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A Premise for Precolonial Nuba History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jay Spaulding
Jay Spaulding*
Affiliation:
Kean College
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Extract

Near the center of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan lies a tract of broken, elevated terrain about the size of South Carolina. The region, by common convention, is called the Nuba Mountains, and the people who live there, through a familiar if misleading generalization, the Nuba. The inhabitants of the Nuba Mountains have long attracted the attention of students of African languages and cultures, for in these respects they exhibit very great diversity among themselves as well as distinctiveness in relation to the Arab and Nilotic cultural traditions that dominate the surrounding lowlands on every side. No scholar has yet deliberately undertaken to write a history of the Nuba, but many have found themselves constrained to make tangential statements or assumptions about Nuba history in the course of constructing studies with some other primary focus. The sum of these tangential comments and assumptions may read as the current state of Nuba historiography. The present study addresses a stimulating clash of opinion among those whose interests have led them to comment peripherally on the more remote Nuba past. The issue at stake is the existence, or non-existence, of a state form of government among the Nuba in precolonial times.

Students of the Nuba during the colonial and post-colonial periods have seldom failed to assign considerable importance to the role of successive Sudan governments in directing the destiny of the Nuba, however they may differ in assessing the quality of this intervention.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 14 , 1987 , pp. 369 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1987

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References

Notes

1. For example see Faris, James C., “Southeastern Nuba Age Organization” in Cunnison, Ian and James, Wendy eds., Essays in Sudan Ethnography Presented to Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (NY 1972), 1–30.Google Scholar

2. Stevenson, R.C., The Nuba Peoples of Kordofan Province: An Ethnographic Survey (Khartoum, 1984), 31.Google Scholar Other classics of Nuba scholarship representing this tradition include Nadel, S.F., The Nuba (London, 1947)Google Scholar and C.G., and Seligman, B.Z., Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan (London, 1932).Google Scholar A recent historical treatment of Taqali supports this school by reducing the size of this polity to the capital and its environs: see Ewald, Janet, “Leadership and Social Change on an Islamic Frontier: The Kingdom of Taqali, 1780-1900,” (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982).Google Scholar

3. For example see Frobenius, Leo, “Märchen aus Kordofan,” Atlantis, 4 (1923), 3–22Google Scholar, and Hofmann, Inge, “Eine meroitishe Stadt in Wadai?” Meroitic Newsletter (June, 1972), 14–18.Google Scholar The most effective statement of this interpretation may be found in Osman, Ali Mohamed Salih, “The Economy and Trade of Medieval Nubia,” (Ph.D., Christ's College, Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

4. For an introduction to the older history of Sinnar see O'Fahey, R.S. and Spaulding, J.L., Kingdoms of the Sudan (London, 1974).Google Scholar For a detailed treatment of Sinnar in the eighteenth century see Spaulding, , The Heroic Age in Sinnar East Lansing, 1985).Google Scholar

5. See the roster appended to Spaulding, , Hernia Age, 614–29.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., 21-39.

7. Ibid., 381-412.

8. Nadel, , Nuba, 358–62.Google Scholar

9. For a discussion of the sources about early times in Taqali see Stevenson, , Nuba People, 31ff.Google Scholar For the appeal to the Sultana Nasra see Ewald, , “Leadership and Social Change,” 245Google Scholar, who is not aware who Nasra was, and therefore fails to appreciate the significance of the disputants' appeal to tne sultana's judgment.

10. Mansfield Parkyns, “Notes on Tagalla, the Noubas, Dowleeb, etc.” University of Khartoum, Sudan Library, Manuscripts, Case 8K0PB. For a discussion of this document see Stevenson, , Nuba People, 53, 79n55.Google Scholar Stevenson correctly noted that the manuscript is a conflation of three independent works, some or all of which may have been translated rather than composed by Parkyns, who regarded them as source material for a projected history of the Sudan. The first and longest segment (a) discusses the history of Taqali, the second (b) the more westerly Nuba, while the third (c) offers information about the “Dowleeb,” a category which the author of (c) apparently understood to include both the hills of northern Kordofan generally known by that name and (probably incorrectly) some of the extreme southeastern Nuba Mountains subject to Taqali. Stevenson rightly had reservations about (c), and the present study confines itself exclusively to references derived from (a).

11. Spaulding, , Heroic Age, 75–104.Google Scholar

12. For a discussion based on evidence form Fazughli, another part of southern Sinnar, see Spaulding, , “Toward a Demystification of the Funj: Some Perspectives on Society in Southern Sinnar,” Meroitica, 7 (1980), 505–21.Google Scholar

13. Ewald, , “Leadership and Social Change,” 328Google Scholar; for a broader context see Spaulding, , Heroic Age 75–104.Google Scholar

14. Kapteijns, Lidwien and Spaulding, Jay, “Precolonial Trade Between States in the Eastern Sudan,” African Economic History, 11 (1982), 29–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. For example, see Manger, Leif Ole, “Traders and Farmers in the Nuba Mountains: Jallaba Family Firms in the Liri Area” in Trade and Traders in the Sudan, ed. Manger, Leif O (Bergen, 1984), 213–42.Google Scholar