Kingdoms of the Sudan

R.S. O'Fahey, J.L. Spaulding

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138211537
• eBook ISBN: 9781315451114
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book, first published in 1974, is a study of the two states which dominated the northern and western regions of Sudan from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century: the Funj kingdom of Sinn?r and the Keira sultanate of D?r F?r. Until now the history of these two states has been neglected in comparison with that of the western states of the Sudanic Belt. The authors spent years researching the documentation of the period and the present book is a concise survey of their findings, comprising history, literature, politics, economics, trade and religion.

Part One
Sinnār

II
The transitional age in Nubia, 1300-1500

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were a period of change in the riverain Sudan, of adjustment to cultural and economic developments impinging from the surrounding countries, and of accommodation to two intrusive groups – the Arabs and the Nilotic-speakers, particularly the Shilluk. The unification of Nubia early in the sixteenth century may be seen as both a Nubian reaction against the invaders, and a positive response to the new economic and social circumstances that the intrusive forces had created.

The Nubian states and the Arabs

For almost seven centuries following the Muslim conquest of Egypt, an informal and occasionally uneasy truce was maintained between Cairo and the Nubian states. During these centuries small bands of Arabs ventured south into Nubia as merchants, miners, pilgrims, or nomads; though their numbers were relatively few, the early immigrants had an important impact on the border region. Well before the fourteenth century the northernmost kingdom of Maris became Muslim, fell under Egyptian hegemony, and ultimately disappeared as an independent state.

South of Maris the Nubians retained political control of the Nile valley. The kingdom of Makuria was vigorous and indeed aggressive. On 18 August 1272, the army of Makuria descended upon the Egyptian-controlled Red Sea port of ‘Aydhāb. After sacking the city, executing the governor, the chief judge and the commercial supervisor, the Christians marched back across the desert and attacked Aswan. Warfare between Egypt and Nubia had rarely reached such proportions during the seven centuries, and with his attack King Dāwūd of Makuria precipitated a series of events that were to bring usurpers, puppets and Muslims to his throne. His country would be plundered, and the whole northern Sudan opened to the penetration of nomadic Arabs.

Makuria and Egypt were two parties in the dispute, and never after 1272 did the Nubians regain the initiative. When the devices of diplomacy, assassination, and the retention of Makurian royal hostages in Cairo failed to produce adequate tribute and maintain the subjection of the Nubian rulers, Makuria was repeatedly the object of Egyptian expeditions.¹ A third party was the ‘Urbān, the primarily nomadic and whenever possible autonomous Arab tribes of Upper Egypt and the eastern hill country of the Sudan. The Egyptian policy of subordinating and settling the ‘Urbān as peasants resulted in a long series of revolts. Escape from Egyptian rule was possible for the ‘Urbān through migration, and combined with this negative incentive was the promise of rich grazing lands away in the south where the rains began. These were known through the transit of traders and pilgrims to the Red Sea ports, and also via the early arrivals in the Sudan among the nomads themselves.

Each of the various Egyptian expeditionary forces during the struggle with Makuria employed units of ‘Urbān. In theory, the ‘Urbān were supposed to return to Egypt after concluding the campaign, there to be settled as farmers. One article of the agreement that resulted from the expedition of 1276 provided for the extradition from Makuria of any ‘Urbān who remained behind the Mamlūk army returned to Egypt.² In the circumstances it is not surprising that some groups of ‘Urbān tried to maintain themselves in riverain Nubia, or passed beyond Makuria into the more fertile lands to the south.

By the middle of the fourteenth century, Egypt had succeeded in imposing a Muslim puppet dynasty on Makuria, now commonly called Dongola after the capital city. ‘In these days’, wrote Ibn Faḍl Allāh (A.D. 1331-51),

no king is able to reign there except as a dependent of the court of the Egyptian sultans. The kings of Dongola owe a fixed tribute to the rulers of Egypt; this tribute does not consist of gold or silver, but of a certain number of slaves, male and female, of lances, and of the savage animals of Nubia.³

The puppet dynasty was not chosen from among the ‘Urbān but from Kenzi-speaking Nubians of Upper Egypt.⁴ This suggests that neither Mamlūks nor ‘Urban were strong enough to impose a non-Nubian government on Dongola. Even though it was Nubian, however, this puppet dynasty was not destined to endure. A rebel Dongolāwī faction arose, enlisted its own ‘Urbān supporters, seized the capital city and forced the puppet rulers north into the rocky gorge country of the third cataract. In reprisal, the Mamlūks launched what was to be their final expedition in 1365-6, but failed to recapture Dongola for their clients. Half a century later the Egyptian ruler was no longer mentioned in the Friday prayers in Dongola, and the tribute had been allowed to lapse. In correspondence with the Egyptian court, the ruler of Dongola was addressed in terms appropriate to an independent monarch.⁵ The wars between Egypt and Makuria did not result in the imposition of an Arab government on Dongola; Islam, however, had come to stay.

Historians have emphasized both the Christian character of medieval Nubia and the Islamic aspects of its culture following the conversion of the rulers to Islam.⁶ There is evidence, however, that both religions rested lightly over an indigenous African culture of rather a different character. In the early fifteenth century the geographer al-Bakāwī offered a revealing glimpse of the institution of kingship in the independent kingdom of Dongola, the successor to Christian Makuria.

Dongola: (long. 43° 40′; lat. 15° 30′) A large city in the land of the Nubians. It extends along the bank of the Nile for eighty miles, although its width is very little. … The inhabitants are very numerous; they are Christians and they have a king named Kābīl. They pretend that the latter is descended from Himyarite kings. It is among their customs to venerate their king as a divinity, and they observe the fiction that he never eats. Thus one brings him food in secret, and if any of his subjects sees him, he is killed instantly. The king has great authority over his subjects, who attribute to him the power to make live or make die.⁷

The veneration and seclusion of the monarch, the concealment of his bodily functions, and the belief that he bestows life upon his subjects, or withholds it, are all beliefs common to the broader conceptual pattern of Sudanic kingship. The evidence of al-Bakāwī suggests that the government of Makuria and its successor state of Dongola probably resembled that of other states in the Sudanic belt of Africa. While similar evidence for southern Nubia during the medieval period is not forthcoming, it seems fair to assume that these more isolated regions experienced lesser rather than greater cultural influence from the world of Christianity and Islam. Elements of traditional African culture would have been correspondingly stronger there.

Evidence regarding the impact of Arab penetration south of Dongola is scanty. It has been customary to attribute to the Arab nomads both an immediate political impact, the decline and fall of the southern medieval kingdom Alodia, and a long-term cultural impact, the spread of the Arabic language and Islam.⁸ Both of these interpretations require serious qualification; the first will be discussed below, and the second in the chapters to follow.

The decline of the kingdom of Alodia was well advanced by 1300, and therefore antedated the arrival in the Sudan of substantial numbers of nomadic Arabs. Archaeological investigations at Soba reveal that the material culture of the capital city of Alodia had fallen into decline as early as the thirteenth century;⁹ towards the end of that century the geographer al-Ḥarrānī was told that the capital of the southern state had shifted from Soba to ‘Waylūla’.¹⁰ and his contemporary, the Mamlūk emmisary ‘Alm al-Dīn Sanjar, found that he had to deal with nine individual rulers on his mission to Alodia.¹¹ The southern kingdom, it would seem, had lapsed into its constituent parts before the fall of Makuria and the major waves of Arab immigration. The small polities of the Nile valley south of Dongola were to remain fragmented for two centuries, a situation to which the incursion of the nomads undoubtedly contributed.¹² A visitor who passed through the region shortly before the rise of Sinnār reported to a Portuguese missionary in Ethiopia that the Nubians of the Nile valley had one hundred and fifty churches.

These churches are all in old ancient castles which there are throughout the country; and as many castles as there are, so many churches do they have. … These lordships of the Nobiis are on both sides of the Nile, and they say that there are as many captains as there are castles; they have no King, but only Captains.¹³

Such was the political situation in the Nile valley about 1500. It remains to consider the forces that were to bring the small Nubian ‘Captaincies’ under a single government.

Commerce and the Nubian captaincies, 1300–1500

Commercial patterns set during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contributed greatly to the political unification of the northern Nubian captaincies. The most important trade route connected Upper Egypt with the Red Sea. Before the fall of Christian Makuria the principal termini for this route were the entrepot of al-Qūs on the Nile and the port of ‘Aydhāb.¹⁴ Al-Qūs was in Egypt, and the Egyptian government maintained a customs post at ‘Aydhāb. The caravan route between, however, was under the control and protection of the Beja. ‘It is they’, wrote Ibn Sa‘id (c. 1286)

who conduct the pilgrims and merchants across the deserts on their camels. The security which they provide is well known in spite of the dangers on this route coming from the intrusions of the Nubians on red, camels.¹⁵

The Nubian danger reflected the aggressive posture of Makuria in the late thirteenth century; red camels are the inferior breed of the Nile valley, while good Beja camels are white. The most prominent Beja rulers from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries were the Ḥaḍāriba, a section of the Bishārīn¹⁶ who claimed ideologically fashionable Arabian ancestors.¹⁷ Although the Ḥaḍāriba occasionally proclaimed their loyalty to Egypt when an Egyptian army or fleet was at hand, in ordinary circumstances they held the food-and-waterless island ports such as ‘Aydhāb, and later Sawākīn at their mercy. In return for their protection the Beja rulers expected not only fees from individual merchants and pilgrims, but also a substantial share of the customs revenues of ‘Aydhāb. In earlier times their share had ranged from one-half (c. 1165)¹⁸ to most of the revenue (c. 1183)¹⁹; in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s day (c. 1350) they were receiving two-thirds.²⁰ This apportionment of revenues between the Ḥaḍāriba and the Egyptians seems to have been a relatively constant feature of the history of ‘Aydhāb.

As Makuria declined during the fourteenth century the primary trade route from the Nile to the Red Sea shifted south. This was caused largely by the desire of the Ḥaḍāriba to evade Egyptian control, and was facilitated by the removal of the hostile Christian regime in Dongola. The port of ‘Aydhāb faded, the victim in part of capricious Egyptian policy, as did the old Nile entrepot of al-Qūs.²¹ On the Nile the new trading centre of al-Tīn arose. It lay on the west bank, evidence that its trade was directed south via Dongola, not directly east.²²

The focus of the new commercial pattern was the Ḥaḍāriba port of Sawākīn, which lay to the south of ‘Aydhāb along the Sudanese Red Sea coast. Ibn Faḍl Allāh’s excellent mid-fourteenth-century account is worthy of quotation:

Then there is the Shaykh of the Ḥaḍāriba Samra b. Malik, who disposes of great numbers and a redoubtable force, with which he makes incursions against the Abyssinians and the peoples of the Sudan, which brings him a rich booty. All the rulers of the interior as well as other Arabs have been commanded in writing to render him aid and assistance and to accompany him in his military expeditions whenever he desires. He has received the investiture of the countries that he h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• I Introduction
• PART ONE · SINNĀR
• PART TWO · DĀR FŪR
• Notes
• Sources and Bibliography
• Index