Darfur

“ The Tokrooris are natives of Darfur, who were converted to Mahometanism after the conquest of Northern Africa by the Arabs. They are governed by a sultan in their own country, who strictly prohibits the entrance of white men; thus Darfur remains impenetrable to civilization. That country is extremely arid and unfruitful; thus, as the pilgrims journeyed towards Mecca from their own inhospitable soil, they passed through a land flowing with milk and honey, with excellent pasturage and fertile soil, in the district of Gallabat. ”

“ I now busied myself with the administrative affairs of the province of Dara. The returns which I had called for, showing the names and numbers of villages, their population, etc., were duly submitted to me, and I now resolved to travel over the entire district and personally inquire into the state of affairs.
There is very little money in cash in Darfur. The northern Arab tribes who act as camel-men, and who supply transport for the great caravan road between Assiut and Darfur, have a small amount of gold and silver coin ”

“ The sovereign of Darfur [76] exercises boundless despotic power. He may put to death thousands of individuals, and no one asks him wherefore. He may degrade whom he pleases, and no one asks him wherefore. His orders, however adverse they may be, are always obeyed, and no one resists, even by a word. The only resource is to cry for mercy; but, if the Sultan chooses to commit an act of injustice, the hatred it excites remains for ever concealed. ”

“ There is a remarkable custom, called the Festival of the Sowing, in Darfur. The Sultan possesses, as his domain, cultivable land, which is sown every year. After the rains, he goes forth in great pomp, escorted by more than a hundred young women, chosen amidst the most beautiful, and adorned with their richest garments and jewels. These women are the best-beloved of his harem. They wear upon their heads vases filled with the most delicate viands, and they walk behind the Sultan’s horse with the young slaves, called korkoa, armed with lances, and with a troop of flute-players. ”

“ The Negroes of Darfur (the Furs or Furava and the Dajo) , of high stature, and very black (Nachtigal) , are much purer; they speak a Nilotic-Negro dialect. In the west of the country they are mixed with the Fulahs, and Arab tribes surround them on all sides. The predominant race is descended from pure Arabs established first in Tunis, who achieved the conquest of Darfur only in the nineteenth century. [509] To the south-east of Darfur, separated from this country by the encampments of the Bahr-el-Huer or Bagarra, Arabised Nilotes, dwell other Nilotics of a well-marked negro type. ”

“ Mohammed Khaled had left Sultan Yusef, the son of Sultan Ibrahim, and the legitimate successor, as chief Emir of Darfur. He was quite a young man, and endeavoured to strengthen his position by soliciting the good-will of Abu Anga and his assistant, Osman Wad Adam, who then resided at El Obeid. Every now and then he sent them quantities of horses and slaves; and they, in their turn, sent what they thought advisable to the Khalifa. Khaled, on leaving Darfur, had taken with him almost all the Mahdists who were inhabitants of the Nile valley ”

“ I am not proposing a third peacekeeping mission be sent to Darfur. I am suggesting that NATO increase the support it is already lending to the African Union with a small number of fully equipped troops to help with command and control, communications, and dissemination of intelligence, on the ground. And I am proposing that these troops stay in Darfur only until the U.N. force has deployed all of its troops. ”

“ In Darfur the sovereign must be of the blood of the Sultans. No stranger, not even a descendant of the Prophet, can pretend to the throne. When a prince is invested with power, he rests for a week in his dwelling, without issuing orders of any kind. During this space of time no affair is brought before his tribunal. The Sultan Abd-er-Rahman was the first who derogated from this custom. ”

“ The slave-merchants take to Darfur some fine cotton stuffs, each piece of which is of sixty cubits. They cut them into lengths of twenty cubits in the country where they buy, and having had them dyed, take them away, and generally procure a slave for each cut. A coarse mixture of silk and cotton is also used in the barter for slaves, as are also several other kinds of stuffs. Foreign asses, such as those of Egypt, are [249] highly esteemed in Darfur. A Forian will give ten slaves for one ass! ”

“ The Ghazwah, or slave-hunts, in Dar-Fertyt, and amongst the Jenakherah, are carried on in a different manner in Darfur and Wadaï. In the latter country, the Sultan sends one of his governors with a troop, chosen beforehand, to which no strangers attach themselves; but in Darfur things are managed differently. There, even a private individual, if he thinks himself capable of conducting a Ghazwah, demands a salatieh, and, if he obtains it, sets out with as many people as he can collect. ”

“ I have already said that the customs of Wadaï and those of Darfur are similar in some respects. The houses in the latter are more elegant, but those in the former are more solid. Warah is a large city, surrounded by a natural rampart of mountains. The dwelling of the Sultan is entirely of masonry, but is surrounded by huts inhabited by slaves. To the west, outside of the wall, is a mosque and a great square, called the Fasher, which word, in Wadaï, is restricted entirely to this place; whilst, in Darfur, it is applied to the whole town in which the Sultan resides. ”

“ The garments worn in Darfur are all light, but of various forms and colours. Rich people have black or white dresses of very fine tissue. The Sultan and other great people wear two long shirts of fine stuff, imported from Egypt, or made in Darfur. The white garments are very brilliant, and all clothing is kept perfectly clean. The Sultan wears a Cashmere turban on his head, which no one else is allowed to do. ”

“ Zubeir meanwhile strengthened his position at Shakka, and made all preparations for the impending attack. He now received from the Rizighat a truly characteristic Arab message: "The army of the Sultan of Darfur is advancing. You and they are our enemies. When you begin fighting, we shall remain neutral. If you are defeated, we shall harass you on your retreat, and shall kill you all. If you conquer, then shall we mount our swift horses, follow up the Darfurians, and share with you the booty." ”

“ Many people in Darfur gain their living by hunting. They are divided into two classes, and are generally workers in iron. They rarely appear in the villages, and form a caste apart, called Darmoudy. They are people without faith and without law, and it is dangerous to meet them in bye-places. The other Forians never seek to ally themselves to them by marriage. The first class hunts quadrupeds, as the gazelle, the wild ox, the elephant, the buffalo, the hyæna, the lion, the rhinoceros, &c. ”

“ Latterly, no large caravans of slaves have arrived in Omdurman, because the majority of the slave-producing districts, such as Darfur, have become depopulated, or, in some cases, the tribes, such as the Tama, Massalit, etc., have thrown off allegiance to the Khalifa. Consignments, however, still come from Reggaf; but, owing to the long and tedious journey, numbers of them perish on the way. As the supplies from Gallabat, Kordofan, and Darfur have considerably diminished, the Khalifa now allows the Emirs to sell slaves to the itinerant Gellabas ”

“ Notes that security will greatly facilitate early recovery initiatives and a return to normalcy in Darfur; stresses the importance of early recovery efforts in Darfur, and in this respect encourages UNAMID, within its current mandate, to facilitate the work of the UN Country Team and expert agencies on early recovery and reconstruction in Darfur, inter alia through the provision of area security; and calls on the Government of Sudan to continue its efforts to resolve the root causes of the Darfur crisis and to increase investment in early recovery activity ”

“ Bellal’s expedition to Bahr El Ghazal destroyed by Zubeir, 1869.Dating from the days of Mohammed Ali’s expeditions, Darfur was in constant dread of Egyptian aggression, and the country was practically closed to all Europeans, who were regarded as spies. For many generations Darfur had sent annually a caravan containing ivory, feathers, gum, slaves, etc., to Egypt, bringing back in exchange cloth, beads, firearms, etc. In 1874, the slave trade having been stopped in Egyptian territory, the Governor of the Sudan seized all the slaves belonging to the caravan of that year ”

“ This latter kingdom was then more important than now, and dominated much even of the Egyptian Sudan. Hence in the fourteenth century Islam obtained a strong footing in Darfur, as it had already in Baghirmi and Wadai. [91] Already in the twelfth century, Kordofan and the extreme east of the Sudan had been partially Moslemised by Arabs from Egypt, who had come south after the fall of the Fatimite Caliphs. ”

“ The habits and manners of the other tribes of Darfur, such as the Berti, the Dajo, the Bijo, &c., are pretty nearly the same as those of the people of [74] Marrah. If some of them differ by being more hospitable and benevolent, they owe this improvement to association with Bedawin Arabs, and of the merchants who come to them from Egypt and other distant countries. Those who received strangers best are those who speak the Arabic language. ”

“ The ivory and many of the slaves were sold to the Egyptian merchants who travelled along the Arbaïn road between Assiut and Darfur, and for these, Turkish and European wares were exchanged. This trade was most lucrative on both sides, and gradually quantities of gold-brocaded stuffs, richly caparisoned saddles, silk embroideries, and other articles of luxury found their way into Darfur, besides quantities of jewellery as well as arms and ammunition. ”

“ The Darfurians found Dervish rule as irksome as that of the Egyptians had been, and a state of almost constant warfare ended in the gradual retirement of the Dervishes from Darfur. Following the overthrow of the khalifa at Omdurman in 1898 the new (Anglo-Egyptian) Sudan government recognized (1899) Ali Dinar, a grandson of Mahommed-el-Fadhl, as sultan of Darfur, on the payment by that chief of an annual tribute of £500. Under Ali Dinar, who during the Mahdia had been kept a prisoner in Omdurman, Darfur enjoyed a period of peace. ”

“ There are scarcely any other arts in Darfur than those which I have indicated. The wants which in civilised countries have created the professions are satisfied by mutual assistance. Neighbours shave the heads of one another, and then there is no need of barbers. If a man requires a house, he calls in his friends, and pays them with a dinner and supper, and so there is no need of builders.
[254] If a man dies, a friend, and, above all, a Fakih, performs the last duties, washing the corpse and burying it, for every one knows the simple ceremonies necessary. ”

“ There are, it is true, some few places in Darfur the soil of which something resembles that of Wadaï, but the greater part of the former country is sandy, and almost deprived of water. The Forians, therefore, who inhabit these deserts are puny, thin, and have a yellow tint in their complexion; they are, so to speak, always thirsty, and are compelled to portion out water as if they were in a ship that has lost its reckoning at sea. But in Wadaï, nearly everywhere there are springs of living water; nearly everywhere there are leafy trees filled with the songs of birds. ”

“ Medicine, among the Forians, is a branch of magic, which is cultivated most especially by the Fullans, or Fellatahs.
With reference to climate, Darfur is not equally salubrious throughout its whole extent, and in all its provinces. The most healthy part is the Gouz, or Country of Sand. The Arabs who inhabit it, and breathe its pure air, are full of force and courage; but it contains, unfortunately, little water. The most unhealthy country for strangers is the Saïd; and, indeed, all the great capital towns are remarkably unfavourable to health. ”

“ What is the use of such men in these countries; they are, as Speke was to you, infinitely more bother than use. Then why do you put him on me? I have had enough trouble with them already.
"You will have my letter about Darfur. I must say your task will not be pleasant; but you talk Arabic, which I do not; and you will have much to interest you, for most of the old Darfur families are of Mohammed's family.
"I dare say you wonder how I can get on without an interpreter and not knowing Arabic. I do not believe in man's free-will, and therefore believe all things are from God and preordained. ”

“ Next to the Rizighat, the Beni Helba was the most powerful tribe in Darfur, and they soon began worrying the Tagu and Messeria Arabs, who had up to now remained faithful, and lived in the neighbourhood of Dara. ”

“ The valley of the Nile, which seems destined by Nature to be the highroad to this region, is rendered comparatively useless for that purpose by the restrictive regulations of Darfur. That cautious little kingdom stops the way. It is so fearful of aggression from Egypt—not entirely without cause—that it will not allow the easiest routes to be used, and compels all caravans to reach its frontiers exhausted by a two months’ march across the desert from Siout. ”