Nubia - Crystalinks
Nubia was also called - Upper & Lower Nubia, Kush, Land of Kush, Te-Nehesy, Nubadae, Napata, or the Kingdom of Meroei.
The region referred to as Lower Egypt is the northernmost portion. Upper Nubia
extends south into Sudan and can be subdivided into several separate areas such as
Batn El Hajar or "Belly of Rocks", the sands of the Abri-Delgo Reach, or the flat plains of
the Dongola Reach. Nubia, the hottest and most arid region of the world, has caused
many civilizations to be totally dependent on the Nile for existence.
Historically Nubia has been a nucleus of diverse cultures. It has been the only occupied
strip of land connecting the Mediterranean world with "tropical" Africa. Thus, this put
the people in close and constant contact with its neighbors for long periods of history
and Nubia was an important trade route between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of
the world. Its rich material culture and tradition of languages are seen in archaeological
records. The most prosperous period of Nubian civilization was that of the kingdom of
Kush, which endured from about 800 BC to about 320 AD. During this time, the Nubians
of Kush would at one point, assume rule over all of Nubia as well as Upper and Lower
Egypt.
The regions of Nubia, Sudan and Egypt are considered by some to be the cradle of civilization. Today the term Nubian has become inclusive of Africans, African Arabs, African Americans and people of color in general.
The history of the Nubians is closely linked with that of ancient Egypt.
Images of early Gods are not unlike those found on heiroglyphs of Egyptian Gods - with heads of animals and birds.
More than fifty ancient pyramids and royal tombs rise out
of the desert sands at Meroe. They are Sudan's
best-preserved pyramids, and one of Africa's best-kept
secrets.
Unlike Egypt's famous pyramids to the north, the Pyramids
of Meroe are not floodlit at night. They do not form the
backdrop to a dazzling laser-light multimedia
extravaganza. They do not cater to the whims of
camera-toting, dollar-wielding tourists. The pyramids are a
silent and awesome sight, where the intrepid traveler can
soak up their ancient atmosphere in solitude.
Like the Egyptians, the Kushites believed in a life after death. This was
thought to bc a continuation of life on earth. For them, the afterlife
resembled this one, and they built huge graves as an enduring home for the dead.
The unique social position of the pharaoh, as god on earth, was reflected in
his tomb.
The king was the son of Amun-Pa the sun god and as such embodied the sun on
earth. Like the sun, his life followed a cyclical plan. His youth resembled
the sun rising, his maturity was like the sun at noon and his old age was
comparable with the setting sun. When the king died the sun disappeared below
the horizon and darkness fell.
Mythology recounted that the dying or setting sun travelled through the
underworld in its journey towards the east where it was to be reborn at the dawn
of the day. From time immemorial the pyramid represented the rising sun and the
resurrection, and people believed that a tomb in this shape would offer the dead
king the chance of rising out of death. The pyramid was seen as a ladder up to
heaven enabling the dead king's soul to travel and join the gods in the heavens.
At night time the king, assuming the shape of Osiris, god of the afterlife and
resurrection, descended in the barque of the sun god Ra and, having become one
with this god, sailed through the bouts of darkness.
Building pyramids ceased towards the end of the Middle Kingdom period. The
pharaohs of the New Kingdom constructed their graves in caves with underground
rooms and passages symbolizing the nightly sojourn of the sun god. The black
pharaohs of the Kushite Dynasty and their descendants readopted the old pyramids
for their tombs. The number of pyramids in Nubia, where a total of 223 bas been
round, fat exceeds that of Egypt.
The pyramids of Nubia have three important sections. These are: 1) an
underground burial place symbolizing the underworld, where the mummy lies; 2) a
massive steep pyramid above, symbolizing the ladder up to heaven; 3) a small
chapel on the eastern side where sacrifices could bc placed, intended to sustain
the dead king on his travels. Perhaps the doors to this chapel would be
opened by a priest at sunrise so that the light could shine in on the stela that
was placed against the rear wall. The chapel thus also functioned as a place of
prayer connected with the cult of the dead.
The underground graves of the Nubian pyramids were richly decorated. The
mummified kings and queens were laid upon beds in accordance with the ancient
tradition of Kerma. So that the dead monarch would not have to work
in the afterlife, their tombs were filled with shabtis, small statues of people
which in a magical manner would come to life when summoned by the gods to
perform tasks.
Pyramids from the Northern Cemetery at Meroe, 3rd c. B.C. to
4th c. A.D. By the 4th c. B.C., the Kushite kings had moved south to
the Sudanese savannah and built a capitol at Meroe. Here southern
cultural traditions slowly prevailed over the cultural heritage of Egypt.
Ruins of the Merotic temple at Musawwarat es-Sufra. This temple
complex, called the "Great Enclosure", lies south of Meroë near the
Sixth Cataract. It may have been a pilgrammage center or a royal
palace. A number of towns were located on the banks of the
Atbara, Blue Nile and White Nile, in which lived craftsmen who met
local needs and exported along the trade route that ran from Red
Sea port towns in the East to beyond Lake Chad in the West. This
route eventually connected to the major center of iron production
in Jenne Jeno.
Elephant statue from the "Great Enclosure" at Musawwarat
es-Sufra temple. Elephants served a military function, but the
cultural influence from the South is apparently the reason for their
having a religious significance, now lost to us.
Elephantine Temples on the eastern bank of the Nile River.
The Lion Temple of Naqa. The architectural style is Egyptian. The
entrance reliefs show the king and queen striking their enemies.
The queen reflects Merotic culture in both her importance being
equal to that of the king, but also in her figure style.
Relief from the Lion Temple at Naga, south of Meroë at the Sixth
Cataract. King Natakamani stands before the lion god, Apedemek,
and also Horus and Amun. The king's robe and the sash draped
over his right shoulder, which is typical of Merotic dress. The
Sudanese god Apedemek slowly displaced the divinities of Egypt.
Ancient Nubia
Was this the place of creation - the Garden of Eden?
Worshipping Gods and Goddesses
Nubian Priestess - linked to creational forces -
the return of the feminine energies -
the tones of the dolphin
the flight of the dove - transition -
the flow of the collective unconscious through
which all things are created
The earliest inhabitants of what is now The Sudan can be traced to African (i.e., Negroid) peoples who
lived in the vicinity of Khartoum, the Sudan, in Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) times (30,000-20,000
BC). They were hunters and gatherers who made pottery and (later) objects of ground sandstone.
Toward the end of the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age; 10,000-3,000 BC) they had domesticated
animals. These Africans were clearly in contact with predynastic civilizations (before c. 2925 BC) to the
north in Egypt, but the arid uplands separating Egypt from Nubia appear to have discouraged the
predynastic Egyptians from settling there.
At the end of the 4th millennium BC, kings of Egypt's 1st dynasty conquered upper
Nubia south of Aswan, introducing Egyptian cultural influence to the African
peoples who were scattered along the riverbank. In subsequent centuries, Nubia
was subjected to successive military expeditions from Egypt in search of slaves or
building materials for royal tombs, which destroyed much of the Egyptian-Nubian
culture that had sprung from the initial conquests of the 1st dynasty.
Throughout
these few centuries (c. 2925-c. 2575 BC), the descendants of the Nubians
continued to eke out an existence along the Nile River, an easy prey to Egyptian
military expeditions. Although the Nubians were no match for the armies of Egypt's
Old Kingdom, the interactions arising from their enslavement and colonization led
to ever-increasing African influence upon the art, culture, and religion of dynastic
Egypt.
Sometime after about 2181, in the period known to Egyptologists as the First
Intermediate Period (c. 2130-1938), a new wave of immigrants entered Nubia from
Libya, in the west, where the increasing desiccation of the Sahara drove them to
settle along the Nile as cattle farmers. Other branches of these people seem to
have gone beyond the Nile to the Red Sea Hills, while still others pushed south and
west to Wadai and Darfur.
These newcomers were able to settle on the Nile and
assimilate the existing Nubians without opposition from Egypt. After the fall of the
6th dynasty (c. 2150), Egypt experienced more than a century of weakness and
internal strife, giving the immigrants in Nubia time to develop their own distinct
civilization with unique crafts, architecture, and social structure, virtually
unhindered by the potentially more dynamic civilization to the north.
With the
advent of the 11th dynasty (2081), however, Egypt recovered its strength and
pressed southward into Nubia, at first sending only sporadic expeditions to exact
tribute, but by the 12th dynasty (1938-1756) effectively occupying Nubia as far
south as Semna.
The Nubians resisted the Egyptian occupation, which was
maintained only by a chain of forts erected along the Nile. Egyptian military and
trading expeditions, of course, penetrated beyond Semna, and Egyptian fortified
trading posts were actually established to the south at Karmah in order to protect
against frequent attacks upon Egyptian trading vessels by Nubian tribesmen
beyond the southern frontier.
The Kingdom of Kush
Despite the Egyptian presence in upper Nubia, the indigenous culture of the
region continued to flourish. This culture was deeply influenced by African peoples
in the south and was little changed by the proximity of Egyptian garrisons or the
imports of luxury articles by Egyptian traders. Indeed, the Egyptianization of Nubia
appears to have actually been enhanced during the decline in Egypt's political
control over Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1630-1540 BC), when
Nubians were employed in large numbers as mercenaries against the Asian Hyksos
invaders of Egypt.
This experience did more to introduce Egyptian culture, which
the mercenaries absorbed while fighting in Egyptian armies, than did the preceding
centuries of Egyptian military occupation. Conversely, the presence of these
mercenaries in Egypt contributed to the growing African influence within Egyptian
culture.
The defeat of the Hyksos was the result of a national rising of the Egyptians who,
once they had expelled the Hyksos from the Nile valley, turned their energies
southward to reestablish the military occupation of Nubia that the Hyksos invasion
had disrupted. Under Thutmose I (reigned 1493-c. 1482 BC) the Egyptian
conquest of the northern Sudan was completed as far as Kurqus, 50 miles south
of Abu Hamad, and subsequent Egyptian military expeditions penetrated even
farther up the Nile.
This third Egyptian occupation was the most complete and the
most enduring, for despite sporadic rebellions against Egyptian control Nubia was
divided into two administrative units: Wawat in the north, with its provincial capital
at Aswan, and Kush (also spelled Cush) in the south, with its headquarters at
Napata (Marawi). Nubia as a whole was governed by a viceroy, usually a member
of the royal entourage, who was responsible to the Egyptian pharaoh.
Under him
were two deputies, one for Wawat and one for Kush, and a hierarchy of lesser
officials. The bureaucracy was staffed chiefly by Egyptians, but Egyptianized
Nubians were not uncommon. Colonies of Egyptian officials, traders, and priests
surrounded the administrative centres, but beyond these outposts the Nubians
continued to preserve their own distinct traditions, customs, and crafts. A
syncretistic culture thus arose in Kush, fashioned by that of Egypt to the north
and those of African peoples to the south.
Kush's position athwart the trade routes from Egypt to the Red Sea, and from the
Nile to the south and west, brought considerable wealth from far-off places.
Moreover, its cultivated areas along the Nile were rich, and in the hills the gold
and emerald mines produced bullion and jewels for Egypt. The Nubians were also
highly valued as soldiers.
As Egypt slipped once again into decline at the close of the New Kingdom (11th
century BC), the viceroys of Kush, supported by their Nubian armies, became
virtually independent kings, free of Egyptian control. By the 8th century BC, the
kings of Kush came from hereditary ruling families of Egyptianized Nubian chiefs
who possessed neither political nor family ties with Egypt.
Under one such king,
Kashta, Kush acquired control of Upper (i.e., southern) Egypt, and under his son
Piankhi (c. 750-c. 719 BC), the whole of Egypt to the shores of the Mediterranean
was brought under the administration of Kush.
As a world power, however, Kush
was not to last. Just when the kings of Kush had established their rule from Abu
Hamad to the Nile delta, the Assyrians invaded Egypt (671 BC) and with their
superior iron-forged weapons defeated the armies of Kush under the redoubtable
Taharqa; by 654 the Kushites had been driven back to Nubia and the safety of
their capital, Napata.
Although reduced from a great power to an isolated kingdom behind the barren
hills that blocked the southward advance from Aswan, Kush continued to rule over
the middle Nile for another thousand years. Its unique Egyptian-Nubian culture with
its strong African accretions was preserved, while that of Egypt came under
Persian, Greek, and Roman influences.
Although Egyptianized in many ways, the
culture of Kush was not simply Egyptian civilization in a Nubian environment. The
Kushites developed their own language, expressed first by Egyptian hieroglyphs,
then their own, and finally by a cursive script. They worshiped Egyptian gods but
did not abandon their own. They buried their kings in pyramids but not in the
Egyptian fashion.
Their wealth continued to flow from the mines and to grow with
their control of the trade routes. Soon after the retreat from Egypt the capital
was moved from Napata southward to Meroe near Shandi, where the kingdom was
increasingly exposed to the long-established African cultures farther south at the
very time when its ties with Egypt were rapidly disappearing. The subsequent
history of Kush is one of gradual decay, ending with inglorious extinction in AD 350
by the king of Aksum, who marched down from the Ethiopian highlands, destroyed
Meroe, and sacked the decrepit towns along the river.
Medieval Christian Kingdoms
The 200 years from the fall of Kush to the middle of the 6th century is an unknown
age in the Sudan. Nubia was inhabited by a people called the Nobatae by the
ancient geographers and the X-Group by modern archaeologists, who are still at a
loss to explain their origins.
The X-Group were clearly, however, the heirs of Kush,
for their whole cultural life was dominated by Meroitic crafts and customs, and
occasionally they even felt themselves sufficiently strong, in alliance with the
nomadic Blemmyes (the Beja of the eastern Sudan), to attack the Romans in Upper
Egypt. When this happened, the Romans retaliated, defeating the Nobatae and
Blemmyes and driving them into obscurity once again.
When the Sudan was once more brought into the orbit of the Mediterranean world
by the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 6th century, the middle course of the
Nile was divided into three kingdoms: Nobatia, with its capital at Pachoras (modern
Faras); Maqurrah, with its capital at Dunqulah (Old Dongola); and the kingdom of
'Alwah in the south, with its capital at Subah (Soba) near what is now Khartoum.
Between 543 and 575 these three kingdoms were converted to Christianity by
the work of Julian, a missionary who proselytized among the Nobatia (543-545),
and his successor Longinus, who between 569 and 575 consolidated the work of
Julian in Nobatia and even carried Christianity to 'Alwah in the south. The new
religion appears to have been adopted with considerable enthusiasm. Christian
churches sprang up along the Nile, and ancient temples were refurbished to
accommodate Christian worshipers.
After the retirement of Longinus, however, the
Sudan once again receded into a period about which little is known, and it did not
reemerge into the stream of recorded history until the coming of the Arabs in the
middle of the 7th century.
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632, the Arabs erupted from the
desert steppes of Arabia and overran the lands to the east and west. Egypt was
invaded in 639, and small groups of Arab raiders penetrated up the Nile and
pillaged along the frontier of the kingdom of Maqurrah, which by the 7th century
had absorbed the state of Nobatia. Raid and counterraid between the Arabs and
the Nubians followed until a well-equipped Arab expedition under 'Abd Allah ibn
Sa'd ibn Abi Sarh was sent south to punish the Nubians.
The Arabs marched as far
as Dunqulah, laid siege to the town, and destroyed the Christian cathedral. They
suffered heavy casualties, however, so that when the king of Maqurrah sought an
armistice, 'Abd Allah ibn Sa'd agreed to peace, happy to extricate his battered
forces from a precarious position.
Arab-Nubian relations were subsequently
regularized by an annual exchange of gifts, by trade relations, and by the mutual
understanding that no Muslims were to settle in Nubia and no Nubians were to
take up residence in Egypt.
With but few interruptions this peaceful, commercial
relationship lasted for nearly six centuries, its very success undoubtedly the
result of the mutual advantage that both the Arabs and the Nubians derived from
it. The Arabs had a stable frontier; they appear to have had no designs to occupy
the Sudan and were probably discouraged from doing so by the arid plains south
of Aswan.
Peace on the frontier was their object, and this the treaty guaranteed.
In return, the kingdom of Maqurrah gained another 600 years of life.
Islamic Encroachments
When non-Arab Muslims acquired control of the Nile delta, friction arose in Upper
Egypt. In the 9th century the Turkish Tulunid rulers of Egypt, wishing to rid
themselves of the unruly nomadic Arab tribes in their domain, encouraged them to
migrate southward. Lured by the prospects of gold in the Nubian Desert, the
nomads pressed into Nubia, raiding and pillaging along borders, but the heartland
of Maqurrah remained free from direct hostilities until the Mamluks established
their control over Egypt (1250).
In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the
Mamluk sultans sent regular military expeditions against Maqurrah, as much to rid
Egypt of uncontrollable Arab Bedouins as to capture Nubia. The Mamluks never
succeeded in actually occupying Maqurrah, but they devastated the country,
draining its political and economic vitality and plunging it into chaos and
depression.
By the 15th century Dunqulah was no longer strong enough to
withstand Arab encroachment, and the country was open to Arab immigration.
Once the Arab nomads, particularly the Juhaynah people, learned that the land
beyond the Aswan reach could support their herds and that no political authority
had the power to turn them back, they began to migrate southward, intermarrying
with the Nubians and introducing Arabic Muslim culture to the Christian inhabitants.
The Arabs, who inherited through the male line, soon acquired control from the
Nubians, who inherited through the female line, intermarriage resulting in Nubian
inheritances passing from Nubian women to their half-Arab sons, but the Arabs
replaced political authority in Maqurrah only with their own nomadic institutions.
From Dunqulah the Juhaynah and others wandered east and west of the Nile with
their herds; in the south the kingdom of 'Alwah stood as the last indigenous
Christian barrier to Arab occupation of the Sudan.
'Alwah extended from Kabushiyah as far south as Sennar (Sannar). Beyond, from
the Ethiopian escarpment to the White Nile, lived peoples about which little is
known. 'Alwah appears to have been much more prosperous and stronger than
Maqurrah. It preserved the ironworking techniques of Kush, and its capital at
Subah possessed many impressive buildings, churches, and gardens.
Christianity
remained the state religion, but 'Alwah's long isolation from the Christian world had
probably resulted in bizarre and syncretistic accretions to liturgy and ritual. 'Alwah
was able to maintain its integrity so long as the Arabs failed to combine against it,
but the continuous and corrosive raids of the Bedouins throughout the 15th
century clearly weakened its power to resist. Thus, when an Arab confederation
led by 'Abd Allah Jamma' was at last brought together to assault the Christian
kingdom, 'Alwah collapsed (c. 1500). Subah and the Blue Nile region were
abandoned, left to the Funj, who suddenly appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to
establish their authority from Sennar to the main Nile.
The Funj
The Funj were a strange and mysterious people. They were neither Arabs nor
Muslims, and their homeland was probably on the upper Blue Nile in the
borderlands between Ethiopia and the Sudan. Under their leader, 'Amarah Dunqas,
the Funj founded their capital at Sennar and throughout the 16th century
struggled for control of the Al-Jazirah (Gezira) region against the Arab tribes who
had settled around the confluence of the Blue and the White Niles. The Funj
appear to have firmly established their supremacy by 1607-08.
By the mid-17th century the Funj dynasty had reached its golden age under one
of its greatest kings, Badi II Abu Daqn (reigned 1644/45-80), who extended Funj
authority across the White Nile into Kordofan and reduced the tribal chieftaincies
scattered northward along the main Nile to tribute-paying feudatories. But as Badi
expanded Funj power, he also planted the seeds of its decline. During his
conquests, slaves were captured and taken to Sennar, where, as they grew in
numbers and influence, they formed a military caste. Loyal to the monarch alone,
the slaves soon came to compete with the Funj aristocracy for control of the
offices of state. Intrigue and hostility between these two rival groups soon led to
open rebellion that undermined the position of the traditional ruling class. Under
Badi IV Abu Shulukh (reigned 1724-62), the ruling aristocracy was finally broken,
and the king assumed arbitrary power, supported by his slave troops. So long as
Badi IV could command the loyalty of his army, his position was secure and the
kingdom enjoyed respite from internal strife, but at the end of his long reign he
could no longer control the army. Under the leadership of his viceroy in Kordofan,
Abu Likaylik, the military turned against the king and exiled him to Subah. Abu
Likaylik probably represented a resurgence of older indigenous elements who had
been Arabized and Islamized but were neither Arab nor Funj. Thenceforward, the
Funj kings were but puppets of their viziers (chief ministers), whose struggles to
win and to keep control precipitated the kingdom into steady decline, interrupted
by only infrequent periods of peace and stability established by a strong vizier
who was able to overcome his rivals. During its last half century the Funj kingdom
was a spent state, kept intact only through want of a rival, but gradually
disintegrating through wars, intrigue, and conspiracy, until the Egyptians advanced
on Sennar in 1821 and pushed the Funj empire into oblivion.
The Spread of Islam
The Funj were originally non-Muslims, but the aristocracy soon adopted Islam and,
although they retained many traditional African customs, remained nominal Muslims.
The conversion was largely the work of a handful of Islamic missionaries who came
to the Sudan from the larger Muslim world. The great success of these
missionaries, however, was not among the Funj themselves but among the
Arabized Nubian population settled along the Nile. Among these villagers the
missionaries instilled a deep devotion to Islam that appears to have been
conspicuously absent among the nomadic Arabs who first reached the Sudan after
the collapse of the kingdom of Maqurrah. One early missionary was Ghulam Allah ibn
'A'id from the Yemen, who settled at Dunqulah in the 14th century. He was
followed in the 15th century by Hamad Abu Danana, who appears to have
emphasized the way to God through mystical exercises rather than through the
more orthodox interpretations of the Qur'an taught by Ghulam Allah.
The spread of Islam was advanced in the 16th century, when the hegemony of the
Funj enhanced security. In the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous schools of
religious learning were founded along the White Nile, and the Shayqiyah
confederacy was converted. Many of the more famous Sudanese missionaries who
followed them were Sufi holy men, members of influential religious brotherhoods
who sought the way to God through mystical contemplation. The Sufi brotherhoods
themselves played a vital role in linking the Sudan to the larger world of Islam
beyond the Nile valley. Although the fervour of Sudanese Islam waned after 1700,
the great reform movements that shook the Muslim world in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries produced a revivalist spirit among the Sufi brotherhoods,
giving rise to a new order, the Mirghaniyah or Khatmiyah, later one of the
strongest in the modern Sudan.
These men, called faqihs, attracted a following by their teachings and piety and
laid the foundations for a long line of indigenous Sudanese holy men. The latter
passed on the way to God taught them by their masters, or founded their own
religious schools, or, if extraordinarily successful, gathered their own following into
a religious order. The faqihs played a vital role in educating their followers and
helped place them in the highest positions of government, by which they were
able to spread Islam and the influence of their respective brotherhoods. The
faqihs held a religious monopoly until the introduction, under Egyptian-Ottoman rule
(see below), of an official hierarchy of jurists and scholars, the 'ulama', whose
orthodox legalistic conception of Islam was as alien to the Sudanese as were their
origins.
This disparity between the mystical, traditional faqihs, close to the
Sudanese, if not of them, and the orthodox, Islamic jurists, aloof, if not actually
part of the government bureaucracy, created a rivalry that in the past produced
open hostility in times of trouble and sullen suspicion in times of peace. Recently,
this schism has diminished; the faqih continues his customary practices
unmolested, while the Sudanese have acknowledged the position of the 'ulama' in
society.
Egyptian-Ottoman rule
Muhammad 'Ali and his successors
In July 1820, Muhammad 'Ali, viceroy of Egypt under the Ottoman Turks, sent an
army under his son Isma'il to conquer the Sudan. Muhammad 'Ali was interested in
the gold and slaves that the Sudan could provide and wished to control the vast
hinterland south of Egypt. By 1821 the Funj and the sultan of Darfur had
surrendered to his forces, and the Nilotic Sudan from Nubia to the Ethiopian
foothills and from the 'Atbarah River to Darfur became part of his expanding
empire.
The collection of taxes under Muhammad 'Ali's regime amounted to virtual
confiscation of gold, livestock, and slaves, and opposition to his rule became
intense, eventually erupting into rebellion and the murder of Isma'il and his
bodyguard. But the rebels lacked leadership and coordination, and their revolt
was brutally suppressed. A sullen hostility in the Sudanese was met by continued
repression until the appointment of 'Ali Khurshid Agha as governor-general in
1826. His administration marked a new era in Egyptian-Sudanese relations. He
reduced taxes and consulted the Sudanese through the respected Sudanese
leader 'Abd al-Qadir wad az-Zayn. Letters of amnesty were granted to fugitives. A
more equitable system of taxation was implemented, and the support of the
powerful class of holy men and sheikhs (tribal chiefs) for the administration was
obtained by exempting them from taxation. But 'Ali Khurshid was not content
merely to restore the Sudan to its previous condition. Under his initiative trade
routes were protected and expanded, Khartoum was developed as the
administrative capital, and a host of agricultural and technical improvements were
undertaken. When he retired to Cairo in 1838, Khurshid left a prosperous and
contented country behind him.
His successor, Ahmad Pasha Abu Widan, with but few exceptions, continued his
policies and made it his primary concern to root out official corruption. Abu Widan
dealt ruthlessly with offenders or those who sought to thwart his schemes to
reorganize taxation. He was particularly fond of the army, which reaped the
benefits of regular pay and tolerable conditions in return for the brunt of the
expansion and consolidation of Egyptian administration in Kassala and among the
Baqqarah Arabs of southern Kordofan. Muhammad 'Ali, suspecting Abu Widan of
disloyalty, recalled him to Cairo in the autumn of 1843, but he died mysteriously,
many believed of poison, before he left the Sudan.
During the next two decades the country stagnated because of ineffective
government at Khartoum and vacillation by the viceroys at Cairo. If the successors
of Abu Widan possessed administrative talent, they were seldom able to
demonstrate it. No governor-general held office long enough to introduce his own
plans, let alone carry on those of his predecessor. New schemes were never
begun, and old projects were allowed to languish. Without direction the army and
the bureaucracy became demoralized and indifferent, while the Sudanese became
disgruntled with the government. In 1856 the viceroy Sa'id Pasha visited the Sudan
and, shocked by what he saw, contemplated abandoning it altogether. Instead, he
abolished the office of governor-general and had each Sudanese province report
directly to the viceregal authority in Cairo. This state of affairs persisted until the
more dynamic viceroy Isma'il took over the guidance of Egyptian and Sudanese
affairs in 1862.
During these quiescent decades, however, two ominous developments began that
presaged future problems. Reacting to pressure from the Western powers,
particularly Great Britain, the governor-general of the Sudan was ordered to halt
the slave trade. But not even the viceroy himself could overcome established
custom with the stroke of a pen and the erection of a few police posts. If the
restriction of the slave trade precipitated resistance among the Sudanese, the
appointment of Christian officials to the administration and the expansion of the
European Christian community in the Sudan caused open resentment. European
merchants, mostly of Mediterranean origin, were either ignored or tolerated by
the Sudanese and confined their contacts to compatriots within their own
community and to the Turko-Egyptian officials whose manners and dress they
frequently adopted. They became a powerful and influential group, whose lasting
contribution to the Sudan was to take the lead in opening the White Nile and the
southern Sudan to navigation and commerce after Muhammad 'Ali had abolished
state trading monopolies in the Sudan in 1838 under pressure from the European
powers.
In 1863, Isma'il Pasha became viceroy of Egypt. Educated in Egypt, Vienna, and
Paris, Isma'il had absorbed the European interest in overseas adventures as well
as Muhammad 'Ali's desire for imperial expansion and had imaginative schemes for
transforming Egypt and the Sudan into a modern state by employing Western
technology. First he hoped to acquire the rest of the Nile basin, including the
southern Sudan and the Bantu states by the great lakes of central Africa. To
finance this vast undertaking, and his projects for the modernization of Egypt
itself, Isma'il turned to the capital-rich nations of western Europe, where investors
were willing to risk their savings at high rates of interest in the cause of Egyptian
and African development. But such funds would be attracted only as long as Isma'il
demonstrated his interest in reform by intensifying the campaign against the slave
trade in the Sudan. Isma'il needed no encouragement, for he required the
diplomatic and financial support of the European powers in his efforts to
modernize Egypt and expand his empire. Thus, these two major themes of Isma'il's
rule of the Nilotic Sudan--imperial expansion and the suppression of the slave
trade--became intertwined, culminating in a third major development, the
introduction of an ever-increasing number of European Christians to carry out the
task of modernization.
In 1869 Isma'il commissioned the Englishman Samuel Baker to lead an expedition up
the White Nile to establish Egyptian hegemony over the equatorial regions of
central Africa and to curtail the slave trade on the upper Nile. Baker remained in
equatorial Africa until 1873, where he established the Equatoria province as part
of the Egyptian Sudan. He had extended Egyptian power and curbed the slave
traders on the Nile, but he had also alienated certain African tribes and, being a
rather tactless Christian, Isma'il's Muslim administrators as well. Moreover, Baker
had struck only at the Nilotic slave trade. To the west, on the vast plains of the
Bahr Al-Ghazal (now a state of the Republic of The Sudan), slave merchants had
established enormous empires with stations garrisoned by slave soldiers. From
these stations the long lines of human chattels were sent overland through Darfur
and Kordofan to the slave markets of the northern Sudan, Egypt, and Arabia. Not
only did the firearms of the Khartoumers (as the traders were called) establish
their supremacy over the peoples of the interior but also those merchants with
the strongest resources gradually swallowed up lesser traders until virtually the
whole of the Bahr Al-Ghazal was controlled by the greatest slaver of them all,
az-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, more commonly known as Zubayr (or Zobeir) Pasha. So
powerful had he become that in 1873, the year Baker retired from the Sudan, the
Egyptian viceroy (now called the khedive) appointed Zubayr governor of the Bahr
Al-Ghazal. Isma'il's officials had failed to destroy Zubayr as Baker had crushed the
slavers east of the Nile, and to elevate Zubayr to the governorship appeared the
only way to establish at least the nominal sovereignty of Cairo over that enormous
province. Thus, the agents of Zubayr continued to pillage the Bahr Al-Ghazal under
the Egyptian flag, while officially Egypt extended its dominion to the tropical
rainforests of the Congo region. Zubayr remained in detention in Cairo.
Isma'il next offered the governorship of the Equatoria province to another
Englishman, Charles George Gordon, who in China had won fame and the sobriquet
Chinese Gordon. Gordon arrived in Equatoria in 1874. His object was the same as
Baker's--to consolidate Egyptian authority in Equatoria and to establish Egyptian
sovereignty over the kingdoms of the great East African lakes. He achieved some
success in the former and none in the latter. When Gordon retired from Equatoria,
the lake kingdoms remained stubbornly independent.
In 1877 Isma'il appointed Gordon governor-general of the Sudan. Gordon was a
European and a Christian. He returned to the Sudan to lead a crusade against the
slave trade, and, to assist him in this humanitarian enterprise, he surrounded
himself with a cadre of European and American Christian officials. In 1877 Isma'il
had signed the Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention, which provided for the
termination of the sale and purchase of slaves in the Sudan by 1880. Gordon set
out to fulfill the terms of this treaty, and in whirlwind tours through the country he
broke up the markets and imprisoned the traders. His European subordinates did
the same in the provinces.
Gordon's crusading zeal blinded him to his invidious position as a Christian in a
Muslim land and obscured from him the social and economic effects of arbitrary
repression. Not only did his campaign create a crisis in the Sudan's economy but
the Sudanese soon came to believe that the crusade, led by European Christians,
violated the principles and traditions of Islam. By 1879 a strong current of reaction
against Gordon's reforms was running through the country. The powerful
slave-trading interests had, of course, turned against the administration, while the
ordinary villagers and nomads, who habitually blamed the government for any
difficulties, were quick to associate economic depression with Gordon's
Christianity. And then suddenly, in the middle of rising discontent in the Sudan,
Isma'il's financial position collapsed. In difficulties for years, he could now no longer
pay the interest on the Egyptian debt, and an international commission was
appointed by the European powers to oversee Egyptian finances. After 16 years
of glorious spending, Isma'il sailed away into exile. Gordon resigned.
Gordon left a perilous situation in the Sudan. The Sudanese were confused and
dissatisfied. Many of the ablest senior officials, both European and Egyptian, had
been dismissed by Gordon, departed with him, or died in his service. Castigated
and ignored by Gordon, the bureaucracy had lapsed into apathy. Moreover, the
office of governor-general, on which the administration was so dependent,
devolved upon Muhammad Ra'uf Pasha, a mild man, ill-suited to stem the current of
discontent or to shore up the structure of Egyptian rule, particularly when he
could no longer count on Egyptian resources. Such then was the Sudan in June of
1881 when Muhammad Ahmad declared himself to be the Mahdi ("the divinely
guided one").
The Mahdiyah
Muhammad Ahmad ibn 'Abd Allah was the son of a Dunqulahwi boatbuilder who
claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Deeply religious from his youth, he
was educated in one of the Sufi orders, the Sammaniyah, but he later secluded
himself on Aba Island in the White Nile to practice religious asceticism. In 1880 he
toured Kordofan, where he learned of the discontent of the people and observed
those actions of the government that he could not reconcile with his own religious
beliefs. Upon his return to Aba Island he clearly viewed himself as a mujaddid, a
renewer of the Muslim faith, his mission to reform Islam and return it to the pristine
form practiced by the Prophet. To Muhammad Ahmad the orthodox 'ulama' who
supported the administration were no less infidels than Christians, and, when he
later lashed out against misgovernment, he was referring as much to the
theological heresy as to secular maladministration. Once he had proclaimed himself
Mahdi (a title traditionally used by Islamic religious reformers), Muhammad Ahmad
was regarded by the Sudanese as an eschatological figure, one who foreshadows
the end of an age of darkness (which happened to coincide with the end of the
13th Muslim century) and heralds the beginnings of a new era of light and
righteousness. Thus, as a divinely guided reformer and symbol, Muhammad Ahmad
fulfilled the requirements of Mahdi in the eyes of his supporters.
Surrounding the Mahdi were his followers, the ansar, and foremost among them
was 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad, the caliph (khalifah; "deputy"), who came from the
Ta'a'ishah tribe of the Baqqarah Arabs and who assumed the leadership of the
Mahdist state upon the death of Muhammad Ahmad. The holy men, the faqihs, who
for long had lamented the sorry state of religion in the Sudan brought on by the
legalistic and unappealing orthodoxy of the Egyptians, looked to the Mahdi to
purge the Sudan of the faithless ones. Also in his following, more numerous and
powerful than the holy men, were the merchants formerly connected with the
slave trade. All had suffered from Gordon's campaign against the trade, and all
now hoped to reassert their economic position under the banner of religious war.
Neither of these groups, however, could have carried out a revolution by
themselves. The third and vital participants were the Baqqarah Arabs, the cattle
nomads of Kordofan and Darfur who hated taxes and despised government. They
formed the shock troops of the Mahdist revolutionary army, whose enthusiasm and
numbers made up for its primitive technology. Moreover, the government itself
only managed to enhance the prestige of the Mahdi by its fumbling attempts to
arrest him and proscribe his movement. By September 1882, the Mahdists
controlled all of Kordofan and at Shaykan on Nov. 5, 1883, destroyed an Egyptian
army of 10,000 men under the command of a British colonel. After Shaykan, the
Sudan was lost, and not even the heroic leadership of Gordon, who was hastily
sent to Khartoum, could save the Sudan for Egypt. On Jan. 26, 1885, the Mahdists
captured Khartoum and massacred Gordon and the defenders.
The Reign of the Khalifah
Five months after the fall of Khartoum, the Mahdi suddenly died on June 22, 1885.
He was succeeded by the Khalifah 'Abd Allah. The Khalifah's first task was to
secure his own precarious position among the competing factions in the Mahdist
state. He frustrated a conspiracy by the Mahdi's relatives and disarmed the
personal retinues of his leading rivals in Omdurman, the Mahdist capital of the
Sudan. Having curtailed the threats to his rule, the Khalifah sought to accomplish
the Mahdi's dream of a universal jihad (holy war) to reform Islam throughout the
Muslim world. With a zeal compounded from a genuine wish to carry out religious
reform, a desire for military victory and personal power, and an appalling ignorance
of the world beyond the Sudan, the forces of the Khalifah marched to the four
points of the compass to spread Mahdism and extend the domains of the Mahdist
state. By 1889 this expansionist drive was spent. In the west the Mahdist armies
had achieved only an unstable occupation of Darfur. In the east they had defeated
the Ethiopians, but the victory produced no permanent gain. In the southern Sudan
the Mahdists had scored some initial successes but were driven from the upper
Nile in 1897 by the forces of the Congo Free State of Leopold II of Belgium. On the
Egyptian frontier in the north the jihad met its worst defeat at Tushki in August
1889, when an Anglo-Egyptian army under General F.W. (later Baron) Grenfell
destroyed a Mahdist army led by 'Abd ar-Rahman an-Nujumi. The Mahdist state had
squandered its resources on the jihad, and a period of consolidation and
contraction followed, necessitated by a sequence of bad harvests resulting in
famine, epidemic, and death. Between 1889 and 1892 the Sudan suffered its most
devastating and terrible years, as the Sudanese sought to survive on their
shriveled crops and emaciated herds. After 1892 the harvests improved, and food
was no longer in short supply. Moreover, the autocracy of the Khalifah had
become increasingly acceptable to most Sudanese, and, having tempered his own
despotism and eliminated the gross defects of his administration he too received
the widespread acceptance, if not devotion, that the Sudanese had accorded the
Mahdi.
In spite of its many defects, the Khalifah's administration served the Sudan better
than its many detractors would admit. Certainly the Khalifah's government was
autocratic, but, while autocracy may be repugnant to European democrats, it was
not only understandable to the Sudanese but appealed to their deepest feelings
and attitudes formed by tribe, religion, and past experience with the centralized
authoritarianism of the Turks. For them, the Khalifah was equal to the task of
governing bequeathed him by the Mahdi. Only when confronted by new forces
from the outside world, of which he was ignorant, did 'Abd Allah's abilities fail him.
His belief in Mahdism, his reliance on the superb courage and military skill of the
ansar, and his own ability to rally them against an alien invader were simply
insufficient to preserve his independent Islamic state against the overwhelming
technological superiority of Britain. And, as the 19th century drew to a close, the
rival imperialisms of the European powers brought the full force of this
technological supremacy against the Mahdist state.
The British Conquest
British forces invaded and occupied Egypt in 1882 to put down a nationalist
revolution hostile to foreign interests and remained there to prevent any further
threat to the khedive's government or the possible intervention of another
European power. The consequences of this were far-reaching. A permanent British
occupation of Egypt required the inviolability of the Nile waters without which
Egypt could not survive, not from any African state, who did not possess the
technical resources to interfere with them, but from rival European powers, who
could. Consequently, the British government, by diplomacy and military maneuvers,
negotiated agreements with the Italians and the Germans to keep them out of the
Nile valley.
They were less successful with the French, who wanted them to
withdraw from Egypt. Once it became apparent that the British were determined
to remain, the French cast about for means to force the British from the Nile
valley; in 1893 an elaborate plan was concocted by which a French expedition
would march across Africa from the west coast to Fashoda (Kodok) on the upper
Nile, where it was believed a dam could be constructed to obstruct the flow of
the Nile waters. After inordinate delays, the French Nile expedition set out for
Africa in June 1896, under the command of Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand.
As reports reached London during 1896 and 1897 of Marchand's march to
Fashoda, Britain's inability to insulate the Nile valley became embarrassingly
exposed. British officials desperately tried one scheme after another to beat the
French to Fashoda. They all failed, and by the autumn of 1897 British authorities
had come to the reluctant conclusion that the conquest of the Sudan was
necessary to protect the Nile waters from French encroachment. In October an
Anglo-Egyptian army under the command of General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener
was ordered to invade the Sudan. Kitchener pushed steadily but cautiously up the
Nile. His Anglo-Egyptian forces defeated a large Mahdist army at the 'Atbarah River
on April 8, 1898. Then, after spending four months preparing for the final advance
to Omdurman, Kitchener's army of about 25,000 troops met the massed
60,000-man army of the Khalifah outside the city on Sept. 2, 1898. By midday the
Battle of Omdurman was over. The Mahdists were decisively defeated with heavy
losses, and the Khalifah fled, to be killed nearly a year later. Kitchener did not long
remain at Omdurman but pressed up the Nile to Fashoda with a small flotilla. There
on Sept. 18, 1898, he met Captain Marchand, who declined to withdraw--the
long-expected Fashoda crisis had begun. Both the French and British governments
prepared for war. Neither the French army nor the navy was in any condition to
fight, however, and the French were forced to give way. An Anglo-French
agreement of March 1899 stipulated that French expansion eastward in Africa
would stop at the Nile watershed.
The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium
The early years of British rule
Having conquered the Sudan, the British now had to govern it. But the
administration of this vast land was complicated by the legal and diplomatic
problems that had accompanied the conquest. The Sudan campaigns had been
undertaken by the British to protect their imperial position as well as the Nile
waters, yet the Egyptian treasury had borne the greater part of the expense, and
Egyptian troops had far outnumbered those of Britain in the Anglo-Egyptian army.
The British, however, did not simply want to hand the Sudan over to Egyptian rule;
most Englishmen were convinced that the Mahdiyah was the result of 60 years of
Egyptian oppression.
To resolve this dilemma the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium was
declared in 1899, whereby the Sudan was given separate political status in which
sovereignty was jointly shared by the khedive and the British crown, and the
Egyptian and the British flags were flown side by side. The military and civil
government of the Sudan was invested in a governor-general appointed by the
khedive of Egypt but nominated by the British government. In reality, there was no
equal partnership between Britain and Egypt in the Sudan.
From the first the
British dominated the condominium and set about pacifying the countryside and
suppressing local religious uprisings, which created insecurity among British
officials but never posed a major threat to their rule. The north was quickly
pacified and modern improvements were introduced under the aegis of civilian
administrators, who began to replace the military as early as 1900. In the south,
resistance to British rule was more prolonged; administration there was confined
to keeping the peace rather than making any serious attempts at modernization.
The first governor-general was Lord Kitchener himself, but in 1899 his former aide,
Sir Reginald Wingate, was appointed to succeed him. Wingate knew the Sudan well
and during his long tenure as governor-general (1899-1916) became devoted to
its people and their prosperity. His tolerance and trust in the Sudanese resulted in
policies that did much to establish confidence in Christian British rule by a devoutly
Muslim, Arab-oriented people.
Modernization was slow at first. Taxes were purposely kept light, and the
government consequently had few funds available for development. In fact, the
Sudan remained dependent on Egyptian subsidies for many years. Nevertheless,
railways, telegraph, and steamer services were expanded, particularly in
Al-Jazirah, in order to launch the great cotton-growing scheme that remains today
the backbone of The Sudan's economy. In addition, technical and primary schools
were established, including the Gordon Memorial College, which opened in 1902
and soon began to graduate a Western-educated elite that was gradually drawn
away from the traditional political and social framework. Scorned by the British
officials, who preferred the illiterate but contented fathers to the ill-educated,
rebellious sons, and adrift from their own customary tribal and religious affiliations,
these Sudanese turned for encouragement to Egyptian nationalists; from that
association Sudanese nationalism in this century was born.
Its first manifestations occurred in 1921, when 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif founded the United
Tribes Society and was arrested for nationalist agitation. In 1924 he formed the
White Flag League, dedicated to driving the British from the Sudan.
Demonstrations followed in Khartoum in June and August and were suppressed.
When the governor-general, Sir Lee Stack, was assassinated in Cairo on Nov. 19,
1924, the British forced the Egyptians to withdraw from the Sudan and annihilated
a Sudanese battalion that mutinied in support of the Egyptians. The Sudanese
revolt was ended, and British rule remained unchallenged until after World War II.
n 1936 Britain and Egypt had reached a partial accord in the Anglo-Egyptian
Treaty that enabled Egyptian officials to return to the Sudan. Although the
traditional Sudanese sheikhs and chiefs remained indifferent to the fact that they
had not been consulted in the negotiations over this treaty, the educated
Sudanese elite were resentful that neither Britain nor Egypt had bothered to
solicit their opinions. Thus, they began to express their grievances through the
Graduates' General Congress, which had been established as an alumni association
of Gordon Memorial College and soon embraced all educated Sudanese.
At first, the Graduates' General Congress confined its interests to social and
educational activities, but with Egyptian support the organization demanded
recognition by the British to act as the spokesman for Sudanese nationalism. The
Sudan government refused, and the Congress split into two groups: a moderate
majority prepared to accept the good faith of the government, and a radical
minority, led by Isma'il al-Azhari, which turned to Egypt. By 1943 Azhari and his
supporters had won control of the Congress and organized the Ashiqqa'
(Brothers), the first genuine political party in the Sudan. Seeing the initiative pass
to the militants, the moderates formed the Ummah (Nation) Party under the
patronage of Sayyid 'Abd ar-Rahman al-Mahdi, the posthumous son of the Mahdi,
with the intention of cooperating with the British toward independence.
Sayyid
'Abd ar-Rahman had inherited the allegiance of the thousands of Sudanese who
had followed his father. He now sought to combine to his own advantage this
power and influence with the ideology of the Ummah. His principal rival was Sayyid
'Ali al-Mirghani, the leader of the Khatmiyah brotherhood. Although he personally
remained aloof from politics, Sayyid 'Ali threw his support to Azhari. The
competition between the Azhari-Khatmiyah faction--remodeled in 1951 as the
National Unionist Party (NUP)--and the Ummah-Mahdist group quickly rekindled old
suspicions and deep-seated hatreds that soured Sudanese politics for years and
eventually strangled parliamentary government. These sectarian religious elites
virtually controlled The Sudan's political parties until the last decade of the 20th
century, stultifying any attempt to democratize the country or to include the
millions of Sudanese remote from Khartoum in the political process.
Although the Sudanese government had crushed the initial hopes of the congress,
the British officials were well aware of the pervasive power of nationalism among
the elite and sought to introduce new institutions to associate the Sudanese more
closely with the task of governing. An Advisory Council was established for the
northern Sudan consisting of the governor-general and 28 Sudanese, but
Sudanese nationalists soon began to agitate to transform the Advisory Council
into a legislative one that would include the southern Sudan. The British had
facilitated their control of the Sudan by segregating the animist or Christian
Africans who predominated in the south from the Muslim Arabs who were
predominant in the north. The decision to establish a legislative council forced the
British to abandon this policy; in 1947 they instituted southern participation in the
legislative council.
The creation of this council produced a strong reaction on the part of the
Egyptian government, which in October 1951 unilaterally abrogated the
Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 and proclaimed Egyptian rule over the Sudan.
These hasty and ill-considered actions only managed to alienate the Sudanese
from Egypt until the Nasser-Naguib revolution in July 1952 placed men with more
understanding of Sudanese aspirations in power in Cairo. On Feb. 12, 1953, the
Egyptian government signed an agreement with Britain granting self-government
for the Sudan and self-determination within three years for the Sudanese.
Elections for a representative Parliament to rule the Sudan followed in November
and December 1953. The Egyptians threw their support behind Isma'il al-Azhari,
the leader of the National Unionist Party, who campaigned on the slogan "Unity of
the Nile Valley." This position was opposed by the Ummah Party, which had the
less vocal but pervasive support of British officials. To the shock of many British
officials and to the chagrin of the Ummah, which had enjoyed power in the
Legislative Council for nearly six years, Azhari's NUP won an overwhelming victory.
Although Azhari had campaigned to unite the Sudan with Egypt, the realities of
disturbances in the southern Sudan and the responsibilities of political power and
authority ultimately led him to disown his own campaign promises and to declare
The Sudan an independent republic with an elected representative Parliament on
Jan. 1, 1956.
The Republic of The Sudan
The triumph of liberal democracy in The Sudan was short-lived. Compared with the
strength of tradition, which still shaped the life of the Sudanese, the liberalism
imported from the West, disseminated through British education and adopted by
the Sudanese intelligentsia, was a weak force. At first parliamentary government
had been held in high esteem as the symbol of nationalism and independence. But
at best Parliament was a superficial instrument. It had been introduced into The
Sudan at precisely the time parliamentary forms were rapidly disappearing from
other countries in the Middle East. Political parties were not well-organized groups
with distinct objectives, but loose alliances motivated primarily by personal
interests and loyalty to the various religious factions. When the tactics of party
management were exhausted, Parliament became debased, benefiting only those
politicians who reaped the rewards of power and patronage. Disillusioned with
their experiment in liberal democracy, the Sudanese turned once again to
authoritarianism.
The Abbud Government
On the night of Nov. 16-17, 1958, the commander in chief of the Sudanese army,
General Ibrahim Abbud, carried out a bloodless coup d'état, dissolving all political
parties, prohibiting assemblies, and temporarily suspending newspapers. A
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, consisting of 12 senior officers, was set up,
and army rule brought rapid economic improvements. The Abbud government at
once abolished the fixed price on cotton and sold all the Sudanese cotton,
rebuilding the nation's foreign reserves. On Nov. 8, 1959, the government
concluded an agreement with Egypt on the Nile waters, by which Egypt not only
recognized but also appeared to be reconciled to an independent Sudan. In the
southern Sudan, Abbud's policies were less successful. In the name of national
unity the army officers introduced many measures designed to facilitate the
spread of Islam and the Arabic language. Important positions in the administration
and police were staffed by northern Sudanese. Education was shifted from the
English curriculum of the Christian missionaries, who had long been solely
responsible for education in the south, to an Arabic, Islamic orientation. Foreign
Christian missionaries were expelled between 1962 and 1964.
In the southern Sudan itself, the measures of the central government met
ever-increasing resistance. In October 1962 a widespread strike in southern
schools resulted in antigovernment demonstrations followed by a general flight of
students and others over the border. In September 1963 rebellion erupted in
eastern Al-Istiwa'iyah (Equatoria) and in the A'ali An-Nil (Upper Nile) province led by
the Anya Nya, a southern Sudanese guerrilla organization that believed that only
violent resistance would make the government of General Abbud seek a solution
acceptable to the southerners. In return the generals in Khartoum increased
repression.
Although the northern Sudanese had little sympathy for their countrymen in the
south, the intelligentsia was able to use the government's failure there to assail
authoritarian rule in the north and to revive demands for democratic government.
By 1962, numerous urban elements, including the intelligentsia, the trade unions,
and the civil service, as well as the powerful religious brotherhoods, had become
alienated from the military regime. Moreover, the tribal masses and growing
proletariat had become increasingly apathetic toward the government. In the end
the regime was overwhelmed by boredom and overthrown by the reaction to its
lassitude. The means of its overthrow was the southern problem.
In October 1964, students at the University of Khartoum held a meeting, in
defiance of a government prohibition, in order to condemn government action in
the southern Sudan and to denounce the regime. Demonstrations followed, and,
with most of its forces committed in the southern Sudan, the military regime was
unable to maintain control. The disorders soon spread, and General Abbud
resigned as head of state; a transitional government was appointed to serve
under the provisional constitution of 1956.
The Sudan since 1964
Under the leadership of Sirr al-Khatim al-Khalifah, the transitional government held
elections in April and May 1965 to form a representative government. A coalition
government headed by a leading Ummah politician, Muhammad Ahmad Mahjub, was
formed in June 1965. As before, parliamentary government was characterized by
factional disputes. On the one hand, Mahjub enjoyed the support of the
traditionalists within the Ummah Party, represented by the Imam al-Hadi, the
spiritual successor to the Mahdi, while on the other he was challenged by Sayyid
Sadiq al-Mahdi, the young great-grandson of the Mahdi, who led the more
progressive forces within the Ummah. Unable to find common objectives,
Parliament failed to deal with the economic, social, and constitutional problems in
The Sudan. Moreover, the earlier hopes expressed by the transitional government
of cooperation with the southerners soon vanished. Conflict continued in the
south, with little hope of resolution. A group of young officers led by Colonel
Gaafar Mohamed el-Nimeiri--tired of having no workable constitution, a stagnant
economy, a political system torn by sectarian interests, and a continuing civil
conflict in the south--seized the government on May 25, 1969.
The Early Nimeiri Regime
When Nimeiri and his young officers assumed power they were confronted by
threats from communists on the left and the Ummah on the right. Nimeiri disbanded
the Sudanese Communist Party, which went underground, and in his government's
struggles with the Ummah Party under Imam al-Hadi, the latter was killed and his
supporters dispersed. An abortive coup by the resilient communists in July 1971
collapsed after popular and foreign support held steadfast for the reinstallation of
Nimeiri. The abortive coup had a profound effect on Nimeiri. He promised a
permanent constitution and National Assembly, established himself as president of
the state, and instituted the Sudanese Socialist Union (SSU) as the country's only
party. The affair also produced the incentive to press for a resolution to the
southern rebellion.
The Addis Ababa Agreement
In 1971 the southern Sudanese rebels, who had theretofore consisted of several
independent commands, were united under General Joseph Lagu, who combined
under his authority both the fighting units of the Anya Nya and its political wing,
the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM). Thereafter, throughout 1971 the
SSLM, representing General Lagu, maintained a dialogue with the Sudanese
government over proposals for regional autonomy and the ending of hostilities.
These talks culminated in the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement on Feb. 27,
1972. The agreement ended the 17-year conflict between the Anya Nya and the
Sudanese army and ushered in autonomy for the southern region, which would no
longer be divided into the three provinces of Al-Istiwa'iyah (Equatoria), Bahr
Al-Ghazal, and A'ali An-Nil (Upper Nile). The region's affairs would be controlled by
a separate legislature and executive body, and the soldiers of the Anya Nya would
be integrated into the Sudanese army and police. The Addis Ababa Agreement
brought Nimeiri both prestige abroad and popularity at home.
Economic Development
The signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement enabled economic development in The
Sudan to proceed using funds that had previously been allocated for the civil war.
This diversion of government resources to peaceful projects coincided with the
dramatic growth of petroleum revenues in the Persian Gulf, and the Arab states
there began investing large sums in The Sudan in order to transform it into the
"breadbasket" of the Arab world. The resulting spate of development projects in
the 1970s was followed by investments from private multinational corporations
and generous loans from the International Monetary Fund. The highest priority was
placed on expanding The Sudan's production of sugar, wheat, and cotton in order
to provide foreign exchange. The new projects were accompanied by efforts to
expand the national infrastructure and to construct the Junqali (Jonglei) Canal
through the great swamps of As-Sudd.
Though these projects were laudable in conception, their flawed implementation
plunged The Sudan into a severe economic crisis by 1980 from which it had yet to
recover in the 1990s. Few projects were completed on time, and those that were
never met their production targets. The steady decline of The Sudan's gross
domestic output from 1977 left the country in a cycle of increasing debt, severe
inflation, and an ever-diminishing standard of living.
There were two fundamental causes for the failure of The Sudan's economic
development. First, planning was deficient, and decisions were increasingly
precipitous and mercurial. There was no overall control, so individual ministries
negotiated external loans for projects without the approval of the central planning
authority. The result was not only incompetent management but also innumerable
opportunities for corruption. The second cause of economic failure lay in external
events over which The Sudan had no control. Rising oil prices dramatically
increased The Sudan's bill for petroleum products, while the concomitant
development projects in the Persian Gulf siphoned off from The Sudan its best
professional and skilled workers, who were lured by high wages abroad only to
create a "brain drain" at home. Neither the Nimeiri regime nor its successors
proved successful in breaking this cycle of persistent economic decline.
The Rise of Muslim Fundamentalism
In the elections of 1965, the Islamic Charter Front, a political party that espoused
the principles of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan Al-Muslimin), received only an
insignificant portion of the popular vote. But the election roughly coincided with
the return from France of Hassan at-Turabi, who assumed the leadership of the
party, now known as the Islamic National Front (NIF). Turabi methodically charted
the Brotherhood and the NIF on a course of action designed to seize control of
the Sudanese government despite the Muslim fundamentalists' lack of popularity
with the majority of the Sudanese people. Tightly disciplined, superbly organized,
and inspired by the resurgence of Islam in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood
consciously sought to recruit disciples from the country's youth. It was
relentlessly successful, and by the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood and the NIF had
successfully infiltrated the country's officer corps, the civil service, and the ranks
of secondary-school teachers.
Despite its relatively small size, the Muslim Brotherhood began to exert its
influence, a fact not unnoticed by President Nimeiri. The Sudanese Socialist Union,
which he had established as the sole political party in The Sudan, had failed to
galvanize popular support. In the face of deteriorating relations with both the
southern Sudanese and the traditionalists of the Ummah-Mahdi grouping, Nimeiri
turned increasingly to the Muslim Brotherhood for support. He appointed Turabi
attorney general and did not object to the latter's designs for a new constitution
based partly on Islamic law. In September 1983 Nimeiri modified the nation's legal
codes to bring them into accord with Islamic law, the Shari'ah. This measure was
bound to be resisted by the Christians and animists of the southern Sudan.
Moreover, Nimeiri was coming to accept the arguments of the Muslim Brotherhood
and other northern political groups that the Addis Ababa Agreement had been a
mistake. In June 1983 Nimeiri unilaterally divided the southern region again into
three provinces, thereby effectively abrogating the Addis Ababa Agreement.
Southern reaction
Even before the official demise of the agreement, the civil war between the
African Christians of the south and the Muslim Arabs of the north had resumed
with even greater ferocity than before. There had been sporadic uprisings in the
south since the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972, but they had been
quickly suppressed. In May 1983, however, an army battalion stationed at Bor
mutinied and fled into the bush under the leadership of Colonel John Garang de
Mabior. The rebels had become disenchanted with Nimeiri and his government,
which was riddled with corruption and was contemptuous of southerners. Led by
Garang, the ranks of the Bor garrison, which had taken up sanctuary in Ethiopia,
were soon swollen by discontented southerners determined to redress their
grievances by force of arms under the banner of the Sudanese People's Liberation
Army (SPLA) and its political wing, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
Nimeiri's overthrow and its aftermath
Although Nimeiri at first sought to crush the rebels by military force, his
deployment of the Sudanese army only succeeded in disrupting the distribution of
food, which, when coupled with drought and diminished harvests, created
widespread famine in the southern Sudan. Without popular support, Nimeiri found
himself facing a successful armed rebellion in the south and growing criticism in the
north over the rigour with which he sought to carry out the brutal corporal
punishments prescribed under the Shari'ah. In response, Nimeiri softened his
hard-line policies; he annulled the state of emergency that he had invoked five
months earlier, he rescinded the tripartite division of the south, and he suspended
the more brutal aspects of the Islamic courts. But these futile gestures were too
late. Nimeiri was overthrown in a bloodless coup in April 1985 by his chief of staff,
General 'Abd ar-Rahman Siwar ad-Dahab. Although the new military government held
elections in 1986 that returned Sadiq al-Mahdi as prime minister, the next three
years were characterized by political instability, indecisive leadership, party
manipulations resulting in short-lived coalitions, and abortive attempts to reach a
peaceful settlement with the SPLA. These years of indecision came to an end on
June 30, 1989, when a Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation led by
Lieutenant General 'Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir seized power.
The emergence of the National Islamic Front
The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) was in fact the vehicle for the NIF, the
political party of the Muslim Brotherhood. Bashir and his colleagues realized that,
as a minority with little popular support, they would have to resort to harsh
measures to curtail the educated elites who had been instrumental in organizing
populist revolutions in the past. With a ruthlessness to which the Sudanese were
unaccustomed, the RCC imprisoned hundreds of political opponents, banned trade
unions and political parties, silenced the press, and dismantled the judiciary. It
sought to prosecute the war in the south with vigour, inhibited only by the
deterioration of the national economy. With the support of the NIF, the Muslim
Brotherhood, and a ruthless and efficient security system, the most unpopular
government in the modern history of The Sudan remained firmly in power as the
country entered the last decade of the 20th century.
The confidence of the RCC and its supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood enabled
President Bashir to reintroduce Islamic law (Shari'ah), including corporal
punishment, in March 1991, and emboldened the government to support Iraq in the
Persian Gulf War. Both these acts isolated The Sudan not only from the West but
from its Arab neighbours as well (although the Libyan government was
supportive). The economy continued to deteriorate, precipitated by this isolation
and also by civil war in the south, fallen productivity, and rampant inflation. There
were widespread shortages of basic commodities, particularly in the sensitive
urban areas, creating disturbances which were ruthlessly suppressed. In the south
the army continued to lose towns to the Sudanese People's Liberation Army
(SPLA), but it managed to hold the three provincial capitals of Malakal, Waw, and
Juba. Unable to defeat the SPLA on the field of battle, the government armed and
unleashed an Arab militia (mujahideen) against their traditional African rivals,
principally the Dinka. Moreover, it consistently ignored pleas for food and
obstructed the efforts of Western humanitarian relief agencies to provide food
aid. Caught between two armies, plundered by the Arab militia, and scourged by a
persistent drought, countless Africans fled to northern towns and cities or sought
sanctuary in Ethiopia. Thousands perished fleeing the endemic East African famine,
or in the camps for the displaced where they received no relief from the Khartoum
government, which was determined to crush the SPLA as the initial step in a policy
to Islamize the non-Muslims of the southern Sudan.
References:
Encyclopedia Britannica Online
Nubia Wikipedia
Nubia in the News
Rare Nubian King Statues Uncovered in Sudan National Geographic - March 2003
Black pharaoh trove uncovered in north Sudan BBC - January 2003
Artefacts represent kings Taharqa, Tanutamon, last of black
pharaohs as well as two monarchs who all lived about 600 years BC.
The Nubian kings ruled 2,500 years ago.
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