were the regions to the west, in Ouaddai and Bornu. The Arab tribes in northern Darfur and Kordofan kept herds of camels and sheep. Subsequent arrivals, who could not find room in this region, had to hurry southwards – that is, into southern Kordofan and Dar Fur. The new belt, although rich in pasture, was not climatically suitable for either camels or sheep. Gradually, the Arabs, like the natives, adopted cattle breeding and thus became known collectively as the Baqqara (from baqara or cow).19
The origins of the Baggara are a bit obscure. They themselves claim to be of Juhayna descent, and their oral histories state that they came to Kordofan from Tunis and Fezzan (in Libya). MacMichael already commented that there was a lot of air in the Baggara genealogies. He believed the Baggara came from the north through the Nubian Kingdoms and had little to do with the Juhayna Arabs that came from the east.20 Jean-Claude Zeltner dismissed any large-scale Arab migration from North Africa into the region of Lake Chad prior to an 1842 movement of Arabs from Fezzan to Kanem (east of Lake Chad).21 Today the Baggara will acknowledge the improbability of the route through Chad, but they will maintain that they are Juhayna. Point remains that the Juhayna came only from the east, not from the north along the Nile. According to Hasan, they are probably distant offspring of Judham Arabs and some other Arab tribes that came to the Sudan together with them.22
The most important Baggara tribes in Kordofan are the Hawazma, the Misseriya Humr and the Misseriya Zuruq. They started to occupy land to the west and the north of the Nuba Mountains from the sixteenth century onwards. The Nuba of central Kordofan, who had already been pushed back by the incursions from Sennar and Keira, gradually withdrew further south. For centuries they were living relatively peaceful though, at least according to Sagar: Vast tracts of land surrounding all the jebels [mountains] were cultivated, so that when eventually the Baggara Arabs, searching for pasture and water for their rapidly increasing herds, arrived in Kordofan from the west some 120 years ago [around 1800], they naturally turned southwards into this prosperous country and divided it amongst themselves. Meeting with no opposition in the plains, they drove the Nuba into their hills and occupied all the best watering places… Stories told by present-day Baggara, passed from father to son, tell of a country “yellow with grain”, and names given by the inhabitants to hills and khirs [seasonal currents] suggest that places which are now mere wastes were then inhabitat and cultivated. An instance in point is Jebel Simasim, some 10 miles north of Jebel Ghulfan, where the Arabs found vast piles of simsim [sesame] stored, showing that then the Nuba of Ghulfan could cultivate unmolested at such a distance from their own homes.23
This was to change very soon. Again according to Sagar: Slave raiding began at once, and the Nuba were cooped up in the hills. The usual procedure was that each sub-tribe of Baggara protected, as far as possible, the hills in its own zone, in return for supplies of grain and slaves, and raided, as far as they could, hills belonging to other sub-tribes. Cultivation in the plains consequently ceased, for fear of the sudden onset of the dreaded horsemen… To grow their grain the Nuba set to work and terraced the hills, and do kept themselves from starvation. But crops grown in such barreb soil were poor and often failed, so that in bad times they were compelled to sell their own slaves, and often their own children to the Arabs for grain.24
And that was only the beginning.
V. The Turkiyya
1. Muhammad Ali Pasha For the next phase in the history of Sudan that directly affected the Nuba we turn to the north, to Egypt, and beyond, to Turkey.25 From the beginning of the fourteenth century AD, a new power emerged in Turkey that replaced the remnants of the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople fell in 1453 and the Ottoman Empire started to expand into the regions once held by the Romans. Central Europe [only just] withstood Ottoman conquest, but Southeast Europe, the Middle East, Egypt and the North African coast were conquered and incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.
In Egypt the Ottoman Empire replaced the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517 AD. The Mamluks remained influential though. We will not bother ourselves with the ups and downs of the Ottomans, until the year 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt. The Ottoman Empire was clearly in decline, and the Mamluks successfully challenged the authority of the Pashas [the Ottoman Sultan appointed a new Governor, or Pasha, every two years]. This led to chaotic scenes that need not worry us, but that did give Napoleon a pretext to invade the country ‘in order to restore the authority of the Ottomans’. The Sultan was not amused. He sought and obtained the help of the British to regain control over Egypt and the French occupation didn’t last three full years. After some more years of struggle Muhammad Ali Pasha became the ruler of Egypt, in name of the Ottoman Sultan, but really, in name only.
Muhammad Ali Pasha ruled Egypt as if it were his personal property and he managed to restore order in the country. After killing the leaders of the Mamluks he set out to expand his influence. He conquered Libya and then, in 1820, sent his son Ismael south to invade Sudan. Muhammad Ali Pasha had four reasons to seek control over Sudan: to vanquish the remnants of the Mamluks who had settled at Dongola; to take control of the caravan trade to the Red Sea; to get to the gold mines, and to capture slaves to fill the ranks of his standing army. The invasion was successful: Ismael defeated the Mamluks, and he ended the rule of Sennar in 1821. In the same year Muhammad Ali’s son-in-law Muhammad Bey, the Defterdar, conquered Kordofan from Keira. The last resistance in the centre of Sudan was crushed in 1822.
The consequences for the population of Kordofan were terrible. Perhaps the best thing is to let MacMichael do the talking: Previously, it is true, Kordofan had seen wars and tumults, but taxation had been light and the rulers just according to the standard of the day. Now all was altered: a foreign race seized the country and administered it exclusively for their own benefit, and in defiance of every law of humanity and justice. Relying on accounts by Palme and Petherick,26 he continued: The Defterdar was a monster of inhuman cruelty and gruesome stories are told of the outrages perpetrated by him and his successors. Money and the gratification of lusts were their only objects. Not only did they crush the native under a heel of iron, but they incidentally swindled their own government at the natives’ expense at every turn.27
2. Slave raids As we have seen in the previous chapters, slavery and slave trade was nothing unusual in the Sudan. From the Baqt between the Muslims and the Nubians, to the wealth of Keira, to the army of Sennar: slaves were always in demand. And the Nuba were always considered to make good slaves. Even the Tegali Kings, who were Nuba, raided neighbouring tribes for slaves. Slaves were the most important ‘export product’ of Sudan, followed at a distance by gum, gold and ostrich feathers. Keira was the main supplier, sending raids to the Central African hinterland. Sennar also contributed to the slave caravans, sending mainly Nuba northwards and to the Red Sea. Exact numbers are not available, but it seems that before the Turkiyya, about 4000 slaves annually found their way to Egypt from or through Sudan.28
After the conquest of Sudan by the Egyptians, the slave trade became a different matter. Muhammad Ali wanted to create an army of Sudanese that would enable him to dispense with his own mutinous Albanian and Turkish troops, and defy the Ottoman Sultan.29 To the French Consul he declared that he wanted to create a Nizam Jadid [New Model Army], and that he would deploy those unfit for military service in his many agricultural and industrial projects.30 Muhammad Ali perpetually urged his commanders to collect and send as many Sudanese slaves as they could to the training camps at Aswan: You are aware that the end of all our efforts and this expense is to procure negroes. Please show zeal in carrying out our wishes in this capital matter.31
By 1823, 30.000 slaves, mainly from Al Jazirah and from Kordofan, had been sent to Aswan. Only 3.000 survived the sudden change of environment. Despite this obvious failure, Muhammad Ali continued to demand slave soldiers to man the garrisons in Sudan and to form new regiments for his own army. The number of slaves sent to Egypt more than doubled to an estimated 10-12.000 annually. On top of that several thousands of men were kept in Sudan to fill the file and rank of the army there. And these figures do not even include the number of slaves that were traded to the Arab peninsula across the Red Sea, nor the many slaves that were kept in Sudan as concubines, domestic servants or labourers. It is hard to imagine this constant flow of human merchandise taken from the heartlands of Africa, mainly over land, through swamps and deserts and endless savannas.
In Kordofan, Rustum Bey carried out orders from the Governor-General of Sudan, Ali Kurshid Pasha, to raid the Nuba. Rustum took 1.400 people captive in 1830, and another 1.500 in 1832.32 These are just some random figures really. There is no clear indication of how many people were dragged off in captivity. Apart from the military campaigns to capture slave soldiers, the Baggara also raided the Nuba villages, to pay the taxes imposed by the Turkiyya. The accounts of European travellers provide ample details about slave raids and slave trade in Kordofan during the Turkiyya. Pallme is often sited: The Viceroy of Egypt institutes annually, once or twice in the course of the year, an actual hunt in the mountains of Nuba, and in the bordering countries, and seizes upon a certain number of the negroes by stratagem of force… The burden of this sanguinary fate falls most heavily upon the miserable inhabitants of the Nuba mountains. In the year 1825, four years, therefore, after the conquest, the number of slaves which had been led away into captivity was estimated at forty thousand; and in the year 1839 the total number amounted at least to two hundred thousand, without reckoning the thousands stolen by the Bakkara and bought by the Jelabi.33
It would probably be a mistake to attribute the figures given by Pallme to the Nuba alone. Ali Kurshid Pasha personally led campaigns against the Dinka, the Shilluk, the Ingassana and other African peoples34 , and I think the slaves taken from these and similar campaigns are part of the two hundred thousand Pallme mentions. But the main thing is of course that the captured people suffered terribly. Arthur Holroyd provides an eyewitness account: The troops stationed in Kordofan were marched annually after the kharif [first rain] to Jebel Nuba, for the purpose of capturing slaves from these mountains. These expeditions were called ghaziyeh and when I arrived at El Obeid the troops had just returned with the produce of such an expedition. The handsome women were sold for the harems of the Turks and Arabs; the able-bodied men were placed in the ranks; the decrepit of both sexes, the pregnant females, and young children, were allotted to the soldiers in lieu of money to the amount to a moiety of their arrears. I once witnessed this distribution; and a more heart rending scene cannot be imagined: for though these blacks had been seized two or three months, and had been deprived of their liberty, they felt severely the final separation of their friends and families.35
In the 1840’s and 1850’s, the slave raids were focused on the Bahr al Jabal and the Bahr al Gazhal. European traders looking for ivory broke the state monopoly and started to sail up the White Nile to hunt for elephants and trade with the inhabitants of the South. Soon the elephants ran out and the only profitable trade left was slavery. Arab slave traders started to participate as well. The most notorious was without doubt Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur. He carved out his personal empire in the Bahr al Gazhal, entirely based on the slave trade. Setting up a network of trading forts known as zeribas, his control reached well into today’s Central African Republic and southern Chad. This eventually brought him in conflict with Egypt.
3. Khedive Ismail Muhammad Ali Pasha, who only in words had tried to end slavery, died in 1848. His immediate successors were not very interesting but in 1863 his grandson Ismail came to power. He carried the title of Khedive of Egypt. Khedive Ismail considered the modernisation of Egypt as his personal project. It would be fair to say he succeeded, but at too high a price. He overstretched the Egyptian population and he amassed such huge national debts that the French and the British intervened and eventually got rid of him in 1879.36
A. suppression of the slave trade in Sudan Paradoxically, the same conquest of the Sudan that led to an intensification of slave raiding also opened up the country to western travellers. Their accounts raised awareness in Europe that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not unique. Especially the British Abolitionists started to demand an end to slavery in Egypt and the Sudan. Initially their protests did not sort much effect. The demand from Egypt did decrease in the 1840’s and 1850’s, but mainly for economic reasons. There was, however, another sharp increase in trade in the 1860’s, after the introduction of cotton cultivation to Egypt. It was only from the 1870’s onwards, that attempts to abolish slavery markedly diminished the demand from Egypt.37
Khedive Ismail was quite serious about ending the slave trade in Sudan. He started to block trade routes along the Nile and across the Red Sea, and sent an army down to Bahr al Ghazal to end the activities of Al-Zubayr. However, Al-Zubayr defeated the Khedive’s troops and he established a new trade route over land, from the areas south of Darfur, through South Kordofan to El Obeid. Eventually Ismail figured that the best way to pacify the Bahr al Gazhal was to make Al-Zubayr governor of the area, which he did in 1873. Al-Zubayr then turned his attention to Darfur that was still a centre of slave trade. Al-Zubayr took El Fasher, the capital of the Keira Sultanate. He had envisioned himself as Governor of Darfur but when he came to Cairo in 1875, Khedive Ismael kept him in captivity instead.38
Another initiative of the Khedive to end the slave trade was to send an English explorer, Sir Samuel Baker to the region known as Equatoria. Actually the Khedive was more interested in bringing the south of the country under his influence, but officially the campaign was aimed at tackling the slave trade at the source. Baker spent three years in Equatoria and only managed to create a lot of animosity against the Egyptian authority. He plundered the country to feed his troops, used excessive violence and ended up trading with the very slave merchants he was supposed to oust from the region. Determined to see the project through, the Khedive then sent Charles G. Gordon to pacify Equatoria, in 1874. Gordon succeeded within three years39 , after which he was appointed Governor–General of the Sudan. In this capacity he continued to fight the slave traders, until he resigned in 1879, exhausted from the many years of incessant work.
B. Events in South Kordofan For the Nuba some things had already changed under Ismail’s predecessors. Official large scale slave raids had ended by the time the Khedive came to power, but raids by Baggara, private slave traders and even by neighbouring tribes remained a cause for insecurity. The Egyptian administration left most of the Nuba tribes alone and those who were expected to pay taxes were no longer pressed to such extremes as before.40 The Kingdom of Tagali, although somewhat restricted in its power by the Egyptian Governor, flourished for several decades and withstood Egyptian attempts to subdue it.
As mentioned before, since the conquest of the Sudan several European travellers made it to Kordofan. In 1837 Muhammad Ali Pasha sent an expedition into the Nuba Mountains – he was looking for gold – and to that adventure we owe the account of geologist Joseph Russegger, who came as far as the Tira Mountains. During the rule of Khedive Ismail, travellers start to mention Jebel Dair and Dilling as places they visited. Most remarkable is the enterprise of the Catholic missionaries led by Comboni. In 1875, they established a mission post in Dilling, which they had to abandon when the Egyptian authorities started a campaign to subdue Jebel Dilling. The missionaries returned to Dilling in 1877, and stayed there until the outbreak of the Mahdist Revolt. One of the missionaries, G. Martini, wrote: although these people are not Muslims, they have a great inclination towards the precepts and customs of the Muslims as they see these practised by the Baqqara living on their borders… The Nubas have learnt from the Muslims to swear by the Koran, to weep for the dead, to call Muhammad the Prophet of God, and some other things.41
From the few sources available emerges an impression of stabilisation. After several decades of plunder and intens raiding in the Nuba Mountains, the Egyptian authorities seem to have been content with a nominal control, leaving the Nuba alone except when a group would become too bold in one way or another (like Tagali or Dilling). The relationship between the Baggara and Nuba remained tense, but apparantly, towards the 1870's the Nuba had been able to arm themselves with guns. And we must be aware that the Nuba were not a harmless, defenseless lot: they would raid eachother and they would raid the Baggara just as well. The influence of Islam was becoming evident in the northern hills, but the Catholic missionaries were able to establish themselves in Dilling, which also says something about the growing stability.
C. Involvement of the British in Sudan Khedive Ismail spent too much money. All the wealth of Egypt and Sudan couldn’t cover his expenses. He sold his large share in the Suez Canal to the British, but the revenues did not even begin to cover his debts. Egypt was bankrupt. The British and the French, trying to save their interests, put the Khedive under legal restraint in 1876. When he ceased to cooperate, the British played ball with the Sultan in Constantinople, who dismissed Ismail in 1879, and appointed his son instead. In the following years the situation in Egypt deteriorated, a revolt threatened to ruin all European investments in the country, as well as the trade through the Suez Canal. The British decided to invade Egypt, supposedly to restore order. They remained until 1956.42
VI. The Mahdiyya (1881-1899)
1. Governor-General Gordon Charles Gordon fought the slave trade for two years, from 1877 to 1879, but he was unable to end it permanently. The resistance of the slave traders and the influential families engaged in it was too strong. It would have taken a large army to suppress the unrest, and there simply wasn’t any money: Egypt was bankrupt, the budget for Sudan was extremely limited and England was not going to pay for any large scale operation in Sudan. Pressured by the British Government, Gordon abandoned his initial policy of caution. He appointed foreigners as governors, replaced Egyptian administrators by Europeans, and turned to violence to suppress the trade. This led to a number of revolts in Kordofan, in Bahr al Gahazal and in Darfur. Using increasingly more force, Governor-General Gordon managed to keep the country under control. When Khedive Ismail was replaced by his son, Gordon resigned. He was exhausted.
His successor, Governor-General Muhammad Ra’uf, was not half as able as Gordon. I will quote a large paragraph from Mowafi, because it sums up matters handsomely: The policy of oppression… had alienated the Sudanese people who believed that slavery was permitted by their religion. The fact that the campaign against slavery was conducted by Christians made the people think that the government was acting against their religion. Moreover, the attempts to suppress the slave trade struck at an important source of wealth and had shaken the basis of the domestic and agrarian economy which was based on slave labour. [Many slaves had obtained their freedom, but their] masters had not been compensated for the loss of their slaves. In spite the people’s economic losses, the taxes remained unchanged… The Government, under Ra’uf showed no mercy in the collection of taxes, and force was used to collect them. On the other hand, he permitted the slave trade to revive… The appearance of the “Mahdi” Muhammad Ahmad provided the leadership necessary to unite all the discontented forces of the country to achieve the termination of the Egyptian rule in the Sudan.43
2. Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah, or the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmed was a young religious teacher who resided on an island in the White Nile near Kosti, called Aba Island. He preached a simple and spiritual life to a modest number of followers. In 1881, he proclaimed to be the Mahdi: the Expected One who would deliver the Muslims from tyranny. The belief that such a redeemer will come is part of the Islamic traditions called hadiths. They are a collection of sayings of the Prophet Mohamed, considered by Muslims as guidelines for the proper conduct of life almost of the same importance as the text of the Qur’an. According to several hadiths, the Prophet announced the coming of a religious leader at a moment when the world was in great turmoil. This leader would be ‘from his tribe’; he would be ‘of his name’ and he would lead the people to a life of peace, and free the world from injustice, corruption and oppression. Through the centuries, many men have proclaimed to be this expected Mahdi, in one revolt or another.
Muhammad Ahmad is said to have been a devout man, who travelled a lot in Sudan. His journeys took him to Kordofan and Darfur, where he sensed people’s readiness to welcome anyone who would end their misery. Muhammad Ahmad’s fame grew, and so did the number of his adherents. He was joined, in 1880, by a man from Darfur, called Abdullahi Muhammad. Abdullahi was a Baggara from the Ta’aisha tribe, and eventually he was to succeed Muhammad Ahmed in 1885. Some say he was an important figure from the start. MacMichael was not the only one to write along these lines: This man was a most valuable asherent, for he was thoroughly acquainted with the restless Bakkara tribes, and had great influence with them. It was at his suggestion that Muhammad Ahmad again made a tour through Kordofan, - this time with the definite design of fomenting the discontent that was rife.44 During this second tour of Kordofan, Muhammad Ahmad secured the support of many influential sheikhs of the Baggara tribes. He also tried to win over Adam Dabbalu, the King of Tegali. The King remained cautious and only promised to stay neutral in case Muhammad Ahmad would revolt. Muhammad Ahmad then returned to Aba Island. He openly declared himself as the Mahdi in June 1881 by sending dispatches to various notables, tribal chiefs and adherents to join him in his divinely ordained mission. Some say the Egyptian authorities only became alarmed when the Mahdi called on people to stop paying their taxes. In a proclamation issued some time between November 1881 and November 1882, the Mahdi wrote: Verily these Turks thought that theirs was the kingdom and the command of [God's] apostles and of His prophets and of him who commanded them to imitate them. They judged by other than God's revelation and altered the Shari'a of Our Lord Mohammed, the Apostle of God, and insulted the Faith of God and placed poll-tax [al-jizya] on your necks together with the rest of the Muslims.... Verily the Turks used to drag away your men and imprison them in fetters and take captive your women and your children and slay unrighteously the soul under God's protection.45
The Egyptian authorities tried to suppress the revolt by sending troops to Aba Island, but the Mahdi’s followers defeated them. Knowing he could not stay were he was, the Mahdi turned to Kordofan with his followers, called the Ansar [helpers]. According to Stevenson: It is said that, having reached Tegali again, the Mahdi wished to stay there for a while, but was persuaded to continue southwards.46 He eventually established himself at Jebel Gadir, where he was welcomed by the Mek. According to Edward Lino, this was not just out of mere coincidence. Abba Island at that time, 1881, was part of the Kingdom of the Reth of the Shilluk... The Reth's seat was in Fashoda and continues to be up to date… The father of the Mahdi… had a married relationship with the Umda of Abba. On behalf of the Mahdi, when the fight started, he sent an emissary to the Reth: "This is the son of our daughter… he would like to save our people from the slavery and oppression being carried out by the Turks." Instead of going there directly, he contacted the Nuba because there is an institutionalized relationship between the Eastern Nuba and the Reth of the Shilluk.47 Apparently several items essential to the coronation ritual of the Reth [King] of the Shilluk had to be brought from the Nuba Mountains. Among them was a glittering stone.48 Whatever the truth in it, the story is too good to be left out, and I haven’t found any other allusion as to why the Mahdi would go to Jebel Gadir. There is a good explanation why he wanted to establish himself on a mountain though: at every junction of the operation the Mahdi simulated the activites of the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, the conscious enacting of the traditions of the Prophet aimed at reinforcing the popular legitimacy of the nascent charismatic. Thus, the Mahdi’s hijra [withdrawal] from Aba to Kordofan corresponds to Muhammad’s hijra to Madina when threatened by authorities in Makka. Similarly the early followers of the Mahdi were labelles Ansar, as were the ‘companions’ or ‘helpers’ of Muhammad. Finally, as the Mahdi reached MountQadir in the Nuba Muntains, he renamed it Masa in conformity with the Prophet’s tradition.49
A personal assistant to the Mahdi remembered: While we were at Gadir, the Mahdi’s followers increased ands we were fed by the Nuba’s. Khalifa Abdullahi was with him, but he was a man of no great importance.50 Much of what happened in the years that followed has been described by Joseph Ohrwalder, one of the missionaries in Dilling. The Ansar attacked Dilling repeatedly and eventually subdued it. Ohrwalder was taken prisoner and was kept in captivity for ten years.51 The Mahdi defeated several convoys sent against him, and went on to capture El Obeid in 1883. Adam Dabbalu, the King of Tagali, was taken prisoner as well, in 1884, He died in captivity. While the Mahdi concentrated on the conquest of Khartoum, his adjutant Hamdan Abu Anga continued to strengthen the Mahdi’s authority in Kordofan. Ohrwalder says that: Almost all the inhahitants of Jebel Nuba sent messengers to say that they were the Mahdi’s subjects.52 This is probably an exaggeration, but I suppose the tribes in the northern hills did recognise the Mahdi’s authority. Only Jebel Dair withstood the Ansar.
3. Abdullahi Ibn Muhammad, or the Khalifa The Mahdi was moving against Khartoum and the British Government was not inclined to stop him. After all, Sudan was Egypt’s problem, not theirs. It only asked Charles Gordon to assure a safe withdrawal of the British and Egyptian troops from the country. Gordon has left an account of his first and final meeting with the Cabinet on 18 January 1884: At noon he, Wolseley, came to me and took me to the Minister, and came back and said: "Her Majesty’s Government wants you to understand this. Government are determined to evacuate the Sudan, for they will not guarantee future government. You will go and do it?" I said "Yes". He said "Go in." I went in and saw them. They said: "Did Wolseley tell you our ideas?" I said "Yes, he said 'You will not guarantee future government of the Sudan', and you wish me to go and evacuate it." They said "Yes" and it was over ...53 Unfortunately for Gordon, by the time he arrived the way north was cut of and he was trapped in Khartoum. The Mahdi sent him a few handsome letters, demanding that he would surrender and convert to Islam, so his life could be spared.54 Gordon refused and on January 26, 1885, his head was brought to the Mahdi’s tent. Six months after the fall of Khartoum the Mahdi died of typhus. He was followed by Abdullahi ibn Muhammad, who became the Khalifa, or successor. The Khalifa ruled over northern Sudan, from the Beja country to Darfur. It would go well beyond the scope of this story to get into details of his turbulent reign, but we will have a look at what happened in the Nuba Mountains.
For the siege of Omdorman and Khartoum, the Mahdi had ordered all able men from the Baggara tribes in Kordofan to join him in battle. Most of them did so, reluctantly, under threat of severe penalties. Abu Anga put down a revolt of Baggara tribes that no longer wanted to contribute to the war, and he raided the Nuba hills for slaves that could serve in the Mahdi army. After the Mahdi’s death, affairs under the Khalifa only worsened for the Nuba. The Tagali royal family was massacred when the sons of Adam Badallu refused to sent soldiers to the Khalifa. Jebel Dair continued its resistance, but Gulfan was taken after a group of Nuba deserters had found refuge there. Abu Anga ‘finally left the Nuba hills in April 1887 with an immense booty of slaves.’55 His successors continued to plunder and raid.
Raids from Baggara against the Nuba became rare, because most of the Baggara men were off. Actually now some of the Nuba started raiding Dervish posts. In contrast Jebel Dair concluded a treaty with the Dervish Governor that opened trade on El Obeid. Meanwhile the Khalifa had to face the British (more about their motivation to become involved in the following chapter). He ordered still more of the Baggara to come to Omdorman and a giant army assembled in Kordofan and devastated the country. Several hills were nearly depopulated, like Gulfan, Debria and Kadaru. Many men and women from the Miri hills were taken to Omdorman. The Khalifa’s army was defeated at the Atbarra and he fled with the remaining Dervishes to the vicinity of the Nuba Mountains. He was eventually killed, on November 24, 1899, by Colonel Wingate.
The Nuba who had been abducted by the Dervishes to Omdorman gradually returned home. They brought back Islam, after having been exposed to it in the north for years. They also came with their fire arms. The spread of fire arms throughout the Nuba Mountains was furthered by the need of the Baggara to replenish their herds. Preferring their spears and swords anyway, they traded most of their guns for cows. This development made the job of pacifying the Nuba tribes a lot more difficult for the British who took up the administration of Kordofan.56
VII. The Condominium (1899-1956)
1. Reconquest of Sudan In 1884 the British Government had decided not to interfere in Sudan. It asked Gorodon to organise the evacuation of British and Egyptians from Khartoum and prepared to safeguard the border between Egypt and Sudan. Only eight years later Herbert Kitchener started preparations to reconquer Sudan. What had changed?
To begin with, there were the ambitions of the Mahdi and his successor. In a letter to ‘the families of Fez’ the Mahdi wrote: Know that shortly insh’allah, I shall come with the party of God to Egypt, for the affair of the Sudan is finished.57 The Khalifa tried to invade Egypt in 1889. His troops were beaten badly by the Egyptian army that had been reorganised by the British. Left undisturbed, surely the Mahdist movement would eventually try again. But this was not the most important reason why the British Government decided to go back to Sudan.
The British occupation of Egypt triggered the scramble for Africa. The British, the French, the Portuguese, the Italians and the Germans: they all wanted a piece of the African continent. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, the colonial powers agreed to a set of rules by which the division of Africa was to be pursued. France and Great Britain were equally ambitious: France wanted to create a string of colonies that would stretch from Africa’s west coast to its east coast. Great Britain aimed at a similar sphere of influence, starting at the Cape and ending in Egypt. The idea was to link these vast territories by rail and water way, ensuring access to valuable resources from the interior, and an expansion of possible markets across the continent. Clearly, with such ambitions, occupation of the Sudan was only logical. The final reason was that the British Government strove for control over the sources of the River Nile and its course. The Nile waters have always been vital to the economy of Egypt of course, but the British were thinking already of building a large irrigation dam at Aswan. The actual invasion of Sudan started in March 1896. It took two-and-a-half year before Omdorman was taken (September 1898), and another year to defeat the remnants of the Khalifa’s army (November 1899). Meanwhile the British had to worry about more than just the Khalifa’s troops. The French Government had sent a force from Brazzaville to Sudan, to establish a post on the White Nile and claim the area of Fashoda as a protectorate of France. They arrived there in July 1898. In September, the British Government sent Kitchener up the Nile with a powerful flotilla of gunboats. The stand-off between France and Great Britain was a logical consequence of their respective ambitions in Africa, that crossed right there in the Fashoda region. Diplomacy prevailed over military confrontation, well… actually, it would be better to say that the French were not strong enough to hold on to Fashoda, and didn’t want to risk an all-out war with Great Britain. So by the end of the year the French troops withdrew, leaving all the Sudan to Great Britain.
2. Condominium On January 19, 1899 Britain and Egypt signed a condominium agreement under which the Sudan was to be administered jointly. In general the British ruled while the Egyptians executed their policy and paid for the administration - or, as the London Times of April 18, 1900 put it: Two men have jointly bought a horse, A contributing one third, B two thirds of the price. A rides the horse, B grooms it and pays its upkeep. That is approximately the situation in Sudan.58
The first 25 years of the Condominium, most of the troops in Sudan would be Egyptian. After the Independence of Egypt in 1922, the British ordered all the Egyptians out of Sudan and administered the country alone, even though the official terms of the Condominium Agreement were not changed. To replace the Egyptian troops, the Sudan Defence Force was formed of Sudanese soldiers and mainly British officers. By 1951, Egypt demanded that Britain would withdraw from Sudan. The British Government only agreed to do so in 1953, when Egypt recognised the Sudan’s right to self-determination. January 1, 1956, the British had left Sudan: the country was independent.59
Throughout the Condominium, the British Administration grappled with the future of Sudan. Especially the problem of where the southern provinces should belong was hard to solve. Culturally they would probably fit better with the British protectorates of East Africa (roughly present day Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), but at the same time South Sudan was quite interwoven with the North. There were no roads, railways or lines of communication between the South and the East African protectorates. All trade was with the North, mainly through Arab merchants. The South lacked skilled people to fill the administration, and it lacked the capacity to develop larger economic projects. Many Southerners were living in the North as labour migrants. Apart from the economical ties, it would be impossible to separate African Sudanese from Arab Sudanese in several areas, like Bahr al Ghazal.
During the first twenty years, the British had no official policy towards the South. Pacification; organisation of the administration and the establishment of clear national borders had their priority. From 1922 onwards though, they were actively striving to develop the South separately from the North. The spread of Islam seemed to be their main worry, because it went hand in hand with nationalist tendencies. The White Flag League, formed in the early 1920’s, revolted against the British presence in Sudan in 1924. The leader of the League, Ali 'Abd al-Latif, was a former army officer whose parents had been slaves. Either his father was a Nuba and his mother a Dinka, or it was the other way around. This is by no means reason to claim him as a fore-fighter of the Nuba cause though. Abd al-Latif was a nationalist, and the White Flag League was striving for integration of Sudan with Egypt. Abd al-Latif believed the two countries were linked by the Nile, by Islam and by the Arab culture.
In an attempt to halt the influence of nationalism, the administration in the South started to favour local authorities. Arab administrators were sent back to the North. Arab traders were banned from the South and at the same time labour migration from the South to the North was stopped. Christian missionaries were invited to set up schools throughout the South, teaching in English rather than in Arabic. In the end, this policy utterly failed: the development of the South remained far behind with the North. The rising nationalist movement in North Sudan demanded that the unity of Sudan would be respected. At the same time emerging nationalist movements in the East African protectorates were not at all enthusiastic to add the worries of another vast, underdeveloped region to their own problems. This brought about a dramatic turn in British policy: from 1946 onwards, the South was to be prepared for its future in a united Sudan.60 Do I need to add that the British policy contributed to the outbreak of the north-south conflict?
3. Administration of the Nuba Mountains The same policy as in the South was applied in the Nuba Mountains. Once they had established their authority, the British started to look for ways to keep the Nuba and the Arabs apart. This was not done with a joint administration with the South in mind, but out of the idea that the Nuba had to be protected from an unsuccessful assimilation into the Arab culture surrounding them. Personal sentiments played a large part in this approach. British officials were afraid that without preventive measures the Nuba would turn into some debased sort of half-cast Arabs. Or, as Stevenson wrote: The ‘best’ type of Nuba, in the eyes of many British officials, were those uncontaminated by Arab influence or admixture, and the mixed populations of, say, Eliri and Talodi, and the semi-arabicizid people of Kadaru or the Daju hills near Lagowa, were considered miserable and decadent.61 He probably referred to Vicar-Miles: I should like to lay stress on the undesirability of an Arab–Nuba blend… The result is always an undisciplined, drunken, half-caste Arab who has no background and no tradition to keep him up to the mark.62 And Stevenson, in 1984 (!) agreed: That there is some truth in this when with half-acculturation tribes appear to lose many of the good points of their older culture and take on what is worst in the new, it would be hard to deny in many instances.63
Eventually it became quite obvious that the policy of separation was totally impractical, even more so in the Nuba Mountains than in the South. There was no clean-cut border between Arabs and Nuba, and economically the Nuba were even more tied to the North than the Southerners were. As in the South, the British turned their policy around. We will look at the changes in policy in more detail. Meanwhile we have to keep in mind that, no matter what the British tried, the cost of occupation always outweighed the revenues in Kordofan. A few British officials with limited financial means and a small north Sudanese staff had to keep things quiet in a vast province. With this outlook it is easier to understand that, despite the obvious good intentions of many of the administrators in the field, little was done for the social and economic development of the region.
From 1898 to 1912, the Nuba Mountains were a sub-province of Kordofan; from 1913 to 1928 they were called Nuba Mountains Province, with its capital in Talodi. It consisted of three districts: the Western, Eastern and Southern Jebels. Each district was ruled directly by a British District Commissioner [D.C.] and an Assistant D.C., supported by an Egyptian Mamur and Submamur. 64 The District Commissioner [...] is most simply described as a Jack of all trades. He hears civil and criminal cases, supervises police and prisons, arranges for the assessment and collection of taxes, patches up fends, makes simple roads, bridges and houses, assists in the compilation of maps, encourages economic development, enforces quarantine, and frequently acts both as medical and matrimonial advisor to his constituents.65
To exercise some authority over the different tribes – to make them pay their taxes and to keep them from raiding their Nuba or Baggara neighbours – the D.C.s looked for a person in the community that could be make accountable. They considered the kujurs to be the most influential individuals. Kujurs come in different sorts and sizes: some are merely herbalists and traditional healers, others are considered to be very powerful men or women of priest-like stature who are in touch with the spirit realm. From the latter category, the British would choose one individual – preferably the rain priest - to make him Mek [head] of a hill or range of hills. The Mek would be vested with some tokens of authority, and was henceforth supposed to make ‘his’ people do as they were told. This was not very effective, in the first place because the kujurs’ authority was limited, and would more often than not rely on their skills in organising raids on neighbouring communities.66
4. Pacification In their attempts to pacify Kordofan the British first concentrated on the Arab tribes who had supported the Mahdi. Seeing this, the Nuba initially paid their petty taxes which they considered protection money from the Arab tribes. Once these tribes were disarmed, the Nuba no longer saw any reason to pay and they started to resist British rule. The British could not really understand this: they had delivered the Nuba from the harassment of the Dervishes and the Baggara, and in return the Nuba rebelled against the very authority that had brought them peace? There was only one word for it: ingratitude. Now if these Nuba Meks would not listen… A wild and ignorant population such as that of southern Kordofan can only be impressed with a sense of their comparative insignificance by a display of power and they should be afforded a tangible sign of the power of the Government to enforce its administration when necessary … For this reason I consider an increase in the garrison of Southern Kordofan necessary, and patrols in sufficient force to overawe the native mind.67
The British launched a large number of punitive expeditions from 1903 onwards, against various tribes and for various reasons. Francis Balfour, who was second inspector in the Nuba Mountains in 1916, described the usual patrol as follows: From time to time a hill went ‘asi’ (to rhyme with ‘classy’ and having no connection with posteriors), a word which meant locally something nearer to subordinate than rebellious. The people retired to their hill tops, preferably after gathering the harvest, which could always be stored in the many caves, if there was serious trouble. Tribute, satisfaction to some raided neighbour, the surrender of some malefactor or of stolen property – in short whatever the demand for the moment might be – was refused and authority was defied. The next move in the game was the dispatch of a small mixed force, which profited by some realistic field training, with enough bullets flying about to teach the men to keep their heads down, but casualties on either side were usually few. In due course terms were asked for and granted, a bar to the General Service Medal was authorised for Patrol No.- - and, generally speaking, a good time had been had by all. 68
Justin Willis points out that many of those patrols were not so harmless, and that they were quite frequent: I have so far identified twenty-seven patrols in the Nuba Mountains which involved more than one company of soldiers: Tegali, 1903; Daier, 1904; Kitra, 1904; Shat-el-Safia, 905; Nyima, 1908 and 1917; Burham, 1908; Katla, 1909, 1910, and 1925; Tagoi, 1910; Tira Lumman, 1910; Kimla, 1911; KrongoBakheit, 1911; Heiban, 1911; Tira el Akhdar, 1912, 1913, 1915, and 1922; Tendilla, 1913; Mandal, 1914; Miri, 1915; Koalib/Lira, 1919; Tuleishi, 1926, 1945; Julud, 1926; Lafofa, 1929.69
The patrols made numerous victims among the Nuba. Many men were taken captive and forced into military service, cattle might be taken and villages were burned. The largest patrol was Patrol No. 32 against the Nyimang Hills. The Mek of Nyimang refused to surrender some young men wanted for raiding. The thing spiralled out of control when a kujur, known as Sultan Agabna, fuelled defiance of the British authority. The British treated the patrol as a military operation involving more than 3,000 soldiers, with artillery and maxim guns. The rebelling hills were surrounded and the population was either driven out by force or starved into submission. About 500 Nuba were killed. Let me quote a few lines from the official report: At midnight on the 6th [January, 1918], a very determined attempt to escape was made by practically the entire population of Sagan and Kushi. Coming down from the hills in large numbers, the Nubas approached the zareba [usually a fence made of thorny bushes, but here a strongly reinforced defence line] near the North West corner of Sagan, but being turned more to the West by the fire of the 4th Battalion, they fell on the line of No 1 Camel Corps. By weight of numbers, about a dozen forced their way over the zareba, most of whom were accounted for by the Arabs who rushed on to Jebel Komorro on hearing the firing. The remainder were driven back on to the hills with very heavy losses from rifle and Maxim fire. Fifty five dead and ten wounded were found lying on, or in front of, the zareba, but a large number also, with animal-like vitality, dragged themselves away to die on the hills, or later to fall into our hands in a wounded condition.70
Patrols went on until 1930, and then there was one more, in 1945, against Tulishi. The reports, the photos of burning huts and the letters from British participants of the patrols give quite a different impression than the occasional dry remark by Nadel, for example: During the early years of British rule certain bellicose and recalcitrant tribes were forced, in the interest of public security, to leave their hill fortresses and move to settlements down in the valleys.71 And what to make of Stevenson’s understanding of the patrols? He wrote: On many occasions troops had to be concentrated for patrols against recalcitrant hills which refused to ‘come in’. It would be tedious to list all these actions and skirmishes here. Some of the outstanding earlier ones were mounted against Shatt Safaya, Dair, Tagoi, Tira, Nyimang, and Katla, and several hills were attacked more than once... These patrols, for various reasons, were to go on intermittently for many years until they gradually diminished, and fell off entirely in the 1930s.72 Nothing about the violence, nothing about the burning of Nuba villages, nothing about the many casualties. That would just be… tedious? Anyway: it happened that way and from our viewpoint, nearly a century later, we might wonder what difference there was between the British pacification and the attempts of the Government of Sudan, in more recent times, to put down yet another rebellion in the Nuba Mountains?
5. Closed District Arab officials administrated most Southern districts; Arab culture and Islam were spreading rapidly with trade and labour migration, and the British felt compelled to halt this development. It certainly wasn’t just to protect the Nuba that the British tried to apply the Closed District Order of 1922, to the Nuba Mountains. Egyptian nationalism had been a hidden motivation for the British to limit or possibly eradicate Arab influence in the South and in the Nuba Mountains. The revolt of the White Flag League in 1924, had shown that the many Southerners and Nuba who had served in the army might be infected with the fever of nationalism. They should not be permitted to be in contact with Sudanese Arabs. As a result travel from the Nuba Mountains to and from other districts was no longer free; labour migration was limited; Arab merchants were banned and trade was left to (Christian) Greeks and Syrians.73
Labour migration was probably the biggest concern of the British. Ironically it had been encouraged at first by the Administration: "The Sennar Dam was being built and constructors were unable to get enough Sudanese workmen for the job. [...] The Eliri Arabs, of Hawazma, Rowaga and Kowhala slave origin, were the first to go and seek work. The Nuba followed. It would have made the D.C. of today shudder to see his predecessor persuading Nuba and Arabs alike by honeyed words and promises of high wages to go to the river for work! Labour had to be found. The Sudan had to be developed. The Jebels had a suitable population for the work."74 Few men were left to work the fields in the Mountains. When labourers returned to marry, they paid money for bridal prices that before had been rendered in services to the father of the bride. Bridal prices rose, inciting more men to go and look for work. Another way to earn money was to join the military, which many Nuba did.
6. Cotton The administration of the Sudan cost money, certainly in areas like the Nuba Mountains where tax revenues were negligible. To address this issue the British introduced cotton to the region as a cash crop. The cotton trade would not only increase tax revenues, it would solve a lot of problems: the employment was going to keep young Nuba men from migrating to the cities in the north; bore holes would not only serve to irrigate the plants but also to provide the people with fresh water; roads for transportation would disclose the isolated areas, which in turn would make it easier to register and administer the entire Nuba population.
The introduction was successful and from 1927 onwards ginneries were constructed in Talodi, Kadugli, Lagowa, Dilling and other places. Unforeseen by the British was the role of Arab entrepreneurs (or Jellaba as they were called): soon 80 % of the cotton was grown on Arab owned plantations. The Nuba often combined work on their far farms with day labour on the plantations. They started to sell some of their thurra and sesame as well; living standards were on the rise. As a result the Nuba cultures were strained only further from the influence of money and the close interaction with Arab Sudanese.
7. Devolution As a counterbalance to Nationalism and unionist tendencies, the British wanted to strengthen local, tribal authority. They introduced indirect rule to North Sudan through the Powers of Nomad Shaykhs Ordinance of 1922. To strengthen the position of nomad Sheikhs, they were given judicial authority. It was applied to the Baggara in the Nuba Mountains by 1926, together with the Village Courts Ordinance. It could not be applied to the Nuba: most tribes were too fragmented and authority was not clearly established.
The Nuba remained under traditional rule until the introduction of the Power of Sheikhs Ordinance of 1927. Jurisdiction came under 'native administration' that would direct the 'native police' and collect taxes. The British installed three levels of courts, from local to regional scale. The presidents of the courts would be Sheikhs or Meks. They could handle cases according to the competence of their court or send them on to a higher court. They were allowed to fine those found guilty, or to imprison them.75 Had a Mek previously been a kujur, now he might be a former officer or someone who at least could read and write.76
The implementation of the Ordinance demanded administrative reforms. The British were cautiously working towards a confederacy of Nuba tribes. Administrative units could now be comprised of several tribes, sometimes both Nuba and Arab would fall under one district. This was the case in the Tegali Kingdom for example, that had survived all turmoil and officially became the Mekship of Tegali.
By 1929 the administrative boundaries were again redrawn: the Nuba Mountains province was amalgamated with Kordofan. Economically and socially the two provinces were too much interwoven to administer them separately. Kordofan was the name of the combined province, of which the Nuba Mountains constituted four districts: Western Jebels, Eastern Jebels, Southern Kordofan, Southern Jebels. The policy to keep Nuba and Arab separated was not abandoned: actually the British sometimes went out of their way to see that Arab influence on the Nuba would be limited to the minimum.77
8. Nuba Policy Although patrols lessened in frequency towards the end of the 1920s, it became more and more evident that direct rule did not work. The D.C.'s were overburdened. The Meks couldn’t comply with British expectations without losing their authority among the young men in the community. As I have described above, the British Administration was trying to figure out what kind of future they might offer the Nuba. J. A. Gillan, Governor of Kordofan from 1928 to 1932, put it this way: Can we evolve a structure or a series of structures, to fit all these different cultures and stages of civilisation? Can we at the same time preserve all that is best in the Nuba side by side with an Arab civilisation?78 Are their traditions and culture worth maintaining while they learn to stand on their feet; or shall we stand aside and let them slip into a non-descript… arabicisation before they know their own minds?79 Time was running short though. In 1930 the D.C. in Dilling complained that there was no policy whatsoever to guide the integration of the Nuba into the surrounding economy The urgency of the matter lies in the economic progress of the Arab; the contacts are bound to increase; for economic reasons the races must mix and if a policy for Nuba is to be stated, it must be formulated now.80
In his 1931 memorandum, Gillan gave an analysis of the problem. He also offered a series of practical measures. His successor as Governor, Douglas Newbold (Governor from 1932-1936), tried to address the different issues raised in the memorandum, but he was also realistic about the problems: The Nuba policy as set forth in Mr Gillan’s printed memorandum and approved by the Central Government is a positive civilizing policy, based on what is best on local tradition and culture. It does not aim at keeping the Nuba in a glass cage, not in making the NubaMountains into a human game reserve, but envisages the evolution of Nuba civilization through Nuba leaders and Nuba communalities.81
In the late 20's and early 30's Sir Angus Gillan, Governor of Kordofan, attempted to turn the tide. He wrote to the office in Khartoum: "I would therefor ask: 1. That as far as possible Government Departments would recruit labour from other than Nuba sources 2. That Northern Governors would endeavour to round up and repatriate out-of-work Nubas." (Gillan, 1931) In 'The Dilemma of British Rule in the Nuba Mountains' (1985) Osman A. Ibrahim describes the response to this request: "In many cases the Nuba who left the hills looking for a job in other provinces would be repatriated against their wish, to the extend of issuing them with railway warrants up to al-Ubayyid. There was no official fund for repatriation at first and returning Nuba were put to work in Dalamy and their travel expenditure was deducted from their wages."
9. Education The Nuba policy was impractical and contrary to the interest of the Nuba. The best example is the matter of education in the ‘authentic’ areas. For nearly twenty years the Sudan United Mission (SUM), a Protestant missionary society from New Zealand and Australia, was allowed to operate elementary schools in Heiban, Abri, Kauda, Moro, and Tabanya without making any progress. The Church Mission Society (CMS) that started working in the western areas in 1933, hardly performed any better. The societies had insufficient means and the British constantly changed their policy. What to think of the experiment to teach the Nuba children Arabic written in Roman script? Meanwhile the British allowed an Arabic curriculum at well functioning elementary schools in ‘arabised’ areas.82
Douglas Newbold, Governor of Kordofan from 1932 to 1936, was more realistic than his predecessor: The Nuba policy… does not aim at keeping the Nuba in a glass cage, not in making the NubaMountains into a human game reserve, but envisages the evolution of Nuba civilisation through Nuba leaders and Nuba communalities.83 Newbold recognised the need for proper education. Government elementary schools for Nuba were opened in Abri, Kauda, Salara and Katcha. Arabic became the language of instruction. By 1940, Nuba children were no longer restricted in their school choice. SUM was now only giving sub-grade education in so-called bush schools. CSM continued its elementary education and opened an intermediate school in Katcha.84
Reversal of British policy Toward the end of WW II the British acknowledged the economical and geographical impossibilities to disjoint the South from the Sudan as a whole: "The policy of the Sudan Government regarding the Southern Sudan is to act upon the facts that the peoples of Southern Sudan are distinctively African and Negroid but that geography and economics combine (...) to render them inextricably bound for future development to the Middle Eastern and Arabicised Northern Sudan: and therefore to ensure that they should, by educational and economic development, be equipped to stand up for themselves in the future as socially and economically the equals of their partners in the Sudan of the future."85
Unfortunately for the Nuba, there was hardly any basis for the development of local leadership. As Nadel put it: "In the NubaMountains we are faced with problems of creation rather than of development. The indigenous political institutions, still largely in an embryonic stage, hardly possess the prerequisite elements for us to utilize or build upon. More specifically, few Nuba tribes offer an ancient system of chieftainship or some form of leadership which could be entrusted with the new political tasks."86 Nonetheless the British insured in the following years that all tribes were ruled by local chiefs, often forcing the population to accept their new leaders against traditional notions of authority. Arabic became the language used in schools, efforts were made to revive cotton cultivation (which had suffered from labour migration and army service), to construct water reservoirs and roads. And very little more could be done to prepare the Nuba for the independence of Sudan. According to Stevenson the Nuba were slowly integrating into the society: By the end of the Codominium period the Nuba were finding more employment in government services as teachers, clerks, medical assistants and dressers, in shops and offices and, outside the hills, in factories, sanitary squads and on the railways. (...) for many years now they had been eager and valued recruits for the army and police. Health had improved (...); each of the main towns now had its governmental hospital, there were dispensaries under medical assistants in many smaller centres, and leper settlements were started in 1936. (...) In spite of the flooding in upon them of the outside world with more organization and direction and outward changes in clothing, food and work, the cheerful and vigorous Nuba had retained their independence of outlook and much of their directness and simplicity87.
History, part I History, part III
NOTES
1. R. Iyob and G. M. Khadiagala: Sudan: The Elusive Quest for Peace (2006), pp.23.
2. H. A. MacMichael: The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, 1912.
3. Ibid.
4. S. F. Nadel: the Nuba, an anthropological study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan, 1947, pp. 360.
5. J. Spaulding: A Premise for Precolonial Nuba History; History in Africa, Vol. 14 (1987), pp. 369-374.
6. The wide plains of Kordofan between Darfur and the Nile served as a buffer. There was a trade road to Egypt though, known as the 40 day track.
7. D. Lange: Ethogenesis from within the Chadic state: some thoughts on the history of Kanem-Borno; Paideuma 39, 261-277
8. H. R. Palmer: The Kingdom of Gaòga of Leo Africanus Part I; Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 29, No. 115 (April 1930), pp. 280-284.
9. Sir R. C. Slatin: Fire and Sword in the Sudan, 1879-1895; translated by Sir F. R. Wingate, 1896-7.
10. R. S. O’Fahey: State and Society in Dār Fūr, 1980.
11. J. Bruce of Kinnaird: ‘Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1172 and 1773’, published in 1790.
12. For the full story: P. M. Holt: The Sudan of the Three Niles: The Funj Chronicle, 910-1288/1504-1871, 1999.
13. R. c. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, pp. 41-42
14. Yusuf Fadl Hasan: The Arabs and the Sudan, 1973, pp. 136.
15. Ibid. pp. 142.
16. Ibid. pp. 164
17. Ahmad b. Abdallah Al-Qalqashandi: Subh al-A’shafi Sina’at al-Insha’, 1913-14, Vol. VIII, pp. 116-118
18. Hasan, pp. 165-6
19. Yusuf Fadl Hasan: The Arabs and the Sudan, 1973, pp. 167.
20. H. A. MacMichael: The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, 1912, pp. 146.
21. J. Owens (ed.): Arabs and Arabic in the Lake Chad Region, 1994 (Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, Band 14), pp. 81-4.
22. Yusuf Fadl Hasan: The Arabs and the Sudan, 1973, pp. 170.
23. J.W. Sargar: Notes on the history, religion and customs of the Nuba (1922); Sudan Notes and Records 5, pp. 139-40.
24. Ibid. pp.140.
25. Information for the following is mainly drawn from the online encyclopedia ‘Wikipedia’, the English version, as of January 13, 2007.
26. J. Pallme: Travels in Kordofan, 1984 (translation), pp. 17-26, and J. Petherick: Egypt, Sudan and Central Africa. With Explorations From Khartoum on the White Nile to the Regions of the Equator, Being Sketches from Sixteen Years' Travel. 1861, pp. 276-281.
27. H. A. MacMichael: The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, 1912, p. 20.
28. R. Mowafi: Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition Attempts in Egypt and the Sudan, 1820-1882, 1981, p. 32.
29. H. Dodwell: The Founder of Modern Egypt, 1931, p.50
30. E. Driault: La Formation de l’Empire de Mohamed Aly de l’Arabie au Soudan 1814-1823, Correspondences des Consuls de France en Egypte, 1827, pp. 225-26
31. R. L. Hill: Egypt in the Sudan, 1820-1881, 1958, pp. 12-13. from a letter dated September 23, 1823.
32. Official Journal of Egypt, No 19, 15 Muharram, 1246 and No. 388, 3 Muharram, 1248.
33. I. S. Pallme: Travels in Kordofan, 1844
34. R. Mowafi: Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition Attempts…, 1981, p. 21.
35. A. T. Holroyd: Notes on a Journey to Kordofan, in 1836-7; Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 9. (1839), pp. 163-191.
36. Wikipedia.com as of January 15, 2007.
37. R. Mowafi: Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition Attempts in Egypt and the Sudan, 1820-1882, 1981. This study uses a large number of official documents and travel accounts, but to avoid writing a history to my footnotes, I will not list them. Those interested in the subject of slavery in Sudan now know where to look.
38. Ibid.
39. R. Mowafi: Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition Attempts… pp. 72-75.
40. H. A. MacMichael: The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, 1912, pp. 31-32
41. E. Tonioli and R. Hill (ed.): The Opening of the Nile Basin, 1974, p. 297.
42. Wikipedia.com as of Januari 15, 2007
43. R. Mowafi: Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition Attempts… p. 90.
44. H. A. MacMichael: The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, 1912, p. 36.
45. M. Mirak-Weissbach: Why The British Hate Sudan: The Mahdia's War Against London; The American Almanac, September 4, 1995.
46. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, p. 57.
47. Commander Edward Lino in an interview with Sudan Vision, February 24, 2004.
48. More information might be found in E. E. Evans-Pritchard: The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan, 1948 (but I am not sure).
49. R. H. Dekmejian and M. J. Wyszomirski: Charismatic Leadership in Islam: The Mahdi of the Sudan; Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 14, No. 2. (Mar., 1972), pp. 193-214.
50. J. A. Reid: Reminiscences of the Sudan Mahdi, Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed: By His Personal Servant Mohammed el Mekki Ghuleib, Who Is Still Living in the Sudan; Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 35, No. 138. (Jan., 1936), pp. 71-75.
51. F.R. Wingate: Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp, 1882-1892, 1892 (from the manuscripts of Father Joseph Ohrwalder)
52. Ibid. p. 95.
53. Quoted by A. Moorhead in ‘The White Nile’, 1960.
54. G. Sverdrup, Jr.: A Letter from the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad to General C. G. Gordon; Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 31, No. 4 (1911), pp. 368-388.
55. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, p. 59.
56. Information on this chapter from R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, pp. 58-61 and H. A. MacMichael: The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, 1912, pp. 43-50.
57. F. Nicoll: Sword of the Prophet: The Mahdi of Sudan and the Death of General Gordon , 2004. p.230; quoted from Abu Salim, vol.4, pp. 481–2.
58. Quoted by G. Warburg in ‘The Sudan Under Wingate: Administration in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899-1916)’, 1971.
59. Wikipedia: History of Sudan; the East African Protectorate; History of Egypt, as on January 21, 2007
60. /a> M. O. Beshir: The Southern Sudan; Background to Conflict, 1968.
61. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, p. 64.
62. Vicars-Miles, ‘Notes on Nuba administration’, p. 33, SAD 631/10/1-64.
63. R. C. Stevenson: Opus. Cit., p. 64.
64. A. H. M. Ibrahim: The Dilemma of British Rule in the Nuba Mountains, 1898-1947, 1985.
65. H. A. MacMichael: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1934.
66. J. Willis: Violence, Authority, and the State in the Nuba Mountains of Condominium Sudan; The Historical Journal, 46, 1 (2003), pp. 89–114.
67. Kordofan province annual report, 1905, SAD 701/25/164-9.
68. F. C. C. Balfour: Article on 'Faqi 'Ali' (unpublished), 1951; Sudan Archive, Durham, 303/8/27
69. J. Willis: Violence, Authority, and the State in the Nuba Mountains…
70. L. K. Smith: No. 32, Operations in the Nyima Hills, Nuba Mountains Province, 1917-1918; Sudan Archive, Durham, 643/13/15
71. S. F. Nadel: the Nuba, an anthropological study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan, 1947, p. 6.
72. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984, pp. 62-3.
73. M. O. Beshir: The Southern Sudan, Background to Conflict. 1968, pp. 39-41.
74. Sudan Archive, Durham: GS 460. MS. Vicars Miles; 167
75. A. H. M. Ibrahim: The Dilemma of British Rule in the Nuba Mountains, 1898-1947, 1985.
76. J. Willis: Violence, Authority, and the State in the Nuba Mountains…
77. A. H. M. Ibrahim: The Dilemma of British Rule…
78. J. A. Gillan: Some Aspects of Nuba Administration, 1931; Khartoum: Sudan Government Memoranda, no. 1., 6-7.
79. Ibid. 12.
80. Dilling Archives, Southern Kordofan: General Administrative Policy-Devolution, a Note by D.C. Dilling; file SCR/1.A.1/1.
81. K. D. D. Henderson: The Making of the Modern Sudan, 1952, pp. 495-6
82. Anderson, L.: Educational Development and Administrative Control in the Nuba Mountains Region of the Sudan; The Journal of African History, Vol. 4, No. 2. (1963), pp. 233-247.
83. Henderson, K.D.D.: The Making of the Modern Sudan, 1952
84. Anderson, L.: Educational Development and Administrative Control…
85. The 1946 Memorandum on Southern Policy; Beshir, M.O.: The Southern Sudan, Background to Conflict. 1968
86. Nadel, S.F.: The Nuba, an Anthropological Study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan, 1947, p. 494.
87. R. C. Stevenson: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1965

This text was written by the designer of the homepage, Nanne op 't Ende.

History of the Nuba, part III
History, part I History, part II
VII. Independence (1956) VIII. Nimeiri’s regime (1969-1985) IX. War in the Nuba Mountains (1985 - 2002) X. Peace (2002 - now)
VII. Independence (1956)
The uneven development of South and North Sudan disturbed the build-up towards independence. The political process was dominated by Northern parties, who occupied nearly all Government posts. Promises were made and broken. In August 1955, a mutiny in Torit by the Equatoria Corps [a military unit composed of Southerners] resulted in the deaths of 261 Northern Sudanese and 75 Southerners.
Failing democracy Sudan declared its independence on January 1, 1956. The Southern demand for a federal state was brushed aside and the first National Government set out to unify the country by means of education. It took over the missionary schools in the South and in the Nuba Mountains, and started building new schools. Democracy proved unsuccessful: Northern political parties were too engaged in power games to address the problems of the country. Southern parties were too weak. In 1958 the army stepped in: Lieutenant General Ibrahim Abboud became president of Sudan (1958-1964). His policy for union: arabisation of the country and suppression of political opposition. When the missionaries turned against his Government in 1962, they were expelled from the South and the Nuba Mountains. The conflict between the Government and Southern opposition turned into civil war.1
Anya Nya Most Southern politicians went into exile. They formed the Sudan African National Union (SANU), headed by J.H. Oduhu. In South Sudan, remnants of the Equatoria Corps joined with other former soldiers and policemen into a violent rebel movement called Anya Nya [snake venom]. It strove for separation from the North. Abboud sent nearly the entire Sudanese Army to the South but it was unable to suppress the rebellion. Eventually a general uprising in the North forced Abboud to step down.2
Events in Kordofan The civil war in the South had little impact on life in the Nuba Mountains, except for the Nuba men who re-enlisted in the army to fight the Anya Nya, and a small number who joined the Anya Nya.3. More important was the continuous process of arabisation. The Government stimulated the adoption of Arab names and the use of Arab language. Many Nuba adopted Arabic customs because they perceived their own cultures as backward. At the same time Christian missionary work was continued by Nuba clergy. Father Butrus Tia Shukai for example preached in Koalib; Heiban and Moro.4 Among both Muslims and Christians tribal identity remained strong.
Presumably towards the end of the Abboud regime Stevenson wrote: Added to the Nuba diversity are the newer differences in educational level and in religion. Some have been attracted to Islam, others to Christianity [but many] are content at the moment to follow traditional ways. The Nuba peoples are today perhaps more Nuba-conscious, i.e. more conscious of themselves as a regional entity, desirous of having their proper share of education and employment and economic progress, and more consciously aware of their need to have a voice in the nation’s affairs by electing members to Parliament who will make sure that their interests get a fair hearing.5
General Union of the Nuba Mountains (GUN) In 1964, the October Popular Uprising restored democracy in the Sudan. In the same year, a number of Nuba intellectuals organised themselves in the General Union of the Nuba Mountains. GUN participated in the parliamentary elections of 1965. One of the party members was Yousif Kuwa, who campaigned with Atroun Attia, ‘a prominent Nuba politicians those days’.6 Headed by Philip Abbas Ghaboush GUN entered Parliament with eight seats won in Southern Kordofan. Expectations were high but the new government did very little for the country. The problems in the South were not solved. The peripheral areas of the North, like the Nuba Mountains, the Ingassana Hills, Darfur and the Beja country, were left without resources. Disappointed leaders from these areas had already worked together in various political alliances. Now they started to consider the possibility of a military take-over
VIII. Nuba during Nimeiri’s regime (1969-1985)
In 1969 the army again took power. Colonel Jafaar Mohamed an-Nimeiri became President of the Sudan. All political parties were banned. After initial attempts to resolve the problems in the South through force, Nimeiri reverted to negotiations. In 1972 the Addis Ababa Agreement was signed, preserving the unity of the country by giving the South autonomy in all but national matters like defence, foreign affairs, currency and finance. Since the Nuba were living in the north, they hardly profited from the agreement.
Pressure on traditional cultures Initially President Nimeiri was not very interested in changing the cultures of the Nuba. As a socialist he was not interested in creating a state religion and he allowed children from Christian families to be taught the catechism in school. Development and progress were his priority and in this light we should see the Government’s pressure on the Nuba to abandon their traditional way of living. For a while merchants were forbidden to sell anything to a person who was not dressed, for example. In a later stage of Nimeir’s rule islamisation once again became the answer to the country’s diversities. Nuba students received grants to study Islam and returned to their communities to proselytise. Islam did not run too deeply in most Nuba communities though. The belief in charms, spells, possession and rituals remained. Even strongly arabised communities like the Miri for example, would keep their tribal identity and continue to observe many of their traditional practices.7
Labour migration In the 1970's, economic development of the area changed the Nuba communities dramatically. To establish a family; to have some luxury, to buy commodities and clothes: there were many reasons why the Nuba wanted money. And there were many job opportunities: in the army and the police service; in shops, clinics and schools; or on the large agricultural schemes that were being established. Many uneducated men went to the cities of the North. They could experience discrimination, but the people I interviewed agree that during Nimeiri’s regime it was not so bad. However, an uneducated Nuba would usually find only jobs of low esteem.
Labour migration had a profound impact on economic and social life in the Nuba Mountains. Women worked the far farms alone. Large herds became a rare sight because there were no young men to guard the cattle. Many rituals would no longer be held at the appropriate time or place. Village life became less and less attractive for the girls8, who started dreaming of escape with a man who had made it in the city.9
Land Traditionally, each Nuba tribe would consider the wider area around the hills it inhabited to belong to the community. Whomsoever cleared a patch of land for cultivation, owned it. The land remained family property. This became more problematic in 1968, when the government began to encourage mechanised farming. Under the Mechanised Farming Corporation Act, 60% of land was to be allocated to local people and no-one was to have more than one farm. In practice, this was ignored. For the Nuba, financing the lease on a plot was more difficult than to the Arabs, and some outside landowners ended up with more than 20 farms. Many of the Jellaba had no farming experience. Soil depletion led to diminishing yields. Soon land was brought under cultivation outside the official schemes
Matters worsened for the Nuba in 1970. Under the Unregistered Land Act, all land not registered prior to 1970, fell to the State. The government assumed broad powers of eviction in order to clear land for schemes. There was no recognition of the rights of the Nuba who, although not having legal title, had been using land for generations. The regulations were complicated and unfavourable to the Nuba.10
The agricultural schemes attracted many Arab Sudanese, both Jellaba and Baggara, who started to settle near the mountains. By 1974, Leni Riefenstahl remarked that the exposure to the Arab culture and the money economy had changed 'her' Nuba (the Masakin Qisar) beyond recognition.11 Possibly she was too focussed on the changed attitude towards nudity, because Islam and Christianity still did not run deeply in most Nuba communities. Traditional beliefs and customs remained a vital part of Nuba life. Even strongly arabised communities like, for example, the Miri, would keep their tribal identity and continue to observe many of their traditional practices. 12
Nuba politicians While a spirit of optimism captured the Sudan after the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972, the parties that were supposed to defend the interest of the Nuba achieved very little in terms of improving living standards in Southern Kordofan. Shortly after the 1965 elections, the GUN had already split into two factions. One was headed by Philip Abbas Ghaboush, who was stressing Nuba identity and cooperation with other Africans. The other was headed by Mahmud Hasib, who wanted to cooperate with the Baggara and Jellaba in Southern Kordofan.13 In 1969, Philip Abbas Ghaboush was forced to leave the country. He was sentenced to death in absentia for his involvement in an attempted coup that had been staged to take place just days before Nimeiri seized power.14 The faction of Mahmud Hasib allied itself to Nimairi’s regime. In 1977, serving as Governor of Kordofan, Hasib publicly demanded more regional autonomy, he was shouted down by Nimeiri. Many Nuba were disillusioned with their leaders.15 In the same year, Philip Abbas participated in another coup attempt, this time in Juba, with, among others, Mohamed Haroun Kafi and Yunis Dumi Kallo. 16
Komolo In 1972, Nuba students at Tilo Secondary School in Kadugli formed Rabita al-Abna Jibal al-Nuba [the Nuba League], a secret political society, in reaction to attempts of the Ittijaha al-Islami, [Islamic Direction, linked to Hassan al-Turabi], to take over the various student bodies at Tilo. The League’s first president was Kamil Kuwa Mekki, a younger brother to Yousif Kuwa. Among the members were Abdel Aziz al-Hilu and Daniel Kodi. Many members of the Nuba League went to Khartoum University in 1976, where they met other politically engaged Nuba students. Together they formed the Komolo [Youth] movement, in 1977. Yousif Kuwa Mekki became the leader of this secret body, which emphasised its Nuba identity.
Operating clandestinely, Komolo would have a strong influence on the future of the Nuba. Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, Daniel Kodi, Ismael Khamis Jelab, and Neroun Philip are some of the well known members. In 1980 Yousif Kuwa took a job at Tilo Higher Secondary School, and started recruiting among Nuba students and teachers. In 1981, Komolo formed the basis for Youif Kuwa's successful election to the Regional Government of Kordofan. He became Deputy Speaker in the assembly. The Arab dominated Assembly, however, did not address any of the issues important to the Nuba, like education or economic progress in the Nuba Mountains. In the same year, Daniel Kodi was elected to the National Assembly. But the only political party allowed was Nimeiri’s Sudan Socialist Union, and the democratic process was a farce.
Anya Nya II In the late 1970s, Philip Abbas Ghaboush founded a new Nuba party: the Sudan National party (SNP). The SNP participated in several alliances of southern parties and parties representing northern peoples like the Fur and the Beja. Behind the scenes Philip Abbas was in contact with re-emerging rebel movements in the South, generally called Anya Nya II. He recruited Nuba for the armed struggle and sent them to Ethiopian, where the rebels received military training from the Ethiopian Government. (Ethiopia supported the Southerners against the Government of Sudan because the Government of Sudan supported Eritrean secessionists against Ethiopia.) Daniel Kodi helped Komolo members move to the rebels’ bases in Ethiopia. The recruited Nuba brought the Anya Nya to the Nuba Mountains in 1982, where they trained more men. Violence was limited to a raid on a police post in 1983.
Baggara During the first decades of independence, Nuba-Baggara relationships improved considerably in most parts of the Mountains. Baggara might take the Nuba herds north, and when they returned to Southern Kordofan, the Nuba boys might look after the Baggara herds. A growing number of Baggara settled permanently in Southern Kordofan to take up farming. Politically, the Baggara were strongly tied to the Umma Party that had evolved around the descendents of the Mahdi. Some had been cooperating with the General Union of the Nuba Mountains at the 1965 elections, but the Nuba tended to focus more on their African identity than on their regional identity.
The introduction of mechanised farming in 1968, affected the Baggara who grazed their herds in the Nuba Mountains. They found themselves shut off from access to pastures and wells. In spite of official regulations trek routes were blocked by large farms. The inevitable happened: the Baggara started to graze their cattle on Nuba land, destroying crops or harvests and occupying wells. During the 1970s, severe drought in Northern Kordofan forced the Baggara to come southwards sooner and to stay longer. This again increased tensions between the Nuba and the Baggara over land and water use.17 After 1975, the economy of Sudan started to falter. Inflation rose, and the Government rationed fuel and consumer goods. Distribution took place according to a district system that largely followed ethnic boundaries. As a result, competition for resources increased polarisation between Nuba and Arabs.18
Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) By 1983, Sudan’s economy was in a deplorable state. People went on strike throughout the country, protesting against poor economic and social conditions. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of refugees entered the Sudan from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nimeiri’s plans for an administrative re-division of the South were met with an armed uprising in the South. The mutiny of three southern battalions of the Sudanese Army in Bor and Ayod was instigated by southern officers in the National army who had been planning a rebellion for years. Lieutenant Colonel John Garang de Mabior was part of the conspiracy. He joined the rebelling battalions and led them to Ethiopia, where they came together with Anya Nya II.19
Supported by Ethiopian President Mengistu, Garang united the rebelling battalions with part of the Anya Nya into the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Garang became the Commander-in-Chief. In June, the political wing of the SPLA, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) issued its Manifesto, calling for a secular, united New Sudan where all people would be treated equally. In September 1983, in a desperate bid to stay in power, Nimeiri imposed Shari’a [Islamic law]. In response many more southerners joined the SPLA.
Nuba and the SPLA We now get to a very turbulent part of Nuba history, in which part of the Nuba engaged themselves in the war against the Government. Philip Abbas Ghaboush was probably the first link between the Nuba and the Southerners. He had remained in close contact with the Southern rebellion ever since the time of the first Anya Nya. Behind the scenes he recruited Nuba men and sent them to the Anya Nya II bases in Ethiopia.
Daniel Kodi was another link with the Southerners. As member of the National Assembly after the 1981 elections, he soon established contacts with southern movements. Although Kodi was a member of Komolo he did not act as a Komolo representative in these contacts. Just like Philip Abbas, Kodi started sending people to the Anya Nya II. He also established contacts with the movement that would later become the SPLA. When the Bor mutiny took place, he was already aware of the conspiracy, probably through Lam Akol and Edward Lino. Lam Akol was active as a lecturer in Khartoum before he officially got into politics. At the same time he was an SPLM contact from the start – even before the founding of the Movement. Edward Lino was part of the same secret Khartoum cell recruiting intellectuals for the SPLM/A, with Peter Nyot. This cell became the nucleus for the SPLM office once John Garang had left for Ethiopia.20 In 1981, Kamil Kuwa was working in Libya, where he joined a small group of Southern Sudanese. Together they set up an office in Tripoli that was instrumental in channelling Muammar al-Gaddafi’s military support to the SPLA.
John Garang sent the 1983 SPLM Manifesto to Daniel Kodi, who seems to have inititated the discussion whether Komolo should collectively join the SPLM or not. Edward Lino went to Kadugli to see Yousif Kuwa, and they came to Khartoum together. In the house of Philip Abbas Ghabush Yousif Kuwa met with Lam Akol; Daniel Kodi and Abdel Aziz Adam al-Hilu. They discussed the Manifesto and decided that Yousif should go to Ethiopia to discuss the matter further with John Garang. Lam Akol drove him to the airport.
Yousif Kuwa met with John Garang and joined the Movement in 1984. He announced his decision on the SPLM radio, broadcasting form Ethiopia, and called upon all the Nuba to join the fight for freedom. Soon Telephone Kuku, Yunis Abd Sadr, Yousif Karra and Ouwad Al Karim followed him to Ethiopia. Not all Nuba were happy with Yousif Kuwa’s action. Some Komolo members felt that he had gone against the agreement that he would report back to them. They also seem to have felt put before a fait accompli: Yousif Kuwa’s announcement made any Nuba a suspect of having joined the rebellion. 21 Kuwa's first assignment was to head the SPLA Office in Yemen. The office had a similar function as the office in Tripoli. Since the Nuba were living in northern Sudan, John Garang quickly put Yousif Kuwa forward as evidence that the SPLA was not merely a Dinka or Southern movement. He started to address the Southern Sudanese to convince them that the SPLA was fighting for all the Sudanese. They listened to him. The former teacher soon became an alternate member of the SPLA's high command.
Coup Attempts Komolo members were involved in several coup attempts. In 1983, there was one involving Ismael Khamis, Mudir Batallah Kapitulek, and Yunis Abd Sadr. And in 1984, Philip Abbas and Daniel Kodi participated in another attempt. In both instances, the plot was discovered. The conspirators were only imprisoned for brief periods of time. After his exposure, Daniel Kodi went to Ethiopia and was appointed to the SPLM Office in Addis Ababa.
IX. War in the Nuba Mountains (1985 - 2002) In 1985, Nimeiri was overthrown by Lieutenant General Suar al-Dahab. He announced a return to democracy after a transitional period of one year. Following parliamentary elections in 1986, Sadiq al-Mahdi formed a number of coalition governments that were unable to solve the problems of the country.
In Khartoum During the transitional period, Philip Abbas staged another coup, with Ismael Khamis, Mudir Batallah, and Yunis Abd Sadr. It failed. After a brief imprisonment, Khamis, Batallah and Abd Sadr left to join the SPLA. Philip Abbas participate in the elections with his Sudan National Party, which gained eight seats, including the constituency of Al-Hadj Yusif in Omdurman. The SNP worked together with the Southern opposition in the Union of Sudan African Parties. The Nuba politicians of different parties could not agree on a united Nuba policy. H.A. Kadouf remembers: Each had its own hidden political agenda… I knew off hand that all of these parties were fused with members from clandestine Nuba societies such as: Komolo and Nahnu Kadugli. Some of the Nuba youth were strangely enough with the Arab socialists etc… It was proved later that some of these young Nuba intellectuals… were driven more by their own political ideologies than by any common Nuba political interest.22
Murahaliin The Misseriya Baggara in Kordofan had been buying arms since 1983, and were raiding Dinka communities with impunity in Kordofan and Abyei. But by 1985, SPLA task forces were active in the Bahr al-Ghazal. One of those forces followed a group of Misseriya raiders to al-Gardud on the Southern outskirts of the Nuba Mountains and killed 60 of the Baggara. Around that time, Defence Minister General Fadlallah Burma Nassir, himself a Misseriya Zuruq, started to arm the Baggara, turning them into militias known as Murahaliin. Soon the Murahaliin used their guns to intimidate the Nuba population. Robbery and violent attacks became common practice in the Western Mountains. So when a small SPLA task force entered the Mountains in 1986, to recruit among the young men, many were eager to join.
Volcano Rather than trying to end the violence in Southern Kordofan, Sadiq al-Mahdi’s Government armed and organised the Hawazma also. The army started to take part in the fighting. As early as January 1986, it attacked people and villages suspected of SPLA sympathies. The first direct clashes with the SPLA took place in June 1987, when the Volcano Battalion, headed by Yousif Kuwa, entered the Nuba Mountains. The incursion led to more violence by Murahaliin and Government army.
New Kush Abdel Aziz al-Hilu and Yousif Kuwa assembled large groups of recruits and sent them to the SPLA training centres in Ethiopia. The first groups walked for three months to get there. During 1988, the Government army targeted villages known to have sent recruits to the SPLA. (De Waal and Ajawin) The recruits returned in 1989, as the New Kush Brigade. Entering from the south the SPLA turned toward Kadugli, the main town in Southern Kordofan. The SPLA established itself in a large part of the Nuba Mountains and stayed. The Government launched campaigns against villages where the SPLA had been reported to be.
The soldiers of the New Kush Brigade were ‘no angels’ either. Some of them rampaged against the Nuba population. The worst offenders were court-marshalled and executed. (Kuwa) SPLA soldiers would usually kill any captured Government soldier. (De Waal and Ajawin) Arab civilians were targeted too. In Moro several Jellaba were killed, some of whom were married to Moro women. (Mohamed Salih) Mechanised farms were attacked, Jellaba were ambushed and killed. The SPLA attacked Hawazma villages, forcing the civilian population to seek the safety of the towns.23
Violence, isolation, poverty On June 30, 1989, Colonel Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir took power in Khartoum. He agreed to a cease fire with the South and allowed the United Nations to bring aid to the civilian population in the areas under SPLM administration (Operation Lifeline Sudan).The Nuba Mountains, however, were excluded from the arrangement. Instead, al-Bashir legalised the Murahaliin and brought them under Government authority as the Popular Defence Forces (PDF). The fighting escalated into all-out war. The Government army and the PDF continued to burn villages; destroy crops and kill people. They deliberately targeted the educated Nuba. Members of Komolo were persecuted. Relatives of known SPLA leaders disappeared.
Schools were closed. Medical care was no longer available. The farms in the plains were abandoned. Drought and violence combined to cause severe famine from 1990-1993. Thousands of people died of hunger. The Nuba in the SPLA controlled area were largely cut off from the outside world. People would still find ways to travel to Khartoum,24 but trade came to a halt and extreme poverty was the result. Civilians were taken from their villages to so-called Peace Camps, were many were kept against their will. Others went to the camps voluntarily in the hope of getting some food, clothes, medical treatment, or education for their children. People who returned from the Government area would often be treated with suspicion by the SPLA.
Government controlled areas The civilian population under Government control also suffered. Many people were displaced, either to the larger towns in South Kordofan, like Kadugli and Dilling, or to El Obeid, Omdurman and Khartoum. Grain production was low, and the draught during the early 1990s, touched everyone. In general, however, the Nuba in the Government area were better off than those in the SPLA area. Health care and education, though very poor, were at least available. Government garrison towns and Peace Camps received food relief from the UN, which was not allowed to the SPLA area. The people had some basic commodities. Insecurity was less in the Government areas. SPLA soldiers sometimes raided for cattle in nearby 'enemy' villages, but after 1993, for lack of ammunition, the SPLA launched only one large attack, in 1998.25 In contrast the Government army mounted large scale campaigns against the SPLA every dry season.
In between the parties From the beginning of the war in the Nuba Mountains, Baggara traders smuggled people and commodities from the Government area into the SPLM area. Government officers were bribed. In 1993, the Misseriya realised that they were victims of the war like the Nuba. They signed the Buram agreement with the Nuba. In exchange for grain and cattle, Baggara traders brought salt, clothes, and medicine. This continued until the end of 1993, when government troops took Buram. The 1995 Regifi Agreement closely followed the previous accord. In 1996, the Nuba concluded the Kain Agreement with the Rawawga who even brought ammunition to the SPLA.26
Nuba against Nuba A growing sense of common Nuba identity has not yet replaced tribal allegiances. The Nuba peoples had different experiences throughout the centuries. Different levels of education, of economic development, of arabisation, etc., give them different outlooks on life. This was reflected in the situation in the Nuba Mountains during the war. Nuba politicians, chiefs, and officials worked with or for the Government all through the war. Were they corrupted opportunists, replacing the Nuba of integrity who had been killed or chased? (De Waal and Ajawin) Did they fear the Government? Were the Nuba who joined the Government army just poor brainwashed sods looking for money, as the SPLA officers used to tell me? Or did they have very different ideas about their place in Sudan than the Nuba who joined the SPLA? Maybe the general elections of 2008 will provide an answer to such questions.
Yousif Kuwa Shortly after the SPLA had occupied, or liberated, large areas in the Nuba Mountain, Yousif Kuwa began to develop a civil administration, from village level upwards to the whole region under his command. However, in 1991, two members of the SPLA High Command, Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon and Lam Akol Ajawin, tried to oust John Garang from the SPLA leadership. The coup failed, Machar and Akol broke away from the SPLA and continued as the Nasir Faction. Suddenly the SPLA troops in the Nuba Mountains became isolated from the South. Supplies no longer reached the Mountains, and Yousif Kuwa faced a mutiny among his officers.
Considering the near hopelessness of the situation he decided to consult the Nuba people. In 1992, he called together representatives of all segments of the population and asked them whether they wanted to surrender, or continue to fight. The Advisory Council voted in favour of fighting. The Council became a permanent institution that discussed many social and political developments, passing recommendations to a legislative council that turned them into guidelines for the civil administration.
The SPLA held on to large parts of the Mountains. Although the violence never stopped the parties fought each other to a standstill. This changed after 1998, when Yousif Kuwa was diagnosed with cancer. Treatment kept him away for long periods of time, leaving command to deputies who were not quite up to the task of securing the area. They did not have Kuwa's political skills and personal charisma. Meanwhile logistical support from the SPLA in the South remained bad. Large areas were lost to the Government army, and the number of internally displaced persons grew dramatically.27
Relief and international pressure Kuwa and several other prominent Nuba were frequently travelling abroad to raise awareness about the war in the Nuba Mountains. They met with parliamentarians, human rights activists, aid organisations, journalists, etc. Dr. Suleiman Musa Rahhal, co-founder of Nuba Mountains Solidarity Abroad, tried relentlessly to stir western governments into acting against eradication of the Nuba. Neroun Philip, head of Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Society (later NRRDO), managed to convince several large NGO's that the humanitarian crisis in the Mountains was urgent enough to ignore the flight ban and assist the people in the SPLA controlled areas.
In 1999, a UN assessment team investigated the needs of the Nuba people on both sides of the demarcation line. Despite growing pressure on the Sudanese Government, relief was not allowed to be flown in until November 2001. Earlier that year, the US had committed itself to what it hoped would be a final effort to restore peace to Sudan. Special envoy John Danforth called a Nuba Mountains cease fire crucial for his plan to build confidence between the Government and the SPLM. Yousif Kuwa did not live to see this development: he died on March 31, 2001.
X. Peace
Nuba Mountains Cease Fire Agreement In January 2002, the Government of Sudan and the SPLA/Nuba agreed on a cease fire under international monitoring that went into effect on January 21. For the SPLA It had been negotiated by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, Daniel Kodi, Neroun Philip, and two Southerners. Mohamed Haroun Kafi was heading the Government team. Hostilities were suspended; restrictions on relief flights were lifted. People of both sides were allowed to travel freely throughout the whole area. NGO's started to clear landmines, to strike water holes, to provide medical assistance, etc. Many agricultural, economic and social development projects were initiated to restore the enormous damage the people suffered from the war. The progress was not as fast as people had expected, but compared to the period of war, life in the Nuba Mountains became considerably better.
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) The number of Nuba refugees outside Kordofan might be estimated as high as one million by the end of 2001. Reports say 70% of the Nuba IDPs wants to return. 300,000 IDPs actually returned to Southern Kordofan between 2002 and 2004.28 At this rate most Nuba IDPs who wanted to return should be home by now. However, many people expressed caution: they would wait to see how the situation in Southern Kordofan will develop. Others would return to Khartoum if they failed to find basic services in the Nuba Mountains, like clean water, education, and health care.
Comprehensive Peace Agreement The cease fire in the Nuba Mountains was renewed several times while the Government and the SPLM were trying to reach a comprehensive peace agreement. The future of the Nuba Mountains was one of the last issues to be resolved. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement was finally signed on December 31, 2004. For the Nuba in the SPLM, Abdel Aziz and Daniel Kodi were on the negotiating team. The Protocol on the Resolution of Conflict in Southern Kordofan/Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile States is not as detailed as they hoped it would be. It gives the Nuba a substantial measure of autonomy and a share in National wealth and National representation, but no referendum on where the Nuba should belong: with the North or with the South. For many Nuba inside and outside the SPLM this falls short of their expectations. Moreover they fear that the Southerners will not seriously try to keep the country together, and they all feel that secession of the South will put the Nuba in the middle of more conflicts.
No right of self-determination The demand for self-determination has been voiced by all Nuba opposing the Government, no matter how deep the political or personal differences. Inside or outside the SPLA: they all wanted a chance for the Nuba people to decide upon their own future. The fact that the SPLA leadership did not adopt the demand for Nuba self-determination, is probably the deepest scar the Nuba carry from the war. It gave all the Nuba who opposed the Government outside the SPLA a reason to blame the SPLA for selling the Nuba short, and it created huge tensions among people who have identical agendas, but different political affiliations. It gave many Nuba within the SPLA a sense of being abandonded, not only by the SPLA in general, but by their leaders in the SPLA. Nuba leaders like Abdel Aziz al-Hilu or Daniel Kodi have made it clear that they are extremely unhappy with the outcome of the peace negotiations. Yet they signed the agreements. And the Nuba people are left with the question why.
To the leading Nuba who cooperated with the SPLA, the first priority was to get arms and ammunition. In addition, many thought that joining the SPLA would eventually strengthen the Nuba position. They did not believe an isolated rebellion in the Nuba Mountains could be sustained for long. Furthermore, they considered the Movement as a means to draw international attention to their cause. Most Nuba who joined the SPLA put their hopes on the vision of a United Sudan, with equal chances for all. The importance of the Nuba soldiers for the fighting force of the SPLA will be acknowledged by most people in the SPLA. And the credibility of the SPLM's aspirations as a national movement largely depended on the participation of the Nuba. In this light it is very difficult to understand why the leading Nuba in the SPLA, and especially Yousif Kuwa, Daniel Kodi, and Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, accepted that the SPLM never made a strong point of Nuba self-determination. Not in the NDA meeting in Asmara in 1995, not in the IGAD negotiations during the following years, and eventually not in the Naivasha peace talks.
Obviously, Nuba self-determiantion was always a breaking point for the Government in any negotiations. For many years, the Nuba leaders were not so adamant about self-determination because they thought that once the Govenrment of Sudan would fall, the SPLM/A would dictate the peace arrangements. But as that scenario was becoming less likely, they must have stressed the importance of their demands with John Garang. Given the outcome of the process, there must have been very strong arguments against pushing the demand for self-determination beyond the point of breaking with the SPLM/A. The difficulty to obtain weapons would be one such reason. A second reason would be that the consequences for the SPLM/A of a Nuba pull-out would be severe, and that this would immideately back-fire on the Nuba. Joining the Government like Riek Machar and others had done, was not an option.
At the negotiations in Naivasha, the Nuba issue, together with that of Blue Nile and Abyei, was being pushed towards the final stage of negotiating. It remained one of the last issues to be resolved. Right until the end, the Nuba might still get self-determination, or not. Eventually the Government stuck to its refusal. My personal estimation is that John Garang said 'this is the best we can do', and promised to do everything in his power as Sudan's Vice-President and as the potential next President to improve the conditions of the agreement of the Nuba and Blue Nile through the process of popular consultation. Then it was up to the Nuba and the people of Blue Nile to blow up the negotiations or sign. They signed and a few months later, John Garang died in a helicopter crash. Suddenly the priorities of the SPLM/A were with the South more than with the whole of the country.
Popular Consultation The Protocol for Southern Kordofan is only final when it has been endorsed by the elected members of the State Assembly. A ‘popular consultation’ will take place after the National and Regional elections scheduled for 2008. The representatives in the Southern Kordofan Assembly will either endorse the agreement as it is now, or they may try to renegotiate it with the elected Central Government. In the mean time, the State Assembly exists of appointed members, 45% of whom are SPLM, and 55% are of the National Congress Party of President al-Beshir. They have drawn up the State Constitution, and they are now determining State Legislation to ensure orderly administration. The process of implementing the CPA has been delayed for various reasons, causing a lot of frustration with both the representatives and the population. The lack of integration of Government and SPLA forces is reason for concern. But as long as the 2008 elections are not in serious danger, there is reason for optimism: anything is possible in the Nuba Mountains.
History, part I History, part II
NOTES

1. Beshir, M.O.: The Southern Sudan, Background to Conflict. 1968 2. Ibid. 3. Iten, O. :Fungor, Ein Nuba Dorf wird ruiniert, 1983 4. Simeon, J.L.: Butrus Tia Shukai, 1931 to 1985; story submitted in 2003 to the Dictionary of African Christian Biography: www.dacb.org 5. Stevenson, A.C.: The Nuba People of Kordofan Province, 1984 6. Yousif Kuwa interviewed by Stephen Amin: "Life is a school and with great lessons" Africanews Issue 61, April 2001 7. Baumann, G.: National Integration and Local Integrity, the Miri of the Nuba Mountains in the Sudan, 1987 8. Mohamed Salih, M.A.: Generation and Migration: Identity Crisis and Political Change among the Moro of the Nuba Mountains; GeoJournal 25.1 51-57, 1991 9. Baumann, 1987 10. Harragin, S.: Nuba Mountains Land and Natural Resources Study; Part I – Land Study, 2003. 11. Riefenstahl, L.: Die Nuba von Kau, 1976. 12. Baumann, 1987 13. Saavedra, M.: Ethnicity, resources and the central state: politics in the Nuba Mountains, 1950 to the 1990s; Kordofan Invaded, Peripheral and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa (Stiansen and Kevane ed.), 1998, pp.223-253. 14. Aguda, O.: Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics; The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 177-200 15. Kadouf , H.A.: Marginalization and Resistance: The Plight of the Nuba People; New Political Science, Volume 23, Number 1, 2001 16. De Waal, A. and Ajawin, Y.: Facing Genocide, the Nuba of Sudan, 1995. Marshall, M.G.: Conflict Trends in Africa, 1946-2004: A Macro-Comparative Perspective; CSP Centre for Systemic Peace. And: Gandul, I.G.: Reconciliation and local unity in Southern Kordofan , 5/15/2005 (sudaneseonline.com) 17. Harragin, 2003 18. Saavedra, 1998 19. Duany, W.: contribution the U.S. Institute of Peace Conference ‘Religion, Nationalism, and Peace in Sudan’ Tuesday, September 16, 1997. Also: Interview with John Garang in Heritage, Khartoum, Nov. 2, 9 and 16, 1987. 20. For the role of Dr. Lam Akol I relied on private correspondence between the author and K. Ajawin, brother to Joanis Ajawin and Lam Akol. Much of the information might be found in ‘Inside an African Revolution’ by L. Akol. Conformation of some of the events and additional information come from an Interview with Commander Edward Lino, Sudan Vision, February 24, 2004 21. Everyone involved remarks that Yousif Kuwa was supposed to report on his meeting with John Garang. Only few people hinted at the consequences of his aparantly single handed decision to join the SPLA. 22. Kadouf, H.A.: United We Stand and Divided We Fall; The Nuba Vision, Vol. 1, Issue 1, June 2001 23. Adam, Biraima M.: contribution to the Wikipedia. Also: private correspondence with the author, 2007. 24. As Timo, my guide in 2000, told me: “Khartoum is in our blood”. 25. Next Year in Kadugli; Africa Confidential January 1998, Vol 39 No 1 26. Suliman, M.: The Nuba conflict in the Sudan; Institute for African Alternatives (www.ifaanet.org) 27. NRRDO: Emergency Report on Buram County, January 25, 2001. 28. International Organization for Migration: IDP Intentions Concerning Return to their Places of Origin; Sample Survey; Khartoum, North, East, Central Sudan and Nuba, Khartoum, June 2005. Also: UNHC/NMPACT, Returnee Data Collection in Southern Kordofan at Five Entry Points, 1st May-3rd June, 2005.

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