Response to Drima's "Sudan: Arab or African?"

The Sudanese Thinker - Arab or African?

http://www.sudanesethinker.com/2007/02/03/sudan-arab-or-african/

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STATEMENT 1:

[Difference between Arab and African]...one is indigenous to the land and the other is not. Arab tribes came from the Arabian Peninsula while African tribes (Nuer, Dinka, Nuba, Nubians etc.) have been in Sudan for ages.

RESPONSE 1:

Sudan is a territory, incorporating in it many nations: that is peoples and their lands that inhabit it. Before seperation, there were literally dozens (though I have yet to count them in number). They were all African, that is, able to trace their lineage back to the first Nilote, the first Saharan, the first Cushite. 

The Bejas are Cushitic, the Nubians are Saharans mixed with ancient Egyptians and have trace mixtures with several other peoples, the Bartis and Komas are purer Saharians,  and the Sennarians of the Sennar Peninsula (Gezira and White Nile and Sennar states) ought to be deemed a people of their own - they appear to be a blend of everything around them, though they seem to be also mixed with Arabs and have Hejazi and Yemeni first and last names. 

The Nubians comprise the Nobatians living in south Egypt, the Makurians who live along the Nile in Northern Sudan, and the Jallab: the Alodian Nubians who live along the Nile from Dongola at the southmost of Makuria to Khartoum. The Jallab are simply Arabized.

In Darfur, they are mostly Saharans, but purer, and the major ethnic group is the Für. (Dar-Fur is Tchadian Arabic for "Home of the Fur"). The two other major groups are the Massalit and Zaghawa, and then there's the Tama, Dago, Bagirmi and Mabo. There is also a Nubian tribe called the Mïdöb (my guess is that they're descendants of refugees that fled the Ottoman conquest of Makuria in 1520).

In the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, there are what I call "Hill Nubians", but are commonly referred to as "Nuba" (Nuba is the native word for Nubian, in Egypt and Sudan). They are Nubians, but with almost no mixture with Egyptians, but appear to have mixed with the Dinka just to the south of them, though they speak one of a few local Nubian dialects.

The Nilotes of South Sudan are too many to be counted, though the major ethnic groups are Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Anuak, Toposa, and Murle. The Hamitics are the Fertit and perhaps the Azande.

Yes, it is very difficult to understand the situation of peoples and lands in the Sudan, but this is because the territory of Sudan which in its pre-2011 state was simply four-fifths of the empire of Khedivate Egypt. To understand it, you must read history. Without history, the whole discussion is confused and fruitless, and discouraging.

Every discussion about Sudanese identity goes back to race, and every discussion about race should acknowledge all of the lands, their locations and the peoples that inhabit them. I am flustered just trying to comprehend it all.

And "one is indigenous and the other is not" is too simplistic. There were Arabs and Himyarites from Yemen were in the Beja lands by the 600s, and they blended into the locals who remained Bejas (and not blended with the locals). But the Dinka and Shilluk did not inhabit their lands until the 12th century, and the first Nilote was said to come out Kordofan in North Sudan in the 11th century.

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STATEMENT 2:

Let’s move on to the next point i.e. the Afro-Arab. “The Afro-Arab” is the product of intermarriage between Arab tribes and African tribes. I am a Northern Sudanese. Ethnically speaking I am a Shaigee. I am of mixed blood, mainly being Nubian, Nuba and Arab. The Nubian and Nuba in me are indigenous to Sudan. The Arab in me was an outsider that came, settled, assimilated into the Sudanese African ethnic pool and as a result made part of it Afro-Arab.

RESPONSE 2:

"Nubian" does not denote someone who can trace his ancestor back to one common man (like Arabs or Nilotes), but someone who's ancestors lived on this stretch of the Nile. That is, nativity and place, and not genealogy and common ancestry. Arabs however, are not attached to any place, and derive their own idea of self from whom their fathers and grandfathers and ancestors were. "My name is X, son of Y, son of Z, son of A, son of B..." is an Arab way of finding his place in the universe. The Nubian derives his idea of self from the village, the farm, the palm trees, the ruins of ancestors. Even his honoring of his ancestors seem ceremonial, but place and familiar nature to him is everything.

"Nuba" means gold, and it just means "those people who wear a lot of gold". Gold or not, its people may be readily recognizable - or not - but its location in Africa cannot be mistaken. The land was primary, as anybody would come, and settle in, blending in with the locals and becoming Nubian, learning the language and farming like everyone else. The first batch are said to have come from West Africa by way of Libya, and they built a simple civilization - little of what remains besides pottery - based on farming and trade. Then came arrivals of peoples from south and blended into the first arrivals. 

Many different peoples came to the land from all directions, but the Arab had the most impact on the people.

A Shayqi (Shaegi, or descendent of Shayq bin Himaydan bin ... bin Ja3al) is a Nubian living in and farming in the valley of the stretch of the Nile between ad-Dabba and Abu Hamad. I call them "Meroites" as the center of civilization and culture has always been the city of Meroe, either the historic one far away from the right bank, or the modern one straddling the left bank. They have their own unique way of talking, which is charismatic, their poetry is highly esoteric, and the syncopated melody in their music is unique to them. But they can still relate to other Nubians.

There is no record of there ever being a Shayq bin Himaydan, and it appears that this name and the lineage to which the Shayqis link themselves was fabricated after the ruin of Soba in 1504, and the establishment of a sheikdom led by a bunch of ragtag Bedouin Arabs. Of course, Nubians have trace Arab genes, and the Meroites more so, because their land was favored by Bedouin infiltrators owing the greenery it once had.

The Meroites, however, consider themselves a tribe, and for them, genealogy is their basis of identity. And so they are highly endogamous. They have no need to do so, and should consider their soil as their home. But this is because of a mental slavery, or a mindset that is Arab (forefathers) instead of African (heavens and earth).

I am from that stretch of the Nile, and I call myself a Meroite, and not a Shayqi.

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STATEMENT 3:

It’s very difficult finding many pure Arab tribes like the Rashaida in Sudan. They’re minorities. 

RESPONSE 3:

Arabs have no place to call home. They are constantly on the move, and have no attachment to any place on Earth. Wherever they visit or "settle" (read: hover around), they feed off the production of the locals after the locals took the time to produce it, not for Arabs, but for their own good benefit.

Arabs rarely keep their blood pure. To them, primacy of father is most important. A Kurdish man marries a Kurdish woman, to keep the Kurdish blood pure, but an Arab counts on the nobility of heroic forefathers, and so, the mother is either irrelevant or not important. 

Arab men who hovered near or around Nubia married pretty Nubian girls who can in no way call themselves Arabs, but the children born out of that marriage have an Arab father and Nubian mother. The children identify themselves Arabs, even talking in Arabic and behaving like Arabs, because the father was an Arab! 

The mixed Arab-Nubian male children married pretty Nubian girls, and have 1/4th Arab children, who again consider themselves Arabs and not Nubians, because their father called himself an Arab. Then again, the male children married pretty Nubian girls whose children are 1/8th Arab but still consider themselves Arabs! And so on and so on, till the Arabs blended in to the Nubian and destroyed their sense of self. (I answered a question of my own there!)

The female children are Arab as well, and they, like all Arabs, must marry Arab men or declare themselves pariahs.

And so did we become something else.

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STATEMENT 4:

Do you want to know how you can find out if you view yourself as more African than Arab or vice versa? Here’s how. Visualize the following and tell me which one you find more offensive.

a) A Persian guy shouting “Arabs are filthy dogs”.

or

b) Some KKK dude shouting “Africans are filthy niggers”.

For most Sudanese I asked, the answer was (b).

RESPONSE 4:

Yes, exactly. If you feel upset because an Arab man was offended, and then had a laugh at an African man being disparaged, then you are an Arab, and your true loyalty lies with people who care not one fig for your existence, besides your usefulness as a slave or a nymph in bed.

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STATEMENT 5:

...Yes, many Afro-Arab tribes have retained a lot of African traditions and have not been fully Arabized. Yes, the Arab culture in Sudan might be sort of loose but it is what ties many tribes together and is what’s common amongst them besides Islam. [...]

RESPONSE 5:

The "Afro-Arab" plays his music on the pentatonic scale, using Jacob's ladder (the same melody used in the American Blues music) and is incapable of playing the Arabian heptatonic scales, even if he appreciates Arab music. He composed beautiful and timeless symphonies, and presents them to people who are confused or bored when they listen to it. When I hear Son House or Leadbelly, I feel a connection of spirit to the music. It not only sounds just like our music, but might as well as our very own experiences being told in song somewhere thousands of miles away. But when I listen to Fairuz or Umm Kalthum, I am perplexed. Even the Arabian classics that I prefer sound similar to the ones we made in Sudan.

The Afro-Arab makes his foods from maize, sorghum, Jew's mallow, peanuts, millet, and bananas if not mangoes and oranges. Shawirma and falafel are imports, but fava beans (foul) has always been native to the Nubian stretch of North Sudan as it was in ancient Egypt till now. Where is the Arab in that? And millet is used to make the standard bread - Injera - in Ethiopia. Not to mention that bananas are made into a popular pudding in Ugandan cuisine.

There is nothing that ties Nubians and Dinkas or Fur and Bejas. There are, however, very close similarities between Nubians and Ethiopians, Dinkas and Masai (Tanzania), Fur and Bambara (Mali). All that binds the different nations in Sudan is that they are enclosed by same borders. How can you build a country on that? Even Nigeria is beginning to disintegrate into Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, as it was destined to do. 

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END.

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WHO ARE THE NUBIANS REALLY?

"Nubian" does not denote someone who can trace his ancestor back to one common man (like Arabs or Nilotes), but someone who's ancestors lived on this stretch of the Nile. That is, nativity and place, and not genealogy and common ancestry. Arabs however, are not attached to any place, and derive their own idea of self from whom their fathers and grandfathers and ancestors were. "My name is X, son of Y, son of Z, son of A, son of B..." is an Arab way of finding his place in the universe. The Nubian derives his idea of self from the village, the farm, the palm trees, the ruins of ancestors. Even his honoring of his ancestors seem ceremonial, but place and familiar nature to him is everything.

"Nuba" means gold, and it just meant "those people who were a lot of gold". Gold or not, its people may be readily recognizable - or not - but its location in Africa cannot be mistaken. The land was primary, as anybody would come, and settle in, blending in with the locals and becoming Nubian, learning the language and farming like everyone else. The first batch are said to have come from West Africa by way of Libya, and they built a simple civilization - little of what remains besides pottery - based on farming and trade. Then came arrivals of peoples from south and blended into the first arrivals. 

And then the land got conquered by ancient Egyptians (have to read history!), and then arrivals came from Egypt, and Nubians themselves went north to lower Egypt as slaves, soldiers and traders. Egyptians blended into Nubians in the south, and Nubians blended with Egyptians in the north, until a Nubian called Taharqa, become the Pharaoh of Egypt. The appearance of most Nubians today comes from a mixture of many different races, and the "mulatto" look comes from ancient Egyptian blood.

But came the Arabs into Nubia! I have yet to understand exactly what happened, and how it happened, or how our sense of identity has been destroyed, but Arab hegemony and Islamicism ruined us. We are more like Arabs in our ideas of honor and dignity than Africans, and we bow down to someone who will never accept us as one of his own. 

And since when did Bedouins ever farm, or assemble a military, or have any sense of duty whatsoever? Bedouins crave the desert, because in the desert is freedom. There is no responsibility or duty or worries, beyond the need for water and food in a very scarce region. And they have to be on the lookout for raids from nearby tribes. Civilization cannot be built on a desert: it needs fertile lands, mountains and caves rich in precious metals, and people who care to live noble lives rather than live like cockroaches or flies. And civilization needs producers, not people who wait until others produce, then loot the product and keep it to themselves!