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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
The Gaawar Nuer recall a battle called Mut Roal which Deng Laka, the prophet of the divinity DIU, fought against the Twic Dinka and their “Arab” allies. In this battle the Dinka and the Arabs failed to coordinate their movements, were attacked, and were defeated singly. Deng Laka himself is said to have personally killed the “Arab” commander. A number of rifles were captured and placed in a hut at the Dinka shrine of Luang Deng, in recognition of the help received from both the divinity DENG and the Rut Dinka caretakers of the shrine (a number of Rut Dinka fought alongside the Gaawar in this, as in other battles). The battle was of a recent enough date to be recounted in some detail by Nuer and Dinka participants to those British officials who visited the Zeraf valley in the first three decades of this century. Though the name of the “Arab” leader involved was remembered and given, the British were uncertain about the date of the battle and the identity of the opponents, and frequently assumed that they were “slavers” from the days of the Turkiyya, the Turco-Egyptian period (1840-85).
This seems to be confirmed by contemporary reports given by Casati and Emin Bey, who each recorded the annihilation of an Egyptian army patrol on the Bahr el-Zeraf (the Giraffe River) in 1885. There are some difficulties in reconciling this date with other evidence concerning floods and the opening of age-sets also mentioned by Gaawar and Dinka oral sources. In this paper I will examine the evidence contained in various orally based accounts collected between 1904 and 1982 and compare them with the few contemporary written accounts we have of battles near the Bahr el-Zeraf in the late nineteenth century. I conclude that the battle of Mut Roal was probably fought against the Mahdists in 1896, rather than against “slavers” in 1885. This conclusion in itself has further implications for our understanding of Arab-Nuer relations, and even Nuer-Dinka relations in the late nineteenth century.
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21. Ibid., 133-34, quoting ‘Arabi Dafa’ Allah to the Khalifa, Shawwal 12, 1313, Mahdiya 1/32/36.
22. Mahdiya 1/32/36, letters number 75, 76, 79, 80. Letter number 75 bears the same date as that cited by Collins, but is on a different subject. It is common in the correspondence of ‘Arabi Dafa’ Allah to find several letters of the same date, each concerning different events. My thanks to the staff of the NRO for providing me with copies of these documents, especially to Dr. Mohammad Ibrahim Abu Salim and Mahgoub Baba. My thanks also go to Sayed Abel Alier and Peter Nyot Kok, who took great interest in this mystery and assisted me in my search. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Peter Nyot Kok for his comments on the documents provided.
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24. My thanks to Professor Richard Hill for this information.
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26. Mabur's son, Monykuer, was later renowned as a chief who established good relations with the Gaawar. Monykuer's sons have continued in their father's work, and denied that their grandfather had ever been allied with the Arabs against the Gaawar. It is possible that their denial has some substance, and that Mabur was not as pivotal in dealings with the Arabs as later British administrators thought.
27. Many Gaawar, when questioned, identified the “Turuk” of Mut Roal as the same “Turuk” who allied with Nuaar Mer. In that many of the slavers of the 1870s and the ansar of the 1890s came from Dongola, this identification is technically correct.
28. This would not be the only misattribution Casati made. He claimed that Rumbek was taken by Dinka converts to Mahdiism (Casati, , Ten Years, 1:76Google Scholar). It is clear from both Dinka and Nuer testimony that there was no direct link with the Mahdists and the fall of Rumbek. Other reporters also sometimes confused the Nuer with the Dinka. The Dutch explorer, Juan Maria Schuver, was killed by Rek Dinka near Meshra el-Rek in the Bahr el-Ghazal in 1883, and though this fact was well-attested at the time, a slightly later report identified his assailants as “a tribe of Dinkas called Nuer.” See W. James, G. Baumann, and D.H. Johnson, eds., The African Travels of Juan Maria Schuver, in preparation.
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