Sudanese

“ When Egypt governed the Sudan, it was from the Bahr el Ghazal Provinces that they recruited the men for the Sudanese battalions, who had come either of their own free-will or had been forcibly impressed. Owing to the climate and plenteous rainfall, the country is more highly cultivated than any portion of the Nile valley lying between Kowa and Reggaf. Besides, the majority of the tribes who inhabit these districts are, owing to internal dissensions, incapable of uniting, and would thus rather facilitate than retard the advance of any foreign power wishing to make itself master of the province. ”

“ The entrance of England into Egypt, after the building of the Suez Canal, stirred up eventually revolt in the Sudan, for political, economic, and religious reasons. Led by a Sudanese Negro, Mohammed Ahmad, who claimed to be the Messiah (Mahdi) , the Sudan arose in revolt in 1881, determined to resist a hated religion, foreign rule, and interference with their chief commerce, the trade in slaves. The Sudan was soon aflame, and the able mulatto general, Osman Digna, aided by revolt among the heathen Dinka, drove Egypt and England out of the Sudan for sixteen years. ”

“ One can rightly say of the Sudanese that their favourite diversions are wine, women and song.
The Sudanis of the Camel Corps are a very likeable lot. They are thoroughly sporting and have a strong sense of humour, but in many ways they are very like children. They have an aptitude for drill and soldiering, but are useless without British officers owing to their lack of initiative. They are faithful and become very attached to Englishmen, but they have a keen sense of discrimination. ”

“ In the south-west of the Bahr-el-Ghazal are the Bongos and other tribes, and along the Nile-Congo water-parting are the A-Zande or Niam-Niam, a comparatively light-coloured race. (All the tribes mentioned are separately noticed.)
Social Conditions.—In contrast with the Egyptians, a most industrious race, the Sudanese tribes, both Arab and negro, are as a general rule indolent. Where wants are few and simple, where houses need not be built nor clothes worn to keep out the cold, there is little stimulus to exertion. ”

“ I remember a quarter of a century ago when you were engaged in the occupation of the Sudan that many of your people at home and some of ours in America said that what was demanded in the Sudan was the application of the principles of independence and self-government to the Sudanese, coupled with insistence upon complete religious toleration and the abolition of the slave trade. ”

“ The third attempt at state building arose on the Guinea coast in Benin and Yoruba. It never got much beyond a federation of large industrial cities. Its expansion toward the Congo valley was probably a prime cause of the original Bantu movements to the southeast. Toward the north and northeast, on the other hand, these city-states met the Sudanese armed with the new imperial Mohammedan idea. Just as Latin Rome gave the imperial idea to the Nordic races, so Islam brought this idea to the Sudan. ”

“ About this period Mehemet Ali leased from the sultan of Turkey the Red Sea ports of Suakin and Massawa, and by this means got into his hands all the trade routes of the eastern Sudan. The pasha of Egypt practically monopolized the trade of the country except that in slaves, which became a vast “industry,” the lands inhabited by negro tribes on the borders of the conquered territories being raided annually for the purpose. From the negro population the army was so largely recruited that in a few years the only non-Sudanese in it were officers. The Egyptian rule proved harmful to the country. ”

“ Moreover, a spirit of jealousy became rampant amongst other Sudanese of high rank, who considered themselves quite as capable of filling high positions as those who had been selected in preference to them. ”

“ The largest negro tribe of the Egyptian Sudan, living on both sides of the White Nile between latitudes 12° and 6° N. They live chiefly from their numerous herds of cattle. The men go perfectly naked, and both sexes extract the two upper incisor teeth. Being brave warriors, they furnish the best material for the Sudanese regiments. ”

“ The Shilouks are among the most powerful Sudanese tribes. The men are usually over six feet tall and well formed. They stiffen their hair with grease and clay and then cut it into fantastic shapes much as a privet hedge is trimmed.
When the Khalifa ruled he feared education and had all the books in his dominions destroyed. Hence not one Sudanese in a hundred can read and write. But the natives respect learning and those at Gordon College are good students. ”

“ Hence the union of these two elements, imperious pastor superimposed upon peaceful tiller, has made the only stable governments among savage and semi-civilized races.1097 The politically invertebrate peoples of dark Africa have secured the back-bone to erect states only from nomad conquerors. The history of the Sudan cannot be understood apart from a knowledge of the Sahara and its peoples. All the Sudanese states were formed by invaders from the northern desert, Hamitic or Semitic. ”

“ West Sudanese: Wolof; Mandingan; Felup; Timni; Kru; Sierra Leonese; Liberian; Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba; Ibo; Efik; Borgu; Mossi.
Central Sudanese: Songhai; Hausa; Mosgu; Kanembu; Kanuri; Baghirmi; Yedina.
East Sudanese: Maba; Fúr; Nuba; Shilluk; Dinka; Bari; Abaka; Bongo; Mangbattu; Zandeh; Momfu; Basé; Barea.
The Negro-Caucasic "Great Divide."
From the anthropological standpoint Africa falls into two distinct sections, where the highest (Caucasic) and the lowest (Negro) divisions of mankind have been conterminous throughout all known time. ”

“ The occasion that brought you here today is a triumph to the government of the Sudan, the people of Southern Sudan and to Ethiopia. It has been said that no one can put asunder what God has joined together. ”

“ The slaves imported from Sudan have modified the Berber type in ^lauritania, giving rise to the Haratins of the Marocco oases, the Atryas of Twat and Ghadames, the Ruaghas of Algeria. The Arab traders and ijiissionaries have in their turn changed the religion and government of the Sudanese populations. Physical Aspect. The Sahara is not a dried- up marine basin, as was supposed by geologists before the nature of its soil and the inequalities of its relief were' as well understood as they now are. ”

“ Cut off from North Africa by the Sahara desert, the inhabitants, who belong in the main to the negro family proper, are thought to have received their earliest civilization from the East. Arab influence and the Moslem religion began to be felt in the western Sudan as early as the 9th century and had taken deep root by the end of the 11th. The existence of native Christian states in Nubia hindered for some centuries the spread of Islam in the eastern Sudan, and throughout the country some tribes have remained pagan. ”

“ The Sudan, though geographically in Central Africa, belongs to the Mediterranean civilisation. The great empires of the Niger, Melle and Songhai, the Fulani Empire of Sokoto, the Emirates of Kano and Katsina, and the Empire of Bornu, were all products of contact with the north. Commercially and culturally, the Sudan faced north with its back against an impenetrable belt of tropical forest inhabited by savage negro tribes, through whose dripping and steaming jungles there was little or no access to the sea. ”

“ Nile region is generally taken as the eastern frontier of Sudan, although it properly reaches to the foot of the Abyssinian highlands. Hence modern maps have introduced the appropriate expression 'Egyptian Sudan' for those eastern districts comprising Senaar, Kordofan, Darfur, and some others. Sudan is therefore, strictly speaking, a broad tract of country reaching right across the whole continent from the Atlantic seaboard almost to the shores of the Red Sea, and is the true home of the Negro races. ”

“ Ethnically Eastern Sudan comprises all the lands east of the Chad basin, where the Negro or Negroid populations are predominant, that is to say, Wadai, Darfur, and Kordofan in the West, the Nile Valley from the frontier of Egypt proper south to Albert Nyanza, both slopes of the Nile-Congo divide (the western tributaries of the White Nile and the Welle-Makua affluent of the Congo) , lastly the Sobat Valley with some Negro enclaves east of the White Nile, and even south of the equator (Kavirondo, Semliki Valley) . ”

“ But civilization has no room for him and his like, and his inevitable fate opens the way of progress and happiness to the negro tribes.
The future of the negro Sudan is only a part of that obscure and difficult problem common to a large part of Africa, the eventual future and destiny of the negro races. The establishment of peace and security of life and liberty is only the first essential preliminary to any consideration of the question. It will not be settled in a few decades, perhaps it will not in a few centuries. Far different is the case of the Arab Sudan. ”

“ The Arab-speaking and Mahommedan population found their religion and language respected, and from the first showed a marked desire to profit by the new order. To the negroes of the southern Sudan, who were exceedingly suspicious of all strangers—whom hitherto they had known almost exclusively as slave-raiders—the very elements of civilization had, in most cases, to be taught. In these pagan regions the Sudan government encouraged the work of missionary societies, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, while discouraging propaganda work among the Moslems. ”

“ But the last six years have wrought a great change in the prospects of the Sudan. It is still, and must remain, the key of Egypt, but it is no longer a mere conduit-pipe or line of communication to be guarded at all hazards. Under British administrators it is beginning to justify its existence on other grounds. Conquered for the sake of the Nile, it shows signs of bearing fruit of its own, like the vineyard that was dug over and over for the sake of its hidden treasure. ”

“ The Arab tribes are all Mahommedans, credulous and singularly liable to fits of religious excitement. Most of the negro tribes are pagan, but some of them who live in the northern regions have embraced Islam.
Divisions and Chief Towns.—Darfur is under native rule. The rest of the Sudan is divided into mudirias (provinces) and these are subdivided into mamuria. The mudirias are Halfa, Red Sea, Dongola and Berber in the north (these include practically all the region known as Nubia) ; Khartum, Blue Nile and White Nile in the centre; Kassala and Sennar in the east; Kordofan in the west ”

“ The name “Sudan” is used throughout to indicate the country referred to by the Arab and early European geographers under this name, that is to say, the country inhabited by negroid people north of the purely negro zone and south of the Saharan deserts. The “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan” is more correctly described as the “Nilotic Sudan.”
[2] The geography of the Sahara as a whole is briefly treated in Le Sahara, by E. F. Gautier, Collection Payot, Paris, 1923, and with greater detail in Le Sahara, by H. Schirmer, Paris, 1893, but much recent work is not included in the latter. ”

“ If this reading of history be accepted, the people of the Central Sudan will be described as a mixed race recently forced into an Arab mould and in varying degrees modified by Arab blood. And we may prophesy that future researches will prove the other elements in this race to be akin to the other races on its borders, to the Nubians and Begas on the north, to the Negroes, Gallas, Abyssinians, etc., on the south and south-east. ”

“ The once comparatively civilised Sudan is now occupied by a barbaric power hostile to both European and Ottoman influence. It blocks [625] the way from the central plateaus along the Nile valley to the Mediterranean; it seals up districts which were at one time fairly tranquil, and open to the influences of commerce and civilisation, while the various countries by which it is bordered are now being gradually opened up. Intercourse between them and the outside world is becoming easier; trade is pushing obstacles out of the way ”

“ In the middle of Africa, between the lands just mentioned and the powers advancing from east, south, and west, lies the former Egyptian Sudan, now under the rule of the Khalifa Abdullahi, the despotic head of the Mahdists. No European can venture to cross the limits of this land, cut off from civilisation, extending in the south along the Nile to Reggaf, and east to west from Kassala to near Wadai; death, or lifelong captivity, would be his lot. ”

“ The civilization, therefore, of the Niger Sudan took its origin from the north, derived all its traditions from that direction, and conducted its trade with the Mediterranean coast Its cultured progress ever thrust southwards the barbarian hordes of negro pagans which it encountered on its frontiers. ”

“ The Khalifa, appeased and flattered, now said, "Well, try and find out the truth."
"My name is Olivier Pain," said the stranger, whom I had now told to talk in French, "and I am a Frenchman. Since I was quite a boy I was interested in the Sudan, and sympathised with its people; it is not only I, but all my compatriots, who feel the same. In Europe there are nations with whom we are at feud; one of these is the English nation which has now settled in Egypt, and one of whose generals, Gordon, is now commanding in Khartum. ”

“ All encroachments on this side necessarily resulted in absorption in the multitudinous Negro populations of Central Sudan, with the modifications of the physical and mental characters which are now presented by the Kanuri, Hausas, Songhai and other Negroid nations of that region, and are at present actually in progress amongst the conquering Fulah Hamites scattered in small dominant groups over a great part of Sudan from Senegambia to Wadai. ”

“ Everything indicated a leavening of some higher element, an element that was clearly taking a deep hold on the negro nature and making him a new man. That element you will perhaps be surprised to learn is Mahommedanism. On passing Lokoja at the confluence of the Benué with the Niger, I left behind me the missionary outposts of Islam, and entering the Central Sudan, I found myself in a comparatively well-governed empire, teeming with a busy populace of keen traders, expert manufacturers of cloth, brass work and leather; a people, in fact, who have made enormous advances towards civilisation. ”