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