posted 02 June 2005 04:47 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

Do you mean in the modern era or historically? Do you mean from a personal level or historically?

---

Historically, and you can extrapolate to the modern world, but I would also like to read personal experiences regarding the subject. The reason why is that I'm more familiar with parts of Africa that were not influenced by the Arabs, and since I know that the encounter with Arabs has transformed vast swaths of Africa, I would like to hear from people from those areas.
Relaxx

posted 02 June 2005 05:13 AM            

Best Regards

Amr

posted 02 June 2005 11:57 AM            

You have to distingush between Arabism or Arab settlements in Africa and Islam.

Most of Africa North of the Sahara is Moslem and below the Equator portions of Uganda, Mozambique, South Africa, etc. are Moslem. But Arabs--on account of their relatively small numbers--only managed to establish a few settlements in the Magreb--where the local languages were replaced by Arabic. In Northern Sudan the same thing happened with the African populations eventually being Arabised in terms of language.

To answer your question: Africa has produced more impressive civilisations that any ever produced on the Arabian penisula so neither Islam nor, for that matter, Christianity have contributed anything of note to Africa.

Of course, some will mention religion. But Islam and Christianity and Judaism(don't forget the Falasha of Ethiopia) are Monotheistic religions that have their theoretical base in Africa--Ancient Egypt/Nubia. So it is ironic that African Moslems and Christians should now pretend that these 2 faiths brought them religious enlightenment.

posted 02 June 2005 08:15 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
...Indeed, it was the Arab persians who brought the ideas of caste to the Indian continent...

---

Not so, Doug! The caste system is very ancient to India and the earliest reference to it goes back to Vedic Aryan times, long before any Muslim invasions. Because even Dravidian peoples in southern India practice the caste system in some form, it is possible the caste system was around long before the Vedic age.

Also, Persians were not the ones that introduced Islam to India. It was the Mughals, who were Mongol converts.

posted 03 June 2005 01:02 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by lamin:
To: Relaxx

You have to distingush between Arabism or Arab settlements in Africa and Islam.

---

posted 03 June 2005 01:06 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
The Arabs bad or good, were the tool of God to give us a treasure like no treasure or Ancient Glories or anything else, the treasure of the Koran.

---

posted 03 June 2005 01:12 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by relaxx:
I know many on this forum have an intimate experience with the subject above and I would like those persons to give some input.
Relaxx

---

posted 03 June 2005 01:23 AM            

I have worked in the jungles of Africa for 10 years, and I met africans living in the remotest areas of Africa, go and try to change their mind about ISLAM, GOOD LUCK. It is done it is deep rooted in African culture, no way to remove it short of a nuclear war or a great catastrophe, live with it.

posted 03 June 2005 01:32 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
One African out of two are Muslims and they are staunch believers of this religion.

I have worked in the jungles of Africa for 10 years, and I met africans living in the remotest areas of Africa, go and try to change their mind about ISLAM, GOOD LUCK.

---

posted 03 June 2005 01:35 AM            

It was the best experience a 25 year old will ever get, to know humanity and humility.

posted 03 June 2005 01:53 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
One African out of two are Muslims and they are staunch believers of this religion.

I have worked in the jungles of Africa for 10 years, and I met africans living in the remotest areas of Africa, go and try to change their mind about ISLAM, GOOD LUCK. It is done it is deep rooted in African culture, no way to remove it short of a nuclear war or a great catastrophe, live with it.

---

I was one of those. I truly believed that I had to prostrate and chant Arabic to talk to God; that I had to go to Saudi Arabia to find God; that I had to dress like an Arab to appear "decent"; that the Arabs, and not the Jews, were God's chosen people; blah, blah, blah......

I changed my mind. I have changed the minds of a few others, including some very close relatives. Some were almost fanatic back then, pretty much like one of those Front Islamique du Salut or Muslim Brotherhood guys.

Believe me, it's not that hard. All you have to do is talk some sense into them. If they have an open mind, they would see Islam for what it really is.

posted 03 June 2005 01:58 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by kembu:
I was one of those. I truly believed that I had to prostrate and chant Arabic to talk to God; that I had to go to Saudi Arabia to find God; that I had to dress like an Arab to appear "decent"; that the Arabs, and not the Jews, were God's chosen people; blah, blah, blah......

I changed my mind. I have changed the minds of a few others, including some very close relatives. Some were almost fanatic back then, pretty much like one of those Front Islamique du Salut or Muslim Brotherhood guys.

Believe me, it's not that hard. All you have to do is talk some sense into them. If they have an open mind, they would see Islam for what it really is.

BTW, Africa does not need a catastrophe or war to regain its mental independence. The Arabs would have to fight their Jihads in Arabia this time. Religious freedom would reign in Africa, quite like it did before the "Clash of Civilizations" found a battleground there.

---

Who told you that Muslims think that the Arabs are the chosen people. There is no race which has preferential treatment with God in Islam, it all depends on the strength of your faith, which will give you this righ to be close to God, not your race.

You just showed me you were never a Muslim, you just thought you were a Muslim.

posted 03 June 2005 02:17 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
Who told you that Muslims think that the Arabs are the chosen people. There is no race which has preferential treatment with God in Islam, it all depends on the strength of your faith, which will give you this righ to be close to God, not your race.

You just showed me you were never a Muslim, you just thought you were a Muslim.

---

Don't be an idiot. You can deduce this yourself. If Arabs don't have a preferential treatment, why would muslims have to pray in Arabic only? Why would they have to face Arabia? Why would the Koran go so far into "demonstrating" how the Jews lost favor with Allah, so much that Allah has to turn to the Arabs (not the Africans, East Asians, Europeans) to select a prophet? Duh!

The difference between Judaism and Islam is that the former made it explicit that they were God's chosen people, while the latter put it in more subtle terms.

True, I never was a muslim, since I was brainwashed back then. It was not something I accepted knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently. Being born into muslim family and being raised as one does not make you so. You have to accept it with all your heart and mind. I never did.

posted 03 June 2005 03:17 AM            

Back to the topic. Arabs don't really have much influence in Africa except for parts of the Northern and eastern parts of the continent. Beyond parts of Northern Africa,the Horn of Africa,and the Swahili Coast Arab historical influence in Africa is minimal.

Pre-Islamic Arabs were not very civlized,nor had any original culture up to par comparable to any African civlization like Egypt,Nubia or Aksum. Much less their closest civlization of Saba in Southern Yemen paled into comparison with the classical Near-Eastern and Mediterranean world.

The Arabs walked into civlization but never founded any civlization of their own. This is the case with the Arab invasion of Northern Africa. Most of Northern Africa was under the rulership of Byzantines untill suposedly the Arabs came and liberated the people. Even since then Northern Africa has been under the hegemony of Arab rulership.

Contacts that indigenous Africans had with Arabs have either been friendly or hostile. Arabs during the 1800's use to raid villages in Central Africa and sell the slaves to ports in areas like Zanjibar. This was mostly Omani Arabs who conquered and controlled parts of the ports of the Swahili coast.

Brianwashed mixed Arab Africans like Tippu Tip controlled their entire region and had an empire of slaves. Tippu Tip and his family still have memories of enslaving Africans from far-exotic places like Zaire. You wonder why so many Saudis,Kuwaitis,Omanians,and other Gulf Arabs have African faces. This is mainly from the slave trading that occured in these regions.

So Arabs really did not bring civlization to Egypt. Maybe they brought order and civlization to Magrebian countries which never had a civlization that rivialed that of Egypt.

Incontrast, many Bedouin Arabs were brought into Egypt and Sudan during the Middle Ages that eventually lead to these two groups intermingling. In Egypt it appears that the bedouin Arabs were forced upon the Fellahin population,and that these bedouins lived like parasites off the rural Egyptian population. Eventually many either were settled in various parts of Egypt,or went further south into the Sudan where the mixed with the local population.

One devestating effect these Arabs had was mixing with royal Nubian women in Nubian Christian kingdoms. Since Nubians were matrilineal then the mixed offspring of these unions inherited the throne;thus we have the collapse of Nubian kingdoms at the hands of the bedouins. Later many Bedouin Arab tribes also intermingled with some Beja groups in Sudan and took leadership positions amongst the Beja.

So it appears historically that encounters with Arabs in Africa have not always been positive. Many times have been negative.

Arabs are like the Borg on Star Trek being that they abosorb and transform people into Arabs.

posted 03 June 2005 08:15 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

Back to the topic. Arabs don't really have much influence in Africa except for parts of the Northern and eastern parts of the continent. Beyond parts of Northern Africa,the Horn of Africa,and the Swahili Coast Arab historical influence in Africa is minimal.

Pre-Islamic Arabs were not very civlized,nor had any original culture up to par comparable to any African civlization like Egypt,Nubia or Aksum. Much less their closest civlization of Saba in Southern Yemen paled into comparison with the classical Near-Eastern and Mediterranean world.

The Arabs walked into civlization but never founded any civlization of their own. This is the case with the Arab invasion of Northern Africa. Most of Northern Africa was under the rulership of Byzantines untill suposedly the Arabs came and liberated the people. Even since then Northern Africa has been under the hegemony of Arab rulership.

Contacts that indigenous Africans had with Arabs have either been friendly or hostile. Arabs during the 1800's use to raid villages in Central Africa and sell the slaves to ports in areas like Zanjibar. This was mostly Omani Arabs who conquered and controlled parts of the ports of the Swahili coast.

Brianwashed mixed Arab Africans like Tippu Tip controlled their entire region and had an empire of slaves. Tippu Tip and his family still have memories of enslaving Africans from far-exotic places like Zaire. You wonder why so many Saudis,Kuwaitis,Omanians,and other Gulf Arabs have African faces. This is mainly from the slave trading that occured in these regions.

So Arabs really did not bring civlization to Egypt. Maybe they brought order and civlization to Magrebian countries which never had a civlization that rivialed that of Egypt.

Incontrast, many Bedouin Arabs were brought into Egypt and Sudan during the Middle Ages that eventually lead to these two groups intermingling. In Egypt it appears that the bedouin Arabs were forced upon the Fellahin population,and that these bedouins lived like parasites off the rural Egyptian population. Eventually many either were settled in various parts of Egypt,or went further south into the Sudan where the mixed with the local population.

One devestating effect these Arabs had was mixing with royal Nubian women in Nubian Christian kingdoms. Since Nubians were matrilineal then the mixed offspring of these unions inherited the throne;thus we have the collapse of Nubian kingdoms at the hands of the bedouins. Later many Bedouin Arab tribes also intermingled with some Beja groups in Sudan and took leadership positions amongst the Beja.

So it appears historically that encounters with Arabs in Africa have not always been positive. Many times have been negative.

Arabs are like the Borg on Star Trek being that they abosorb and transform people into Arabs.

---

Can you say as an Egyptin you are pure decendant of AE, that you have no other blood?

Can you say with no doubt that Muabarak has no Egyptian blood running in his veins?

No you can not.

That is why I insist that the whole population of Egypt, not Sinai, are the decendants of AE, MIXED WITH OTHERS WHO CAME TO LIVE THERE.

I agree with Collins that whoever came is minimal compared to the original people, but probably managed to whiten us a little, across Egypt and North Sudan.

posted 03 June 2005 11:14 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

Back to the topic. Arabs don't really have much influence in Africa except for parts of the Northern and eastern parts of the continent. Beyond parts of Northern Africa,the Horn of Africa,and the Swahili Coast Arab historical influence in Africa is minimal.

Pre-Islamic Arabs were not very civlized,nor had any original culture up to par comparable to any African civlization like Egypt,Nubia or Aksum. Much less their closest civlization of Saba in Southern Yemen paled into comparison with the classical Near-Eastern and Mediterranean world.

The Arabs walked into civlization but never founded any civlization of their own. This is the case with the Arab invasion of Northern Africa. Most of Northern Africa was under the rulership of Byzantines untill suposedly the Arabs came and liberated the people. Even since then Northern Africa has been under the hegemony of Arab rulership.

Contacts that indigenous Africans had with Arabs have either been friendly or hostile. Arabs during the 1800's use to raid villages in Central Africa and sell the slaves to ports in areas like Zanjibar. This was mostly Omani Arabs who conquered and controlled parts of the ports of the Swahili coast.

Brianwashed mixed Arab Africans like Tippu Tip controlled their entire region and had an empire of slaves. Tippu Tip and his family still have memories of enslaving Africans from far-exotic places like Zaire. You wonder why so many Saudis,Kuwaitis,Omanians,and other Gulf Arabs have African faces. This is mainly from the slave trading that occured in these regions.

So Arabs really did not bring civlization to Egypt. Maybe they brought order and civlization to Magrebian countries which never had a civlization that rivialed that of Egypt.

Incontrast, many Bedouin Arabs were brought into Egypt and Sudan during the Middle Ages that eventually lead to these two groups intermingling. In Egypt it appears that the bedouin Arabs were forced upon the Fellahin population,and that these bedouins lived like parasites off the rural Egyptian population. Eventually many either were settled in various parts of Egypt,or went further south into the Sudan where the mixed with the local population.

One devestating effect these Arabs had was mixing with royal Nubian women in Nubian Christian kingdoms. Since Nubians were matrilineal then the mixed offspring of these unions inherited the throne;thus we have the collapse of Nubian kingdoms at the hands of the bedouins. Later many Bedouin Arab tribes also intermingled with some Beja groups in Sudan and took leadership positions amongst the Beja.

So it appears historically that encounters with Arabs in Africa have not always been positive. Many times have been negative.

Arabs are like the Borg on Star Trek being that they abosorb and transform people into Arabs.

---

posted 03 June 2005 02:09 PM            

AND AFRICANS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND WESTERN DARFUR ARE NOT NUBIANS.

posted 03 June 2005 02:27 PM            

AND AFRICANS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND WESTERN DARFUR ARE NOT NUBIANS.

just because you say so?leave up to you to say something incorrect.
most nubians have always marry within their family and most nubians of southern nubia and in the nuba hills are unmixed nubians,even some in other parts of nubia as well or maybe most but barely.

I met a few and none of them said they had any arab backgrounds.so don't tell me what you wish had happen, deal with the folks who know there background.SOME NUBIANS LIVE IN OTHER PARTS OF AFRICA AND THE WORLD.

I agree that most in egypt have some form of mixture put some are unmixed,but most in the sudan are UNMIXED.
if you are talking about SOME nubians that have some form of mixture,it is with other unmixed africans. mixture does not always mean in your warp mind mixing with other races.
so yes if you are talking about ethnic mixture dealing with other blacks,then so be it,but i am not talking about racial mixture with other races and most nubians in the sudan are unmixed, facts are facts,and some mixture that did happen in nubia and egypt did not happen over night,it took time.there are some nubians living in darfur and the nuba hills,look it up.
hill nubians live in the nuba hills with the noba and other africans.
i have done alot of research on nubia so someone who does not know jack about egypt in the first place should not be telling us about nubia,because i have done research about it years,i have talked to scholars and nubians themselves.nubia always interest me more so than egypt,so leave nubia alone.

hill nubians below.

Nuba Survival
An impartial and independent organisation dedicated to promoting the cause of the Nuba People of Sudan.



HOME


BOOKS

CONFERENCES

FILMS

LINKS

NEWS & EVENTS

NUBA CULTURE

NUBA SURVIVAL

NUBA VISION

PHOTOGRAPHS

SEARCH


Nuba Vision

Volume 1, Issue 3, February 2002

Nuba Languages and History:
Who is related to who in and outside of the Nuba Mountains and did they come from anywhere else?

Robin Thelwall, Calgary

A Bit about myself

I first went to the Sudan to take up a post as lecturer in Phonetics in the English Dept at Khartoum University in July 1966 after two years postgraduate studies in this field at Edinburgh.

In my reading up about the languages of the Sudan, which attracted me because there were so many of them, and so many had had hardly any descriptive work done on them, I read about the complexity of the linguistic situation in the Nuba Mountains.

In December 1966 I took a lift, with my wife, with an anthropologist friend, Lewis Hill, who was going by Landrover to Bara and El Obeid, where he would put us on a lorry for Kadugli. One of my students, Abdulla Ibrahim Abdalla Kumodo was in Kadugli and we had arranged to meet him there. We stayed in the government rest house which was quite busy. The weather at that time of the year was fine and the Jebels looked most attractive with good grass and trees in bloom.

I met up with Abdulla and we spent several hours sitting in cafes at the market place. He would try and identify a few of the many people we saw passing. Finally we asked one passerby if he would sit with us and tell me a few words in his language. I had a standard wordlist of 100 items for fieldwork and he turned out to speak a language that he called Logorik. I discovered on returning to Khartoum that this was a variety of what the scholarly literature called Daju and had several related languages in the Mountains. Logorik (also known as Liguri) was spoken to the north east of Kadugli near Hajar el Mek.

It turned out that Abdulla’s family lived in Hajar el Mek and on later visits we stayed with him and his very hospitable family, consisting of his father who ran a sewing machine on the veranda of one of the merchant’s shop in town and his mother and stepmothers and brothers and sisters of whom there always seemed a crowd and always a new youngster crawling around the house.

I pursued further research on Daju and continued by working on varieties spoken near Lagowa and later in Darfur at Nyala and south of Jebel Marra in the Wadi Azum. Also during my work in Darfur I worked on varieties of the Nubian language group (Birgid and later Midob) and did a little work on some "Hill Nubian" languages spoken in the northern Nuba Mountains. I had always been interested in history and later came into regular contact with those archeologists working on the early Sudan. This led me to try and make historical sense of what is known of the languages of the Sudan and their relationships for the understanding to some little degree of the past history of languages in Sudan and perhaps of the past history of the peoples. Unfortunately language history is not exactly the same as ethno-history, but you can’t do the one without some idea of the other, and vice versa.

So what follows is a sketch of what linguists know about the historical relationships of the languages of the Nuba Mountains and what we may infer, and perhaps speculate, about the past of the speakers of those languages. The sources that Suleiman Rahhal mentions in his outline about the Nuba peoples and languages in "The Right to be Nuba" have been superseded over the years since the late 50s and early 60s, but have not been made easily available to the general reader.

A Bit about African language classification

The most significant new account of the relationships of all the languages in Africa was made by the American Joseph Greenberg in a series of articles published after 1945 and collected and revised in a single volume published in 1955 and revised somewhat in 1966. Since that time a large amount of work has been done in the recording and description of languages all over Africa. So, although there are still a large number of languages still almost undescribed (including most of the languages of the Nuba Mountains) we do have just enough material to revise Greenberg’s outline in a number of areas

One of the problems affecting most of the classifications before Greenberg is that many of the fundamental ideas about the different ethnic and linguistic groupings were influenced by old European ideas of race including the use of such terms as Hamitic and Semitic (and even Hamito-Semitic) and Negroid. Greenberg made one crucial change by trying to get away from "ethnic" or racial labels and replacing them with geographical labels which, other things being equal, should be more neutral.

Greenberg proposed four major language families for all of Africa (also called phyla after botanical classifications): Niger-Kordofanian (covering languages spoken from West Africa to East and South Africa including the very numerous Bantu sub-group and some languages of the Nuba Mountains), Afroasiatic (covering Arabic, Berber of North Africa, a large number of languages in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and a group including Hausa around the Lake Chad area), Khoisan (which includes languages spoken in Namibia and South Africa) Nilo-Saharan (mostly in the Sudan and Chad but also as far west as Mali and into Ethiopia and East Africa, including the very numerous Nilotic sub-group). Within Nilo-Saharan Greenberg proposed a large sub-group - Chari-Nile - which has subsequently been revised out of existence. The model of Nilo-Saharan that I will use here is that developed by M.L. Bender as a result of his own work over the last 35 years and his use of new publications over that time. I will also base my analysis on some of my own work on the Daju language group and the Nubian group. Full references are available to anyone who wishes to contact me.

A Bit of History

Evidence for the history of the Sudan is extremely limited before the 1800s with the major exception of the Nile Valley. We know quite a lot about the Kerma, Napata, Meroe and Nile Nubian civilisations although we do not understand Meroitic and are not sure of its relationship to other present-day language groups of the Sudan or Africa. Reliable scholars have rejected the possibility of Meroitic being related to Afroasiatic languages (the nearest geographically is Beja). Recent attempts to review the situation incline towards it being part of Nilo-Saharan, but this is still unproven. We also know of political states in Aksum in Northern Ethiopia, in Kanem and Bornu in eastern Nigeria; of the Funj state in the Blue Nile and the Daju, Tunjur and Fur "states" in Darfur as well as the relatively recent Kingdom of Taqali in the Rashad area of the Nuba Mountains. The Nuba Mountains only figure in indirect ways - perhaps as illustrations on Egyptian walls of wrestlers or certain hairstyles and facial scarring. Also as slaves in Egypt and other countries outside the Sudan.

A Bit of a Problem!

In scholarly writing there is almost no-one who now confuses Nubia or Nubian with Nuba or Nuba Mountains. In Arabic, and particularly in Sudanese usage the terms seem to get confused. There is no ethnic group in the Nuba Mountains that uses this term for themselves. The problem is that we have almost no archeological evidence or ethnic history for the regions west of the Nile, from Aswan to Malakal, which clearly links to the Nile states. So any claims about links between Nuba (Mts) and Nubia or Nubians (except for the Hill Nubian languages which are discussed below) are speculative.

How to simplify the complexity of the Nuba Mountain Language Situation

Of the about fifty languages spoken in the Nuba Mountains (I am of course talking about the situation that persisted at least until the late 70s) we classify them into members of two or perhaps three language families - Nilo-Saharan and Kordofanian (sub-family of the Niger-Kordofanian family). Of course in addition there is Arabic which could not have been spoken in the area prior to the Muslim invasions of Egypt in the 700s (Common Era) or the first century AH and there are also speakers of Fulani and some other West African languages. All the other languages of the Mountains well predate that period and in most cases were spoken there from time immemorial. The Kordofanian languages consist of four groups: Heiban, Talodi, Rashad and Katla - these names are based on their geographical centres (proposed by Thilo Schadeberg) and differ from names used in previous literature. The Kadugli Group was earlier classified by Greenberg as part of Kordofanian but removedfrom that relationship by Schadeberg and is currently considered probably part of Nilo-Saharan. The Kordofanian sub-groups are located in the southern and eastern areas of the Nuba Mountains. The Kadugli Group is located in the south east central fringe area near Kadugli.

The rest of the Nuba languages are classified as part of a major sub-group of Nilo-Saharan called East Sudanic. Relatives to these languages outside the Mountains include the various Nilotic groups and some smaller groups including Tama of Darfur, Nera of Eritrea and the Jebel groups of the Upper Blue Nile.

The "Hill Nubian" and Daju languages spoken in the Mountains have their major relatives outside the Mountains and we can reconstruct some details of their history and as a result propose that they each came into the Nuba Mountains to settle among the existing Nuba populations.

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 Nuba Mountains 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, at least.

The Daju-speaking Groups

The Daju Language Group consists of at least six varieties spread out over a wide area from Eastern Chad to the Nuba Mountains.

We know that Southern Darfur was the centre of a Daju state perhaps as early as 1200 CE which was later displaced by the Tunjur and then the Fur who ruled from the Jebel Marra range. There are various traditions of Daju dispersion including a number of myths celebrating Ahmad el-Daj. Whatever the case, it is clear that the Daju controlled the area between southern Jebel Marra and perhaps as far east as the western edges of the Nuba Mountains. The Shatt and Liguri who are now well inside the Nuba Mts and north-east of Kadugli have been separated from the rest of the Daju for a long time (perhaps as much as 2000 years). The Daju of Dar el-Kabira and Lagawa are much more closely related linguistically to the Nyala and then to the Dar Sila Daju. This makes us think that there were two periods of Daju movement east, the first by the Shatt and Liguri and the second and perhaps related to the expansion and dominance by the South Darfur Daju, by the Lagawa Daju.

The arrival of Islam

Again the picture is very incomplete and uncertain. The following proposed "events" are based on the latest summary to be published this year.

639-640 AD Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt led by Amr ibn al ‘As for Khalifa ‘Omar. This begins the first Muslim contacts with Lower Nubians who are forced to pay tribute in slaves and livestock and promise no aggression against Egypt.

641-2 AD Islamic armies of ‘Amr ibn al`As reach the plain north of Dongola but fail to capture it.

646 AD Egyptians attack Nubia.

652 AD A "baqt" treaty established between Nubia and Egypt under Abdallah ibn Sa’ad ibn Abi Sahr. Nubia would provide 360 slaves each year and promise no attacks; Egypt would provide 1300 "kanyr" of wine. Old Dongola is captured for a period; conflicts noted between Makuria and Nobatia

950 AD Some Muslims reported at Soba

1275-1365 Period of warfare between Mamlukes and Nubians

1276 AD Mamluke Egyptians sack Dongola; forced conversion to Islam; King Dawud captured

1289 AD Last Mamluke military campaign against Dongola.

1317 AD Defeat of the last Christian king in Nubia and the first Muslim king Abdullah Barshambu on the throne in Dongola; "baqt" re-established; first mosque is built at Dongola

ISLAM REACHES THE CENTRAL SUDAN: Rise of Funj and Fur Sultanates

1504 AD The fall of Soba, capital of the last Christian kingdom of Alwa; the beginning of the

Islamic Funj Sultanate at Sennar.

Extracted from online draft: Historical Dictionary of the Sudan (3rd Edition) for subsequent Islamic chronology to the present. Forthcoming in Early 2002 by Richard Lobban, Robert Kramer and Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Scarecrow Press

What can we conclude?

We can propose "layers" of the Nuba language groups (and by implication their speakers) in terms of oldest inhabitants to most recent.

Oldest Kordofanian

Nyimang; Temein; Kadugli (perhaps representing and expansion of East Sudanic)

Daju Shatt & Liguri (perhaps as early as 100 BCE)

Hill Nubian (perhaps sometime between 300 and 1400 CE)

Most recent Daju Lagawa (perhaps as late as the 1300s)

The relationship between Kordofanian and the rest of Niger-Kordofanian is still not clear but the family has a time depth of a minimum of 6000 years.

The earliest date for the arrival of Islam in the Nuba Mountains is likely to be after the beginning of the establishment of Sennar, i.e. after 1504 CE

The only two groups for whom presence in the Nuba Mountains is within the last two thousand years are the Lagawa Daju and the "Hill Nubians". All other languages (and by inference people) are likely to have been in the Mountains for at least 2000 years or more.

Nuba Survival
PO Box 486
28 East Walk, Hayes
Middlesex, UB3 3WZ
United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)20 8813 5831 e-mail: nubasurvival38@aol.com

http://www.nubasurvival.com/Nuba%20Vision/Vol%201%20Issue%203/7%20Language%20and %20history.htm

[This message has been edited by kenndo (edited 03 June 2005).]

[This message has been edited by kenndo (edited 03 June 2005).]

The midob(nubians) and arabized midob nubians live in a region called jebal midob in darfur.some live in other places but here is the proof that some nubians live in darfur

kostastest
ETHNOLOGUE
ETHNOLOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PUBLICATIONS
PUBLICATIONS
SOFTWARE
SOFTWARE
WHO WE ARE
WHO WE ARE
SHOPPING CART
SHOPPING CART

Web version
Web version

Print version
Print version

Overview
Overview

Browse
Browse

Search the Ethnologue
Search the Ethnologue

Feedback & FAQs
Feedback & FAQs

Preface to the Web Version
Preface to the Web Version

Introduction to the Printed Volume
Introduction to the Printed Volume

Abbreviations
Abbreviations

Bibliography of Ethnologue Data Sources
Bibliography of Ethnologue Data Sources

Links of Interest
Links of Interest

Nearly Extinct Languages
Nearly Extinct Languages

Policies
Policies

Statistical Summaries
Statistical Summaries

Terms of Use
Terms of Use

Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy

External Links Disclaimer
External Links Disclaimer

World Area
World Area

Language Size
Language Size

Language Family
Language Family

Country
Country

Country Index with Maps
Country Index with Maps

Language Codes
Language Codes

Language Families
Language Families

Language Names
Language Names

About the SIL Bibliography
About the SIL Bibliography

Browse
Browse

Introduction
Introduction

FAQs
FAQs

Authors
Authors

Countries
Countries

Serials
Serials

Subjects
Subjects

Browse
Browse

New Publications
New Publications

On-line Publications
On-line Publications

Serial Publications and Journals
Serial Publications and Journals

Contact the International Academic Bookstore
Contact the International Academic Bookstore

Authors
Authors

Categories
Categories

Titles
Titles

Overview
Overview

Index of Series
Index of Series

Overview
Overview

SIL Language Software
SIL Language Software

LinguaLinks
LinguaLinks

SIL Software Technical Support and Training
SIL Software Technical Support and Training

LinguaLinks Overview
LinguaLinks Overview

LinguaLinks Library
LinguaLinks Library

LinguaLinks Workshops
LinguaLinks Workshops

LinguaLinks Technical Support and Training
LinguaLinks Technical Support and Training

Catalog of Whole-Text Works
Catalog of Whole-Text Works

Complete Subject Index
Complete Subject Index

LinguaLinks Workshop Tools Tutorial
LinguaLinks Workshop Tools Tutorial

Policies
Policies

Contact Us
Contact Us

Terms of Use
Terms of Use

Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy

External Links Disclaimer
External Links Disclaimer

SITE SEARCH SITE MAP
Ethnologue > Web version > Country index > Africa > Sudan > Midob
Midob
A language of Sudan
ISO/DIS 639-3: mei

Population 50,000 (1993 R. Werner).
Region Northern Sudan, Dar Fur Province, Jebel Midob, and settled communities in Omdurman and Gezira Aba. The center is Malha.
Alternate names Meidob, Midobi, Tidda, Tid, Tid-N-Aal
Dialects Shelkota (Shalkota), Kaageddi, Urrti (Uurti). Lexical similarity 51% with Birgid (closest).
Classification Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Eastern, Nubian, Western
Comments Pastoralists. Muslim.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ethnologue: Web | Ethnologue: Print | Bibliography | Publications Catalog | Software
Who we are | Shopping cart | Site search | Site map | Home

URL: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=mei
Bibliography database last modified: May-2005
Publications catalog database last modified: May-2005
Ethnologue data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15th Edition
Contact us

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | External links
Copyright © 2001–2005 SIL International
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=mei

midob nubian numbers in that region is much larger than 50,000 today since that census is old and out of date or incorrect since 1993.

[This message has been edited by kenndo (edited 03 June 2005).]

posted 03 June 2005 02:57 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
There is not a single pure Nubian or AE, ANY WHERE IN NORTH SUDAN AND EGYPT. THEY HAVE THROUGHLY HAVE MIXED WITH THE MIGRANT POPULATION.

AND AFRICANS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND WESTERN DARFUR ARE NOT NUBIANS.

---

posted 03 June 2005 03:01 PM            

I appreciate the information but we are getting slightly off topic. I just mentioned the history of Sudan as an example of Arab-African relations. The topic is Arab's effect on Africa was it positive or negative.

posted 03 June 2005 03:18 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

I appreciate the information but we are getting slightly off topic. I just mentioned the history of Sudan as an example of Arab-African relations. The topic is Arab's effect on Africa was it positive or negative.

---

THE arab effect on africa was very negative,and you could see that in north africa,egypt,sudan,parts of east africa and parts of northwest africa.

posted 03 June 2005 03:34 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Super car:
Ever heard such a thing called 'upper' Nubia? I doubt it, if your previous comments are anything to go by.

---

I LIVE IN UPPER NUBIA, BORN AND RAISED THERE KNIT WIT.

posted 03 June 2005 03:39 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
I LIVE IN UPPER NUBIA, BORN AND RAISED THERE KNIT WIT.

---

Then why do you make ignorant comments like this?...

quote:

---

AND AFRICANS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND WESTERN DARFUR ARE NOT NUBIANS.

---

posted 03 June 2005 03:45 PM            

The Nubians are the people who lived and still live between Kosti in Central Sudan and Aswan.

Darfur and Southern Sudan has nothing to do with Nubia.

Nuba mountain people are 750 thousand people and they are nopt the only Nubians. Those are people whose ancestors moved from Dongola to this rich mountains in central Sudan married into the natives there and called the area the Nuba mountains.

I live in Khartoum

posted 03 June 2005 03:47 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
Because they are not,

The Nubians are the people who lived and still live between Kosti in Central Sudan and Aswan.

Darfur and Southern Sudan has nothing to do with Nubia.

Nuba mountain people are 750 thousand people and they are nopt the only Nubians. Those are people whose ancestors moved from Dongola to this rich mountains in central Sudan married into the natives there and called the area the Nuba mountains.

I live in Khartoum

Best Regards,

---

Do you have any idea where the supposed "Nubian" region extended to?

BTW, I agree with Ausar, we are drifting away from the main topic. I suggest you open another thread dealing with this subject on Nubia, and perhaps, some of us will have an opportunity to provide you lessons on Nubia.

posted 03 June 2005 03:49 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by kenndo:
THE arab effect on africa was very negative,and you could see that in north africa,egypt,sudan,parts of east africa and parts of northwest africa.

---

It is very positive and the ugliness you see in Sudan is due to African tribalism, it has nothing to do with Isla, christianity, arabs or Europeans.

It is the fact that we are some fools killing each other and we would do it whether we are animist, chrsiatins or Muslims.

posted 03 June 2005 03:52 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
It is very positive and the ugliness you see in Sudan is due to African tribalism, it has nothing to do with Isla, christianity, arabs or Europeans.

It is the fact that we are some fools killing each other and we would do it whether we are animist, chrsiatins or Muslims.

Islam tried to destroy tribalsim in Africa and Muslims made it to fail tremendously, their african tribalism got the best of us.

---

So basically what you are telling us, is that you aren't aware of the obvious fact that the self-identified "Arab" Sudanese are waging a war on the indigenous Southern Sudanese?

posted 03 June 2005 04:37 PM            

SEE RAWANDA, SEE CONGO, WHERE 5 MILLION DIED THERE IN THE LAST 5 YEARS, MORE THAN THE SOUTHERN SUDAN WAR AND THERE IS NO ISLAM AND NO ARABS.

What is happening IN THE WARS OF AFRICA is african tribalism nothing to do with islam or christianity or arabs or europeans IN AFRICA.

posted 03 June 2005 04:53 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
War between North and South would have happened between North and South, reagrdless of ISLAM.

SEE RAWANDA, SEE CONGO, WHERE 5 MILLION DIED THERE IN THE LAST 5 YEARS, MORE THAN THE SOUTHERN SUDAN WAR AND THERE IS NO ISLAM AND NO ARABS.

What is happening IN THE WARS OF AFRICA is african tribalism nothing to do with islam or christianity or arabs or europeans IN AFRICA.

---

From what documentation, can you elaborate on the idea of North Sudanese regions waging a war against Southern Sudanese regions, purely along ethnic lines prior to the Arab or foreign invasions?

Not to say that there weren't conflicts among Africans prior to the intrusions of foreign invaders, but from what I understand, many of the conflicts you hear in Africa, are largely the result of colonization; the divide and rule strategy, and drawing up imaginary boundaries in places, where they were previously absent!

posted 03 June 2005 09:03 PM            

Re Rwanda and the strife in the Congo: you seem to naively believe what the Western media tell you.

The 5 million number for the Congo is strictly bogus and Rwanda was vastly exaggerated. In the case of Rwanda the Tutsis were 12% of the 6.9 million population pre-war(1994), now they are 15-19% of 8 million people. So where is the so-called genocide.

posted 03 June 2005 09:17 PM            

The reason is because Persians were able to keep their indigenous language and culture intact. After the 33rd dyansty in Egypt, many foreigners flooded Egypt,and then the culture slowly began to fragment. Then little things like Christianity came and brought the temple culture of Egypt to a halt and these fanatic Christians destoyed the temples and the language. Of course the Christians also abosrbed and kept many cultural facets in place.

Basically, after the Byzantine invasion and occupation,and later the Arab occupation of Egypt only the more rural Egyptian fellahin were able to hold onto vestiages of long-gone pharaonic culture. This is why rural villages far away from the cities were able to speak the Coptic language in everyday commerce untill the late 17th century.

Arabic replaced Coptic under the rulership of the caliph around the 700's.

Further south in Nubia there was sucessful Christian kingdoms that were latter destoyed by incoming bedouin tribes. These bedouin tribes intermarried with Nubian royalthy and dismantled the monarchy. This and continued pressure from the Mamelukes eventually turned these kingdoms into Islamic ones.

After the series of colonization by the Ottomans,British,and French, the Egyptians felt no other alternative was to join with the so-called Arab world to fight against colonization. Most people in Egypt around this time were simple peasents often ignorant of their own pharaonic past. They did have a unique idenity that was ibn-al-balad something that distinguished themselves from Arabs,Turks,British,and other foreigners.

After the Nasserite regine and overthrow of Farouk Egyptians began to look to the Arab world embracing Pan-Arabism.

posted 03 June 2005 11:48 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

...Persians were able to keep their indigenous language and culture intact...

---

posted 03 June 2005 11:48 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by lamin:
To Amri

Re Rwanda and the strife in the Congo: you seem to naively believe what the Western media tell you.

The 5 million number for the Congo is strictly bogus and Rwanda was vastly exaggerated. In the case of Rwanda the Tutsis were 12% of the 6.9 million population pre-war(1994), now they are 15-19% of 8 million people. So where is the so-called genocide.

---

Most estimates put the figure at 850,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. At least a third killed during the genocide were moderate Hutus. Tutsis were not the only ones killed.

Now if you had to add the substantial number of Tutsi exiles who returned to Rwanda with the Paul Kagame's RPF, that should tell you something. Not to mention the massive number of Hutus who were killed by the advancing RPF troops or those who fled to neighboring countries such as Congo to escape the RPF's onslaught and possible retribution. Not to mention the Tutsis who were masquerading as Hutus to prevent being killed and immediately started re-identifying themselves as Tutsis when the RPF took power. It figures.

So these figures are not plain bogus. It's also probable that they are underestimated.

posted 04 June 2005 01:26 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

The reason is because Persians were able to keep their indigenous language and culture intact. After the 33rd dyansty in Egypt, many foreigners flooded Egypt,and then the culture slowly began to fragment. Then little things like Christianity came and brought the temple culture of Egypt to a halt and these fanatic Christians destoyed the temples and the language. Of course the Christians also abosrbed and kept many cultural facets in place.

Basically, after the Byzantine invasion and occupation,and later the Arab occupation of Egypt only the more rural Egyptian fellahin were able to hold onto vestiages of long-gone pharaonic culture. This is why rural villages far away from the cities were able to speak the Coptic language in everyday commerce untill the late 17th century.

Arabic replaced Coptic under the rulership of the caliph around the 700's.

Further south in Nubia there was sucessful Christian kingdoms that were latter destoyed by incoming bedouin tribes. These bedouin tribes intermarried with Nubian royalthy and dismantled the monarchy. This and continued pressure from the Mamelukes eventually turned these kingdoms into Islamic ones.

After the series of colonization by the Ottomans,British,and French, the Egyptians felt no other alternative was to join with the so-called Arab world to fight against colonization. Most people in Egypt around this time were simple peasents often ignorant of their own pharaonic past. They did have a unique idenity that was ibn-al-balad something that distinguished themselves from Arabs,Turks,British,and other foreigners.

After the Nasserite regine and overthrow of Farouk Egyptians began to look to the Arab world embracing Pan-Arabism.

---

except for southern nubia,that kingdom was detroyed by the funj(the funj-a confederation of other southern nubians and other africans.the funj had some arab help,but the arabs who help them were reconquered by the funj.the southern nubia kingdom of alwa was more aware of the arab settlers and the royal family did not intermarry with them.
THE three regions of nubia-
lower nubia
upper nubia
and southern nubia
southern nubia from around the city of meroe to senner.
the nubian region expanded over time.

posted 04 June 2005 01:37 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
Because they are not,

The Nubians are the people who lived and still live between Kosti in Central Sudan and Aswan.

Darfur and Southern Sudan has nothing to do with Nubia.

Nuba mountain people are 750 thousand people and they are nopt the only Nubians. Those are people whose ancestors moved from Dongola to this rich mountains in central Sudan married into the natives there and called the area the Nuba mountains.

I live in Khartoum

Best Regards,

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1

AND AFRICANS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND WESTERN DARFUR ARE NOT NUBIANS.
read this carefully again.i just said that nubians lived all the way to sennar because that is were the southern nubia kingdom of alwa expanded to. nubians lived in axum,other parst of sudan,east, west and a few in the southern part.of course in the past southern nubia was a part of southern sudan.some nubians live in uganda,kenya and other parts of the world and africa.wake up.

there are some nubians living in darfur and the nuba hills,look it up.
hill nubians live in the nuba hills with the noba and other africans.
i have done alot of research on nubia so someone who does not know jack about egypt in the first place should not be telling us about nubia,because i have done research about it years,i have talked to scholars and nubians themselves.nubia always interest me more so than egypt,so leave nubia alone.

hill nubians below.

Nuba Survival
An impartial and independent organisation dedicated to promoting the cause of the Nuba People of Sudan.



HOME


BOOKS

CONFERENCES

FILMS

LINKS

NEWS & EVENTS

NUBA CULTURE

NUBA SURVIVAL

NUBA VISION

PHOTOGRAPHS

SEARCH


Nuba Vision

Volume 1, Issue 3, February 2002

Nuba Languages and History:
Who is related to who in and outside of the Nuba Mountains and did they come from anywhere else?

Robin Thelwall, Calgary

A Bit about myself

I first went to the Sudan to take up a post as lecturer in Phonetics in the English Dept at Khartoum University in July 1966 after two years postgraduate studies in this field at Edinburgh.

In my reading up about the languages of the Sudan, which attracted me because there were so many of them, and so many had had hardly any descriptive work done on them, I read about the complexity of the linguistic situation in the Nuba Mountains.

In December 1966 I took a lift, with my wife, with an anthropologist friend, Lewis Hill, who was going by Landrover to Bara and El Obeid, where he would put us on a lorry for Kadugli. One of my students, Abdulla Ibrahim Abdalla Kumodo was in Kadugli and we had arranged to meet him there. We stayed in the government rest house which was quite busy. The weather at that time of the year was fine and the Jebels looked most attractive with good grass and trees in bloom.

I met up with Abdulla and we spent several hours sitting in cafes at the market place. He would try and identify a few of the many people we saw passing. Finally we asked one passerby if he would sit with us and tell me a few words in his language. I had a standard wordlist of 100 items for fieldwork and he turned out to speak a language that he called Logorik. I discovered on returning to Khartoum that this was a variety of what the scholarly literature called Daju and had several related languages in the Mountains. Logorik (also known as Liguri) was spoken to the north east of Kadugli near Hajar el Mek.

It turned out that Abdulla’s family lived in Hajar el Mek and on later visits we stayed with him and his very hospitable family, consisting of his father who ran a sewing machine on the veranda of one of the merchant’s shop in town and his mother and stepmothers and brothers and sisters of whom there always seemed a crowd and always a new youngster crawling around the house.

I pursued further research on Daju and continued by working on varieties spoken near Lagowa and later in Darfur at Nyala and south of Jebel Marra in the Wadi Azum. Also during my work in Darfur I worked on varieties of the Nubian language group (Birgid and later Midob) and did a little work on some "Hill Nubian" languages spoken in the northern Nuba Mountains. I had always been interested in history and later came into regular contact with those archeologists working on the early Sudan. This led me to try and make historical sense of what is known of the languages of the Sudan and their relationships for the understanding to some little degree of the past history of languages in Sudan and perhaps of the past history of the peoples. Unfortunately language history is not exactly the same as ethno-history, but you can’t do the one without some idea of the other, and vice versa.

So what follows is a sketch of what linguists know about the historical relationships of the languages of the Nuba Mountains and what we may infer, and perhaps speculate, about the past of the speakers of those languages. The sources that Suleiman Rahhal mentions in his outline about the Nuba peoples and languages in "The Right to be Nuba" have been superseded over the years since the late 50s and early 60s, but have not been made easily available to the general reader.

A Bit about African language classification

The most significant new account of the relationships of all the languages in Africa was made by the American Joseph Greenberg in a series of articles published after 1945 and collected and revised in a single volume published in 1955 and revised somewhat in 1966. Since that time a large amount of work has been done in the recording and description of languages all over Africa. So, although there are still a large number of languages still almost undescribed (including most of the languages of the Nuba Mountains) we do have just enough material to revise Greenberg’s outline in a number of areas

One of the problems affecting most of the classifications before Greenberg is that many of the fundamental ideas about the different ethnic and linguistic groupings were influenced by old European ideas of race including the use of such terms as Hamitic and Semitic (and even Hamito-Semitic) and Negroid. Greenberg made one crucial change by trying to get away from "ethnic" or racial labels and replacing them with geographical labels which, other things being equal, should be more neutral.

Greenberg proposed four major language families for all of Africa (also called phyla after botanical classifications): Niger-Kordofanian (covering languages spoken from West Africa to East and South Africa including the very numerous Bantu sub-group and some languages of the Nuba Mountains), Afroasiatic (covering Arabic, Berber of North Africa, a large number of languages in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and a group including Hausa around the Lake Chad area), Khoisan (which includes languages spoken in Namibia and South Africa) Nilo-Saharan (mostly in the Sudan and Chad but also as far west as Mali and into Ethiopia and East Africa, including the very numerous Nilotic sub-group). Within Nilo-Saharan Greenberg proposed a large sub-group - Chari-Nile - which has subsequently been revised out of existence. The model of Nilo-Saharan that I will use here is that developed by M.L. Bender as a result of his own work over the last 35 years and his use of new publications over that time. I will also base my analysis on some of my own work on the Daju language group and the Nubian group. Full references are available to anyone who wishes to contact me.

A Bit of History

Evidence for the history of the Sudan is extremely limited before the 1800s with the major exception of the Nile Valley. We know quite a lot about the Kerma, Napata, Meroe and Nile Nubian civilisations although we do not understand Meroitic and are not sure of its relationship to other present-day language groups of the Sudan or Africa. Reliable scholars have rejected the possibility of Meroitic being related to Afroasiatic languages (the nearest geographically is Beja). Recent attempts to review the situation incline towards it being part of Nilo-Saharan, but this is still unproven. We also know of political states in Aksum in Northern Ethiopia, in Kanem and Bornu in eastern Nigeria; of the Funj state in the Blue Nile and the Daju, Tunjur and Fur "states" in Darfur as well as the relatively recent Kingdom of Taqali in the Rashad area of the Nuba Mountains. The Nuba Mountains only figure in indirect ways - perhaps as illustrations on Egyptian walls of wrestlers or certain hairstyles and facial scarring. Also as slaves in Egypt and other countries outside the Sudan.

A Bit of a Problem!

In scholarly writing there is almost no-one who now confuses Nubia or Nubian with Nuba or Nuba Mountains. In Arabic, and particularly in Sudanese usage the terms seem to get confused. There is no ethnic group in the Nuba Mountains that uses this term for themselves. The problem is that we have almost no archeological evidence or ethnic history for the regions west of the Nile, from Aswan to Malakal, which clearly links to the Nile states. So any claims about links between Nuba (Mts) and Nubia or Nubians (except for the Hill Nubian languages which are discussed below) are speculative.

How to simplify the complexity of the Nuba Mountain Language Situation

Of the about fifty languages spoken in the Nuba Mountains (I am of course talking about the situation that persisted at least until the late 70s) we classify them into members of two or perhaps three language families - Nilo-Saharan and Kordofanian (sub-family of the Niger-Kordofanian family). Of course in addition there is Arabic which could not have been spoken in the area prior to the Muslim invasions of Egypt in the 700s (Common Era) or the first century AH and there are also speakers of Fulani and some other West African languages. All the other languages of the Mountains well predate that period and in most cases were spoken there from time immemorial. The Kordofanian languages consist of four groups: Heiban, Talodi, Rashad and Katla - these names are based on their geographical centres (proposed by Thilo Schadeberg) and differ from names used in previous literature. The Kadugli Group was earlier classified by Greenberg as part of Kordofanian but removedfrom that relationship by Schadeberg and is currently considered probably part of Nilo-Saharan. The Kordofanian sub-groups are located in the southern and eastern areas of the Nuba Mountains. The Kadugli Group is located in the south east central fringe area near Kadugli.

The rest of the Nuba languages are classified as part of a major sub-group of Nilo-Saharan called East Sudanic. Relatives to these languages outside the Mountains include the various Nilotic groups and some smaller groups including Tama of Darfur, Nera of Eritrea and the Jebel groups of the Upper Blue Nile.

The "Hill Nubian" and Daju languages spoken in the Mountains have their major relatives outside the Mountains and we can reconstruct some details of their history and as a result propose that they each came into the Nuba Mountains to settle among the existing Nuba populations.

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 Nuba Mountains 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, at least.

The Daju-speaking Groups

The Daju Language Group consists of at least six varieties spread out over a wide area from Eastern Chad to the Nuba Mountains.

We know that Southern Darfur was the centre of a Daju state perhaps as early as 1200 CE which was later displaced by the Tunjur and then the Fur who ruled from the Jebel Marra range. There are various traditions of Daju dispersion including a number of myths celebrating Ahmad el-Daj. Whatever the case, it is clear that the Daju controlled the area between southern Jebel Marra and perhaps as far east as the western edges of the Nuba Mountains. The Shatt and Liguri who are now well inside the Nuba Mts and north-east of Kadugli have been separated from the rest of the Daju for a long time (perhaps as much as 2000 years). The Daju of Dar el-Kabira and Lagawa are much more closely related linguistically to the Nyala and then to the Dar Sila Daju. This makes us think that there were two periods of Daju movement east, the first by the Shatt and Liguri and the second and perhaps related to the expansion and dominance by the South Darfur Daju, by the Lagawa Daju.

The arrival of Islam

Again the picture is very incomplete and uncertain. The following proposed "events" are based on the latest summary to be published this year.

639-640 AD Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt led by Amr ibn al ‘As for Khalifa ‘Omar. This begins the first Muslim contacts with Lower Nubians who are forced to pay tribute in slaves and livestock and promise no aggression against Egypt.

641-2 AD Islamic armies of ‘Amr ibn al`As reach the plain north of Dongola but fail to capture it.

646 AD Egyptians attack Nubia.

652 AD A "baqt" treaty established between Nubia and Egypt under Abdallah ibn Sa’ad ibn Abi Sahr. Nubia would provide 360 slaves each year and promise no attacks; Egypt would provide 1300 "kanyr" of wine. Old Dongola is captured for a period; conflicts noted between Makuria and Nobatia

950 AD Some Muslims reported at Soba

1275-1365 Period of warfare between Mamlukes and Nubians

1276 AD Mamluke Egyptians sack Dongola; forced conversion to Islam; King Dawud captured

1289 AD Last Mamluke military campaign against Dongola.

1317 AD Defeat of the last Christian king in Nubia and the first Muslim king Abdullah Barshambu on the throne in Dongola; "baqt" re-established; first mosque is built at Dongola

ISLAM REACHES THE CENTRAL SUDAN: Rise of Funj and Fur Sultanates

1504 AD The fall of Soba, capital of the last Christian kingdom of Alwa; the beginning of the

Islamic Funj Sultanate at Sennar.

Extracted from online draft: Historical Dictionary of the Sudan (3rd Edition) for subsequent Islamic chronology to the present. Forthcoming in Early 2002 by Richard Lobban, Robert Kramer and Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Scarecrow Press

What can we conclude?

We can propose "layers" of the Nuba language groups (and by implication their speakers) in terms of oldest inhabitants to most recent.

Oldest Kordofanian

Nyimang; Temein; Kadugli (perhaps representing and expansion of East Sudanic)

Daju Shatt & Liguri (perhaps as early as 100 BCE)

Hill Nubian (perhaps sometime between 300 and 1400 CE)

Most recent Daju Lagawa (perhaps as late as the 1300s)

The relationship between Kordofanian and the rest of Niger-Kordofanian is still not clear but the family has a time depth of a minimum of 6000 years.

The earliest date for the arrival of Islam in the Nuba Mountains is likely to be after the beginning of the establishment of Sennar, i.e. after 1504 CE

The only two groups for whom presence in the Nuba Mountains is within the last two thousand years are the Lagawa Daju and the "Hill Nubians". All other languages (and by inference people) are likely to have been in the Mountains for at least 2000 years or more.

Nuba Survival
PO Box 486
28 East Walk, Hayes
Middlesex, UB3 3WZ
United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)20 8813 5831 e-mail: nubasurvival38@aol.com

http://www.nubasurvival.com/Nuba%20Vision/Vol%201%20Issue%203/7%20Language%20and %20history.htm

[This message has been edited by kenndo (edited 03 June 2005).]

[This message has been edited by kenndo (edited 03 June 2005).]

The midob(nubians) and arabized midob nubians live in a region called jebal midob in darfur.some live in other places but here is the proof that some nubians live in darfur

kostastest
ETHNOLOGUE
ETHNOLOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PUBLICATIONS
PUBLICATIONS
SOFTWARE
SOFTWARE
WHO WE ARE
WHO WE ARE
SHOPPING CART
SHOPPING CART

Web version
Web version

Print version
Print version

Overview
Overview

Browse
Browse

Search the Ethnologue
Search the Ethnologue

Feedback & FAQs
Feedback & FAQs

Preface to the Web Version
Preface to the Web Version

Introduction to the Printed Volume
Introduction to the Printed Volume

Abbreviations
Abbreviations

Bibliography of Ethnologue Data Sources
Bibliography of Ethnologue Data Sources

Links of Interest
Links of Interest

Nearly Extinct Languages
Nearly Extinct Languages

Policies
Policies

Statistical Summaries
Statistical Summaries

Terms of Use
Terms of Use

Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy

External Links Disclaimer
External Links Disclaimer

World Area
World Area

Language Size
Language Size

Language Family
Language Family

Country
Country

Country Index with Maps
Country Index with Maps

Language Codes
Language Codes

Language Families
Language Families

Language Names
Language Names

About the SIL Bibliography
About the SIL Bibliography

Browse
Browse

Introduction
Introduction

FAQs
FAQs

Authors
Authors

Countries
Countries

Serials
Serials

Subjects
Subjects

Browse
Browse

New Publications
New Publications

On-line Publications
On-line Publications

Serial Publications and Journals
Serial Publications and Journals

Contact the International Academic Bookstore
Contact the International Academic Bookstore

Authors
Authors

Categories
Categories

Titles
Titles

Overview
Overview

Index of Series
Index of Series

Overview
Overview

SIL Language Software
SIL Language Software

LinguaLinks
LinguaLinks

SIL Software Technical Support and Training
SIL Software Technical Support and Training

LinguaLinks Overview
LinguaLinks Overview

LinguaLinks Library
LinguaLinks Library

LinguaLinks Workshops
LinguaLinks Workshops

LinguaLinks Technical Support and Training
LinguaLinks Technical Support and Training

Catalog of Whole-Text Works
Catalog of Whole-Text Works

Complete Subject Index
Complete Subject Index

LinguaLinks Workshop Tools Tutorial
LinguaLinks Workshop Tools Tutorial

Policies
Policies

Contact Us
Contact Us

Terms of Use
Terms of Use

Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy

External Links Disclaimer
External Links Disclaimer

SITE SEARCH SITE MAP
Ethnologue > Web version > Country index > Africa > Sudan > Midob
Midob
A language of Sudan
ISO/DIS 639-3: mei

Population 50,000 (1993 R. Werner).
Region Northern Sudan, Dar Fur Province, Jebel Midob, and settled communities in Omdurman and Gezira Aba. The center is Malha.
Alternate names Meidob, Midobi, Tidda, Tid, Tid-N-Aal
Dialects Shelkota (Shalkota), Kaageddi, Urrti (Uurti). Lexical similarity 51% with Birgid (closest).
Classification Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Eastern, Nubian, Western
Comments Pastoralists. Muslim.

---

posted 04 June 2005 10:59 AM            

quote:

---

except for southern nubia,that kingdom was detroyed by the funj(the funj-a confederation of other southern nubians and other africans.the funj had some arab help,but the arabs who help them were reconquered by the funj.the southern nubia kingdom of alwa was more aware of the arab settlers and the royal family did not intermarry with them.
THE three regions of nubia-
lower nubia
upper nubia
and southern nubia
southern nubia from around the city of meroe to senner.
the nubian region expanded over time.

---

According to Ibn Khaldun the main demise of the Christian Nubian kingdoms was intermarriage between Arabs and Nubian royal women. The Arabs eventually used the matrilineal desent of the Nubians to their advantage.

posted 04 June 2005 12:01 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M:
The spread of Islam and Islamic culture to Africa via Arabs was not good for Africa.
Probably because of the crusades, the spread of Islam was at the point of a knife or tip of a spear. Literally, convert or die. This was even noted in the history books, when Mansa Musa the great Mali King decided to convert himself and his people rather than face a war and untold suffering. But that is just a story we KNOW about. Untold other Africans, Asians and others died at the hand of the Arab invaders. Indeed, it was the Arab persians who brought the ideas of caste to the Indian continent. The Islamic Empires of the Ottomans and Persians were very cruel and dealt with non-believers very harshly. Much of the barbarism practiced in the name of Islam in north Africa has been attributed to the Berbers.

---

No it was not like this, look today islam is still the fastest growing religion in the world. David Chappal the famous comedian converted to islam, and put down his deal with Comedy Central. Islam was not spread from the sword this it total ignorance. Today Islam is the leading religion in Africa. Islam is a buetiful religion if you look at it in a non bias way.

Especially in the Asia, islam came to the ppl through traders, In india and china indonesia, which are the leaders today with the most muslim population got the relgion without any war. This tells u somthing read from the right resources especially when its about islam. Because thier are many enemies of this religion and dislike it, that they make false bias material for the public to spread ignorance and hate.

posted 04 June 2005 12:04 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AMR1:
War between North and South would have happened between North and South, reagrdless of ISLAM.

SEE RAWANDA, SEE CONGO, WHERE 5 MILLION DIED THERE IN THE LAST 5 YEARS, MORE THAN THE SOUTHERN SUDAN WAR AND THERE IS NO ISLAM AND NO ARABS.

What is happening IN THE WARS OF AFRICA is african tribalism nothing to do with islam or christianity or arabs or europeans IN AFRICA.

---

posted 04 June 2005 02:02 PM            

I did the research on the topic and found that the Western media are the ones that have exaggerated the issue.

Your points would be valid if the population growth in Rwanda grew only very slightly or actually declined from 1994 to 2004. Check the numbers and youy will see.

Again, research tells us that there were never more than 20,000 Tutsis in exile in Uganda during the years before the war, so if they wnet back with Kagame tha would not have boosted the numbers of the Tutsis very much.

You also fail to base you argument on the Western thesis that it was a HUTU genocide against the TUTSIS with 800,000 MOSTLY Tutsis(as the media put) and some "moderate" Hutus being killed in just 90 days. My point is that if as many Hutus as Tutsis were killed then why call it a "Hutu genocide of Tutsis"?. Just call it a Civil War or something else.

As I said the population of Rwanda is now 8 million with the Tutsis being 15%, repeat, 15% of that population. In pre-war 1994 the Population of Rwanda was 6.9 million--which means that there was a growth rate of 1 million in 10 years. Now that strikes me as normal when compared with Burundi and Uganda.

Compare this with the fact that the U.S. bombed, napalmed and bulldozed with defoliants the Vietnamese people for 13 years and in the process the total death toll was 3 million. In 1 month bands of Hutus armed mainly with machetes and clubs were able to kill 300,000 people while the U.S. with the best and most efficient of killing instruments were able to kill only approximately 30,000 Vietnamese per month. Just doesn't compute.

If there were a true genocide of Tutsis by Hutus with "800,000--some say 1 million MOSTLY Tutsis killed" then the Tutsis would be no more than 5% of Rwanda today. Instead they control the government and Kagame won the last electiopn without undue support from the Hutus.

Sure all wars are unfortunate but I am interested in facts and plausible scenarios. I am also interested in separating out propaganda from facts. As a result I just don't swallow up naively anything that the BBC, CNN, Agence Presse, Reuters, and all the other Western media that feed news to Africans and others, put out.

posted 04 June 2005 10:05 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by lamin:
To Kembu,

I did the research on the topic and found that the Western media are the ones that have exaggerated the issue.

Your points would be valid if the population growth in Rwanda grew only very slightly or actually declined from 1994 to 2004. Check the numbers and youy will see.

Again, research tells us that there were never more than 20,000 Tutsis in exile in Uganda during the years before the war, so if they wnet back with Kagame tha would not have boosted the numbers of the Tutsis very much.

You also fail to base you argument on the Western thesis that [b] it was a HUTU genocide against the TUTSIS with 800,000 MOSTLY Tutsis(as the media put) and some "moderate" Hutus being killed in just 90 days. My point is that if as many Hutus as Tutsis were killed then why call it a "Hutu genocide of Tutsis"?. Just call it a Civil War or something else.

As I said the population of Rwanda is now 8 million with the Tutsis being 15%, repeat, 15% of that population. In pre-war 1994 the Population of Rwanda was 6.9 million--which means that there was a growth rate of 1 million in 10 years. Now that strikes me as normal when compared with Burundi and Uganda.

[/B]

---

That figure is from the Rwandans themselves, both Hutu and Tutsis. Quit faulting the "Western" media for portraying the truth.

Tutsi exiles and their descendants in Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and Congo (formely Zaire) number more than 500,000. There were several waves of emigration of Tutsis to neighboring countries and Belgium since independence in 1962.

You need to check the definition of "genocide" before making ludicrous statements. You also need to do a thorough and reliable research to get your facts straight.

Moderate Hutus were killed because they were perceived to be Tutsi sympathizers or refused to participate in the genocide.

So what's the point? There was no genocide in Rwanda? Innocent Tutsis were not targeted and killed because of their ethnicity? Hello?

Why don't you go tell that to the Tutsis?

You probably don't think there is genocide taking place in Sudan. I almost forgot you were the one who said that the HIV/AIDS in Africa is an exaggeration when people are dying of AIDS in Africa like chicken.

posted 05 June 2005 05:32 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

According to Ibn Khaldun the main demise of the Christian Nubian kingdoms was intermarriage between Arabs and Nubian royal women. The Arabs eventually used the matrilineal desent of the Nubians to their advantage.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ausar:

---

no, i have to disgree,that only happen in the nubian kingdom of makuria or upper nubia.
scholars today on medieval and early modern african and nubian history would say that was not the case for alwa or southern nubia.few arabs lived in alwa and keep away from the main nubian population there.
it a was the funj that brought down the last christian kingdom down or a confedartion of shilluks and nubians inside the kingom and outside.the royal nubian family in alwa only married within their family.alwan royalty had no intermarriages.

that historian was talking about upper nubia and maybe lower nubia but not alwa since was still a very strong kingdom alwa that existed until 1504 a.d. or 16th cen.
ibn khaldun lived in the 14th cen.

alwa-the southern nubian kingdom was still strong during his time and still fighting the arabs.
alwa fell after a 100 something years,long after his death.alwa fell mostly by other fellow africans with some arab help.

posted 05 June 2005 05:34 PM            

Mohi El-Din Abdalla Zarroug

ISBN 0919813941
$15.00 paper
November 1991

124 pages
10 maps, bibliography

African Occasional Papers. No. 5
(The University of Calgary)
Series editor: Peter L. Shinnie

About the Book

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This book provides a detailed overview of the culture and history of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Alwa. Based on archaeological, historical and ethnographic data, the author discusses the nature of the kingdom and how it related to the cultural history of Sudan and nearby regions.

About the Author

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Mohi El-Din Abdalla Zarroug received a B.A. in Archaeology from the University of Khartoum in1978. He obtained an M.A. in Archaeology from the University of Calgary in 1982 and is currently working in Libya

Table of Contents

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Historical and Ethnographic Record
The Archaeological Record
The Sociocultural and Economic Basis of the Kingdom of Alwa
Towards a Better Understanding of the Kingdom of Alwa
Orders

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For information on how to order this book, please click here.

posted 05 June 2005 05:43 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:

To be honest, I think the only good thing about the Arab invasion is Islam, but even this has it's downsides. Other than that everything else has been bad!

---

Thought Writes:

Islam spread Nile Valley culture to the rest of Africa as Rome spread ancient Greek culture to the rest of Europe.

posted 05 June 2005 05:44 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Thought2:
Thought Writes:

Islam spread Nile Valley culture to the rest of Africa as Rome spread ancient Greek culture to the rest of Europe.

---

What?! How so?

posted 05 June 2005 05:45 PM            

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kingdom of Nobatia (4th c. to beg. 8th c. A.D.)
1. Silver crown with embossed decoration and garnet and carnelian inlays. From royal tumulus at Ballana. Restored. (London: British Museum). The rams's head with feathered crown, uraeus snakes, and Horus falcons derive from Meroitic versions of Kemet motifs. 4th c. AD. 30.6 cm. Rich royal graves are found at Ballana and Qustul, on opposite sides of the Nile. By the Early Christian Period, 6-8th c., Christian iconography has displaced pagan traditions, and Faras became the capitol.

2. Sandstone tombstone of Nikea, from Kalabsha. (London: British Museum). Written in Greek, the standard liturgical language of Christian Nubia. In the Christian era, the elite placed tombstsones in the superstructure of graves. 18 cm. The priest Julian in 543 A.D., sent out by Justianian for strategic reasons, converted the Nobatian king in 543 A.D. to Monophysite Christianity. He was suceeded by Longinus, who completed the conversion of the kingdom. In 652, a treaty with Islam, called the Baqt, guaranteed Nubian independence in exchange for a small annual tribute of slaves and the construction of a mosque at Old Dongala. This treaty ensured Nubian independence until the 12th c.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kingdom of Makuria
1. Footed bowl of Classic Christian period (9-11th c. ) from Qasr Ibrim. (London: British Museum). The glossy orange finish is typical of high quality Christian Nubian pottery called "Dongola Ware." 13.3 cm. While little large-scale art was produced at this time, there was a considerable production of minor arts. Qasr Ibrim was a major center for such industries as woodworking, leather, textiles and basket making. The Kingdom of Makuria was centered on its capitol, Old Dongola, and stretched from the Third Cataract to the Fifth, and absorbed Nobatia at the beginning of the 8th century and converted to the Nobatia's Monophysite form of Christianity, subject to the Patriarch of Alexandria. As the monarchy lost its ancient sacral character, the secular institutions of government flourished and came to be much admired by the Moslems. The Eparch (viceroy for Lower Nubia resided at Qasr Ibrim and was responsible for commerce with Moslem Egypt.

2. Wall painting from Faras Cathedral showing Bishop Maranos of Pachoras (Faras). 1005-1036 A.D. Part of a series of portraits of local bishops begun in the ninth century. After the ninth century, Northern Nubia enjoyed a rising standard of living and more independence thanks to Moslem mercantile settlements. But the kings prevented any Moslem penetration south of the Second Cataract, and welcomed instead close ties with the Byzantine Empire, and that association shaped political ideology and culture. In Faras are a well-preserved cathedral and bishop's palace, and the city remained an important religious center until the 13th c.

3. Page from the Book of Revelations, written in Old Nubian. From the Cathedral ruins at Qasr Ibrim. (London: British Museum). Old Nubian, written in Coptic script, was the vernacular language of Medieval Nubia. For religious texts, Greek was also used. 19.3 cm.

4. Iron scissors, a padlock with a chain, and a knife from Qasr Ibrim. (London: British Museum). Early to Late Christian era (7-14th c.). From the Ballana Period, iron was commonly used in domestic objects. Nubia did not observe the Baqt conscientiously, and finally the Mamelukes in Egypt after 1260 intervened in Nubian affairs more aggressively. This period saw a militarization associated with the growing power of feudal lords and a decline of the monarchy as well as of culture and the economy. By the late 14th c., the kingdom of Makuria broke up into hostile principalities.

5. Wooden carving of a baptism, from Qasr Ibrim. 12-13th c. A.D. (London: British Museum). 8.9 cm.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kingdom of Alwa
1. Soba-ware pottery shards. (London: British Museum). Largest fragment is 10.8 cm. Soba was the capital of the Christian Kingdom of Alwa. Alwa corresponds to the area dominated by the Noba after the collapse of Meroë. The city was located on the Blue Nile, southeast of Khartoum. In tradition, the king of Alwa was converted to Christianity by the missionary Longinus in about 580 A.D. By the 10th century, this kingdom was apparently quite prosperous, perhaps because of slave trading with Kordofan to the south. Here in the upper reaches of the Nile, Moslem influence grew, and the people in time adopted Islam. The kingdom eventually fell to the Funj ruler in the early sixteenth century.

2. Glass vessel of Moslem manufacture found in the Moslem quarter of Soba, capitol of Alwa. Probably 14th c. A.D. (London: British Museum). 28 cm.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE ALWA ROYAL family marry only nubians and alwa fell because of the funj from the south.the arabs could not conquer alwa because it was a stronger kindgom than markuria and better protected.
not all of alwa's population became muslim by the way.