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Deng Laka and Mut Roal: Fixing the Date of an Unknown Battle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Douglas H. Johnson
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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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Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 20 , 1993 , pp. 119 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1993

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References

Notes

1. Struvé, , quoted in Matthews, G.E., “Annual Report. Upper Nile Province, 1908,” Reports on the Finance, Administration and Condition of the Sudan, 1908 (Khartoum: 1909), 656.Google Scholar

2. Struvé, K.C.P., “Report on Khor Atar District,” Appendix B, Sudan Intelligence Report [SIR] 153, April 1907, 10.Google Scholar

3. Johnson, D.H., “Ngundeng and the Turuk': Two Narratives Compared,” HA 9 (1982): 123n25.Google Scholar

4. Hill, G.B., Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, 1874-1879 (London, 1881), 21-22, 32–33Google Scholar; Shukry, M.F., Equatoria Under Egyptian Rule (Cairo, 1953), 155, 317.Google Scholar Kuçuk 'Ali was in fact dead by 1874, but one of his sons carried on the family business along the Bahr el-Zeraf.

5. Johnson, D.H., “Reconstructing a History of Floods in the Upper Nile Region of the Sudan,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 25 (1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Coriat, P., “The Gaweir Nuers” in Governing the Nuer. Documents in Nuer History and Ethnography, 1922-31 [JASO Occasional Paper, 9] (Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar

7. “Report on March from Taufikia to Twi and Visit to Twi by Steamer, by El Kaimakam Liddell Bey, Director of Post and Telegraphs. 9th June 1904,” Appendix A, SIR, 119, June 1904, 4, 6.Google Scholar The Remington rifle was used by the Egyptian army in the 1870s and 1880s, and by the Mahdist jihadiyya in the 1880s and 1890s. Egyptian garrisons in the south frequently also had contingents of Danaqla irregulars from the old slaving companies, and these were usually armed with percussion muskets. A similar mixture of rifles and muskets was found within Mahdist garrisons throughout the Sudan.

8. Events along the Bahr el-Zeraf during Gordon's governorship of Equatoria in 1874 were confused with the period of his last governor-generalship in Khartoum. See SIR 113, December 1903, 2.

9. Schweitzer, G., Emin Pasha, His Life and Work (2 vols.: Westminister, 1898; New York, 1969), 183–84.Google Scholar See also Stuhlmann, F., ed., Die Tagebücher von Dr. Emin Pascha (Hamburg, 1922), 3: 64, 128Google Scholar

10. Casati, G., Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return of Emin Pasha (2 vols.: London, 1891), 1:241.Google Scholar

11. Ruot Rom, Cuol Macar Diu, Gai Thung (Gaawar Nuer), 12 April 1981, Ayod, EHJP-4 (all interviews cited here were conducted as part of the Ecology and History of Jonglei Province project for the Southern Records Office in Juba, supported by a Fulbright Senior Research Grant for Africa. Tapes and transcripts were deposited in the SRO in 1983).

12. Ruot Diu (Gaawar Nuer), 22-23 May 1982, Ayod, EHJP-5.

13. Family of Monykuer Mabur Ajuot (Ghol Dinka), 24 May 1982, Duk Padiat, EHJP-11; Liddell, , SIR, 119, June 1904, 6.Google Scholar

14. Ruot Diu, EHJP-5.

15. Kulang Majok (Gaawar Nuer), 24 May 1982, Ayod, EHJP-8.

16. D.H. Johnson, “Reconstructing a History;” and idem., “Ngundeng and the Battle of Pading: Prophecy, Symbolism and Historical Evidence” in David M. Anderson and Douglas H. Johnson, eds., Prophets and Prophecy in Eastern Africa (London, forthcoming).

17. Jackson, H.C., “The Nuer of the Upper Nile Province,” Sudan Notes and Records 6(1923): 149Google Scholar; Evans-Pritchard, E.E., “The Nuer: Age-Sets Sudan Notes and Records 19 (1936): 246–47.Google Scholar

18. D.H. Johnson, “Reconstructing a History.”

19. “Statement of Said Soghaiyer on his early history,” Appendix 46, SIR, 60, 25 May-31 December 1898, 81–82Google Scholar; Intelligence Report, Egypt, 40, July 1895, p. 2Google Scholar; Collins, R.O., The Southern Sudan, 1883-1898. A Struggle for Control (New Haven, 1962), 132–33.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., vi.

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.

23. Luac Dinka elders, 21 May 1982, Wunalam, EHJP-3. Shukry, , Equatoria, 157, 206.Google Scholar

24. My thanks to Professor Richard Hill for this information.

25. Collins, , Southern Sudan, 158, 165–68.Google ScholarStevenson-Hamilton, J., “The Dinka Country East of the Bahr-el-Jebel,” Geographical Journal 16 (1920):391.Google Scholar

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.

29. Stevenson-Hamilton, , “Dinka Country,” 390–91.Google Scholar