Black America's Influence on Khartoum, Sudan

In the 1970's, shortly after the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement, that ended a 17-year civil war in the South  between the military and An-yan-ya rebels, investors poured their money in from Europe, the US and the Middle East. And at least in Khartoum, life was fine and prosperous throughout the 1970s, and there was plenty to go around. The people of Khartoum modernized, importing luxury items from Europe and the US, as well as importing the Black American culture.

Of course, the Khartoumites wanted to live like Americans, and for a while they did, but the influence from America came most of all from Black America. Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Kool and the Gang and the Isley Brothers were played on the radio. Funk had a huge impact on Haqiba music, and the famous Amen Break came to characterize Mohammed Wardi's pop songs. (Mohammed Wardi is the Nubian Beethoven, the best composer and singer to have ever come out of Nubia and the Republic of Sudan.)

Times got tough, as good times were paid for with debt. And to add insult to injury, oil prices went up, food prices went down and Middle Eastern investors pulled out for some strange reason. (Perhaps because, shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the Republic of Sudan's Islamist movement sent a delegate to the newly throned Ayatollah Khomeini, who received them warmly, and sent back a cultural mission group, that set up a cultural center in Khartoum in the same year.) 

Prosperity was replaced by inflation and poverty, and Khartoum looked like a relic of the 1970s until 2000 or so. By then, oil was discovered (after a short period of de-Islamizing Sudan to appease investors) and Khartoum, for a while and in some respects, moved on. You should have seen the afros on middle-aged Khartoumites in the 1990s, as an era of limbo dragged on from 1979 till 1999. 

Khartoum never really recovered, and things will still get worse....before they get better.

**

Many Black Americans do not know how they influenced the world. There are people all over the world who dress like them, listen to their music, watch their movies and use some of their coined their words. When Africa modernizes, it copies Black America with little exception. When Khartoum looked towards America, it saw a people much like itself in the Black culture of America. And I personally think that the 1970s was the Golden Era for Black America as it was for Khartoum.

**

This song has funk written all over it.

(Don't mind the mustache - that was a popular mustache style in the Arab League countries at the time, called "eleven". Though Hitler was huge in the Arab world back then - and I think he still is.)

Ibrahim 3awad - Your Heart is Stone

Sorry, no translation for now.

Arabic is not our language!

Excerpts from Franck Salameh's "Does anyone speak Arabic?"

A groundbreaking article, that references more than it states, yes, but it brings together ideas that I have never thought of before.

**

STATEMENT 1:

Arabic is not a single, uniform language. It is, on the one hand, a codified, written standard that is never spoken natively and that is accessible only to those who have had rigorous training in it. On the other hand, Arabic is also a multitude of speech forms, contemptuously referred to as “dialects,” differing from each other and from the standard language itself to the same extent that French is different from other Romance languages and from Latin.

COMMENT 1:

What a language!

**

STATEMENT 2:

Monolingualism is no more a precondition or motivation for cultural and ethnic cohesiveness than multilingualism constitutes grounds for national incoherence and loss of a common identity. Irishmen, Scotsmen, Welsh, and Jamaicans are all native English-speakers but not Englishmen.

COMMENT 2:

A Jamaican has no identity crisis, he is simply Jamaican. His accent and patois, his ska and reggae and dub and dancehall, his Rastafarianism, his mainstream Protestant faith, the beautiful island that he calls home, is how the world sees him. And in some or all of that, he takes pride. He or she is usually full of life and vigor, and is not affected by neurosis or sensitivity to his own dignity. If you asked him where he is originally from, he’ll tell you either from common folklore that he is from mother Africa, or he’ll tell you about a DNA test he took to figure out his ancestry; and he won’t lie about the results, which usually points to West African nations. However, he never calls himself an Englishman simply because he speaks English, and never calls himself half-English, or talks about his “English composition and African composition”*, despite Jamaicans having trace Anglo-Saxon and European mixture!

*would be extremely depressing and frustrating to hear a Jamaican talk like that. That is our reality.

**

STATEMENT 3:

Even Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the fourteenth-century Muslim jurist and polymath and arguably the father of modern sociology, wrote in his famous 1377 Prolegomena that only the language of Quraish—the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe—should be deemed true Arabic; that native Arabs learn this speech form naturally and spontaneously; and that this language became corrupt and ceased being Arabic when it came into contact with non-Arabs and assimilated their linguistic habits. Therefore, he argued, “the language of Quraish is the soundest and purest Arabic precisely due to its remoteness from the lands of non-Arabs—Persians, Byzantines, and Abyssinians … whose languages are used as examples by Arab philologists to demonstrate the dialects’ distance from, and perversion of, Arabic.”

COMMENT 3:

Little wonder that Sudanese Arabic is one of the most corrupted languages in the Arab world, if our lands belong to that part of the world.

Arabic in itself is a language group, much like Slavic and Bantu. And in the group are Mudar (the language of Muhammad), Dhofari, Socotri and a few other remnants. Today, the Mudar dominates the rest, and all that’s left are a few languages. Why? Because Muhammad dominated the entire Arabian peninsula by AD 632.

Gulf Arabic is a dialect of the standard Mudar, influenced by the native Nabatean language; just like Southern Levantine Arabic and Egyptian Arabic. It is like a Frenchman speaking English, that is, with a French accent, and with numerous phrases and mannerisms brought over into his English speech. The Gulf Arabic of Kuwait and Qatar and the Emirates is highly arcane to those who don’t speak it, in addition to being unpleasant to listen to. I struggle to understand an Emirati when he speaks in Arabic.

Yemeni Arabic is a dialect group, as the dialect in Ta’izz is very different from the one spoken in Aden is very different from the one spoken in Hadramawt. What fascinates me is the words they use to express themselves. Baghä (want – simple past verb) becomes 3äyiz (I am in need of – noun derived from verb “3äza”) and Däyir (I am looking for - noun derived from verb “dawwara”); S.ära (become) is replaced by Bigat (to remain – used as “to become”); Shinou (what) is used instead of the Hejazi Eysh or Wesh; kida (like it) is used frequently like a preposition; and so on. Those dialects are corrupt by Mudar standards, because the Yemenis who submitted to Islam during Muhammad’s lifetime spoke languages of their own, Arabic languages.

And in the same manner, the Levantine dialect cluster is Mudar spoken by a speaker of Aramaic, as is Iraqi Arabic. Egyptian Arabic, however, is a Yemeni dialect spoken by former speakers of Coptic. It is probably the most corrupted dialect after Sudanese and Tchadian Arabic, both Yemeni dialects as well.

Sudanese Arabic should be called Nubian Arabic. It is one of Yemen’s dialects spoken by a Nubian, that is, with a Nubian twist, with many words and phrases imported from old Nubian dialects. It spread to Darfur and Tchad, creating Tchadian Arabic, Nubian Arabic with a Fur and Zaghawa twist; and to South Sudan as a lingua franca, creating Juba Arabic, that is Nubian Arabic as spoken by a Dinka, Nuer or Shilluk. To my surprise, a few Beja clans speak Nubian Arabic as a first language.

Aa-y is the Sudanese Arabic word for yes, which in Nöbïn corresponds to Eyyo. It comes from an old Nubian dialect no doubt, and is a source of amusement and mockery from other Arabic speakers. Still, they can’t pronounce it properly like we do. Zöl (man) is the hallmark word of Sudanese Arabic, so much that Gulf Arabs call us zoal instead of rajjäl (their word for man). Kadïsa, the Sudanese Arabic for cat, comes from the Nöbïn kadïs. Samih. (nice or pleasant) and Samh.a (beautiful and pretty) come from tasämuh. (tolerance and forgiveness), and the two former words are not found anywhere in the Arab world, to my knowledge. I fancy that it is a remnant of our pre-Islamic ancestors.

Bani Juhayn and Bani Abbas lived and were allowed in live and Alodia and Makuria by Nubian kings, who for sure at one point softened towards Arabs. The last names al-Abbasi and al-Juhani, as well as well as many other Yemeni and Hejazi last names, are found all over historical Nubia and Gezira. These two tribes originated from south Yemen. So little wonder about our dialect.

And for a language to improve, it must import words from time to time. What the Arabs don’t understand is that language is a means of expression, and expression is not an end in itself, and therefore language is not an end in itself. And the spoken and written manifestation of language, that uses words to compose sentences to express outer reality and inner feelings, must submit to reality and inner form. Window dressing entire sentences while saying nothing useful is not the way to expression.

**

STATEMENT 4:

In 1929, Tawfiq Awan had already begun making similar arguments, maintaining that the demotics of the Middle East—albeit arguably related to Arabic—were languages in their own right, not mere dialects of Arabic: “Egypt has an Egyptian language; Lebanon has a Lebanese language; the Hijaz has a Hijazi language; and so forth—and all of these languages are by no means Arabic languages. Each of our countries has a language, which is its own possession: So why do we not write [our language] as we converse in it? For, the language in which the people speak is the language in which they also write.”

[…] Even Taha Hussein (1889-1973), the doyen of modern Arabic belles lettres, had come to this very same conclusion by 1938. In his The Future of Culture in Egypt,14 he made a sharp distinction between what he viewed to be Arabic tout court—that is, the classical and modern standard form of the language—and the sundry, spoken vernaculars in use in his contemporary native Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East. For Egyptians, Arabic is virtually a foreign language, wrote Hussein: Nobody speaks it at home, [in] school, [on] the streets, or in clubs; it is not even used in [the] Al-Azhar [Islamic University] itself. People everywhere speak a language that is definitely not Arabic, despite the partial resemblance to it.

COMMENT 4:

Until 2012, I have in my life ever heard an Egyptian man speak in Standard Arabic. Whatever the situation, no matter how formal, he spoke in Egyptian Arabic. Hosni Mubarak spoke in Egyptian Arabic, the sheikh of al-Azhar University speaks in Egyptian Arabic, the person on the street speaks in Egyptian Arabic, and media from music to soap operas to punditry is expressed whenever possible in Egyptian Arabic. The only Egyptians who use Standard Arabic consistently for formal settings are the Salafi sheikhs, that is, Arab wannabes. I have heard attempts by Egyptians to speak in Standard Arabic, and it comes out as a hodge-podge of Egyptian and Standard Arabic. I have also never heard an Egyptian pronounce the letter ‘j’ in the Arabic language, and in speaking other languages, the French ‘j’ comes out instead.

But strangely, when they write anything, on a book or newspaper or a piece of paper, or read their constitution or laws out loud, they do so in Standard Arabic!

And Taha Hussein is right. The difference between English spoken at home and spoken in parliament is choice of words, even if one must use a sweeter accent in parliament. There isn’t one language for home and one language for the classroom.

**

STATEMENT 5:

Taha Hussein ascribed the decay and abnegation of the Arabic language primarily to its “inability of expressing the depths of one’s feelings in this new age.” He wrote in 1956 that MSA is “difficult and grim, and the pupil who goes to school in order to study Arabic acquires only revulsion for his teacher and for the language, and employs his time in pursuit of any other occupations that would divert and soothe his thoughts away from this arduous effort … Pupils hate nothing more than they hate studying Arabic.”

COMMENT 5:

Learning Arabic is torment and anguish. Five minutes into the lesson, one is abused and humiliated several times by the teacher, because like a bloodthirsty human-sacrifice-demanding Mayan deity, the language must be revered by people who are still learning the language, by not making mistakes while they learn to speak it! (I am seething in rage right now, so hold on.) I would recommend learning the language from an Israeli teacher, and good if he is an Arab, than from someone who is filled with rage and terror, and abuses and mocks his own students for mishandling his hollow vase-like language. Really, find a European linguist who specializes on the language, or an Israeli teacher, and let him/er teach you Arabic. Plus, I’d learn Nöbïn, a Nubian dialect similar to the one spoken by my ancestors, and one which I naturally gravitate towards.

**

STATEMENT 6:

[…]In a recent article published in Israel’s liberal daily Ha’aretz, acclaimed Druze poet and academic Salman Masalha called on Israel’s Education Ministry to do away with the country’s public school system’s Arabic curricula and demanded its replacement with Hebrew and English course modules. Arabophone Israelis taught Arabic at school, like Arabophones throughout the Middle East, were actually taught a foreign tongue misleadingly termed Arabic, wrote Masalha: “The mother tongue [that people] speak at home is totally different from the … Arabic [they learn] at school; [a situation] that perpetuates linguistic superficiality [and] leads to intellectual superficiality … It’s not by chance that not one Arab university is [ranked] among the world’s best 500 universities. This finding has nothing to do with Zionism.”

COMMENT 6:

Is it easier and more convenient to learn Hebrew or English? Well.

**

STATEMENT 7: THE RESULT OF ARABO-CLUSTER-*&^%

To wit, the 2003 report noted that the Arabic language is struggling to meet the challenges of modern times [and] is facing [a] severe … and real crisis in theorization, grammar, vocabulary, usage, documentation, creativity, and criticism … The most apparent aspect of this crisis is the growing neglect of the functional aspects of [Arabic] language use. Arabic language skills in everyday life have deteriorated, and Arabic … has in effect ceased to be a spoken language. It is only the language of reading and writing; the formal language of intellectuals and academics, often used to display knowledge in lectures … [It] is not the language of cordial, spontaneous expression, emotions, daily encounters, and ordinary communication. It is not a vehicle for discovering one’s inner self or outer surroundings.

[…] Yet, from all source-languages combined, the Arab world’s 330 million people  translated a meager 330 books per year; that is, “one fifth of the number [of books] translated in Greece [home to 12 million Greeks].” Indeed, from the times of the Caliph al-Ma’mun (ca. 800 CE) to the beginnings of the twenty-first century, the “Arab world” had translated a paltry 10,000 books: the equivalent of what Spain translates in a single year.

**

STATEMENT 8:

In a metaphor reminiscent of Musa’s description of the Arabic language, Shubashy compared MSA users to “ambling cameleers from the past, contesting highways with racecar drivers hurtling towards modernity and progress. …But perhaps the most devastating blow that Shubashy dealt the Arabic language was his description of the lahja and fusha (or dialect vs. MSA) dichotomy as “linguistic schizophrenia.”

            For although Arabs spoke their individual countries’ specific, vernacular languages while at home, at work, on the streets, or in the marketplace, the educated among them were constrained to don a radically different linguistic personality and make use of an utterly different speech form when reading books and newspapers, watching television, listening to the radio, or drafting formal, official reports.

…[Shubasi notes that]…Why was it that Spaniards, Frenchmen, Americans, and many more of the world’s transparent and linguistically nimble societies, needed to use only a single, native language for both their acquisition of knowledge and grocery shopping whereas Arabs were prevented from reading and writing in the same language that they use for their daily mundane needs?

[THE REACTION:]

As a consequence of the firestorm unleashed by his book, Shubashy, an Egyptian journalist and news anchor and, at one time, the Paris bureau-chief of the Egyptian al-Ahram news group, was forced to resign his post as Egypt’s deputy minister of culture in 2006. The book caused so much controversy to a point that the author and his work were subjected to a grueling cross-examination in the Egyptian parliament where, reportedly, scuffles erupted between supporters and opponents of Shubashy’s thesis. In the end, the book was denounced as an affront to Arabs and was ultimately banned. Shubashy himself was accused of defaming the Arabic language in rhetoric mimicking a “colonialist discourse.”

A deputy in the Egyptian parliament—representing Alexandria, Shubashy’s native city—accused the author of “employing the discourse and argumentation of a colonialist occupier, seeking to replace the Arab identity with [the occupier’s] own identity and culture.”

Ahmad Fuad Pasha, advisor to the president of Cairo University, argued that the book “was added proof that, indeed, the Zionist-imperialist conspiracy is a glaring reality,”

Muhammad Ahmad Achour wrote in Egypt’s Islamic Standard that Shubashy has taken his turn aiming another arrow at the heart of the Arabic language. Yet, the powers that seek to destroy our language have in fact another goal in mind: The ultimate aim of their conspiracy is none other than the Holy Qur’an itself, and to cause Muslims to eventually lose their identity and become submerged into the ocean of globalization.

Even former Egyptian president Husni Mubarak felt compelled to take a potshot at Shubashy in a speech delivered on Laylat al-Qadr, November 9, 2004, the anniversary of the night that Sunni Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad received his first Qur’anic  revelation. Mubarak warned, “I must caution the Islamic religious scholars against the calls that some are sounding for the modernization of the Islamic religion, so as to ostensibly make it evolve, under the pretext of attuning it to the dominant world order of “modernization” and “reform.” This trend has led recently to certain initiatives calling for the modification of Arabic vocabulary and grammar; the modification of God’s chosen language no less; the holy language in which he revealed his message to the Prophet.”

…

**

STATEMENT 9:

[…] ...Husri who, as early as 1955, had already been calling for the creation of a “middle Arabic language” and a crossbreed fusing MSA and vernacular speech forms: “|MSA is the preserve of a small, select number of educated people, few of whom bother using it as a speech form. Conversely, what we refer to as “dialectal Arabic” is in truth a bevy of languages differing markedly from one country to the other, with vast differences often within the same country, if not  within the same city and neighborhood … Needless to say, this pathology contradicts the exigencies of a sound, wholesome national life! [And given] that true nations deserving of the appellation require a single common and unifying national language … [the best solution I can foresee to our national linguistic quandary] would be to inoculate the dialectal languages with elements of MSA … so as to forge a new “middle MSA” and diffuse it to the totality of Arabs …This is our best hope, and for the time being, the best palliative until such a day when more lasting and comprehensive advances can be made towards instating the final, perfected, integral MSA.”

COMMENT 9:

I realized that my own dialect, Nubian Arabic, is seaming with potential, that is, to become an eloquent language for higher expression, with more vivid descriptions and more subtle statements. However, I wish to learn a surviving dialect of Nubian, and develop that one instead, into a higher Nubian language, borrowing from Coptic and Greek, and using the former Greek letters instead of Arabic ones (which is extremely impractical). If that cannot be done, we’ll have to stick with Arabic instead.

**

WORD OF THANKS:

I am indebted to Hanibaal Atheos for name-dropping Franck Salameh. Most of the article consists of references to other works, yet the article in itself is groundbreaking and revolutionary. I have never viewed the Arabic language in such light, and I know now for sure, that the Egyptian Taha Hussein deserves his great name.

A Prophet is One Who Reads History Books

[from Frank Salameh – Syria: the history of a name]

BEGIN.

…modern Syria – as a concept, as a name and as a geographic entity – is the outcome of European fancy, European geography and European conceptions of the Eastern Mediterranean. Isabel Burton, wife of famed British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, summed up the ethnic conundrum of Damascus (in her times an Ottoman vilayet, and not the capital of today’s Syria) as “various religions and sects [living] together more or less, and [practicing] their conflicting worships in close proximity.”

Burton noted that, “Outwardly, you do not see much, but in their hearts [the inhabitant of the State of Damascus] hate one another. The Sunnites excommunicate the Shiahs, and both hate the Druse; all detest the Ansariyyehs [Alawites]; the Maronites do not love anybody but themselves, and are duly abhorred by all; the Greek Orthodox abominate the Greek Catholics and the Latins; all despise the Jews.”

Writing along those same lines in 1907, another British traveler, Gertrude Bell, noted that Syria was “merely a geographical term corresponding to no national sentiment.” This view was echoed by many Levantine contemporaries of Bell, most of whom maintain that there has never been a distinct Syrian society historically speaking; that what Europeans referred to as Syria had always been a bevy of disparate groups and loose geographic entities brought together by conquest and ruled forcibly through terror and tyranny; in sum, “a society based on a despotism of brutal force modeled on that of the ruler.”

Only “Europeanized Syrians” – that is to say Arabic-speaking urban Christians and Jews – who were familiar with the languages and concepts of Europe, began describing the lands of their birth collectively as Syria, and began viewing themselves as Syrians, to be distinguished from Turks, Arabs or Ottomans.

STILL, THIS European concept of Syria is similar to the way one may refer to something approximating “the Balkans,” or “the Alps,” or “the Mediterranean.” Eyebrows would be raised in discontent should analysts in our time venture to write about the Alps as some concrete, coherent political entity. Yet, this is the kind of discourse dominating the debate on Syria, the finality of Syria and the uniformity of Syria.

END.

**

Amazing to read such an article. It’s almost the same country as ours:

[…but in their hearts [the inhabitant of the State of Damascus] hate one another…]

Khartoum was built as a small outpost in the 1820’s, by the Egyptian occupier, and for the Egyptian occupier, to administer properly the middle third of their 19^th century empire that is today North Sudan. It took in Egyptian and Turkish officials, businessmen from Egypt and the Levant, sheikhs and scholars taught in al-Azhar University – mostly native Jallaba, Sephardic Jews coming from all over the Arab world, and a few soldiers also drawn from the native Jallaba. It was partially destroyed by the Mahdi’s soldiers in 1885, but those who settled in Khartoum, no matter where they originated from, stayed put in their place. General Kitchener took back Khartoum from the 19^th century Taliban rulers in 1898, and the people of Khartoum lived to see better times.

Then, Gordon College (today the University of Khartoum) was opened, and the Jallaba sent their children to study there. And the graduates set up their different professions in Khartoum. By then, Khartoum began to have a significant Jallaba population. And post-independence in 1956, the city expanded and grew larger, soon overwhelming the multi-ethnic make-up and becoming a Jallabi city. Southerners, the peoples of Darfur, the Nuba, the Bejas and the Berta and Kuka were conspicuously absent from the populace. But they would soon come as refugees of war and famine, and their numbers would overwhelm the Jallaba.

Refugees from Darfur have been settling here from the 1980s, and many had children here. And the children grew up here and had children of their own. They are Khartoumites, speaking a slang of Sudanese Arabic – that developed in the 1990s from the accents and speaking manner of the Fur and Zaghawa – that has come to symbolize Khartoum’s people. From time to time they visit their hometowns in Darfur, and that is all they know of their native land. They speak their native language at home, and Arabic to one another. These are the older refugees, and the more recent refugees from 2003 onwards are one generation behind the trend.

What once used to be squatter camps are now entire satellite towns with multiple neighborhoods. I’ve seen them so many times. They are miserable and sordid, and the people in it are just as miserable. The architecture is distinctly Darfurese, but there is no development beyond the neighborhood’s own contributions, notwithstanding a few clinics and markets. Some of the youths have spent their entire lives there, and have never tasted dignity. They are desperate for a better tomorrow, perhaps at any cost.

Khartoum is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city that now holds 5 million people, and it is a ticking time bomb. The different peoples do not get along, the Coptic Christians are withdrawn and are always suspicious of a Jallabi talking to them, the Nuba keep to themselves, the Fur keep to themselves, the descendants of Egyptians and Levantines – known as the Halab – keep to themselves and hold a strong contempt for the Jallaba, as I have consistently seen from them. The Turkish community keep to themselves – and after being around them for a few instances, I now understand why the Slavs of Eastern Europe and the Kurds hate them as they do. The foreigners coming as refugees from South Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia keep to themselves. All interactions are kept to a minimum beyond incidental friendship. There is a seething resentment, a desire for revenge and a need for change from everybody – but the Jallaba.

You can see it, you can hear it when you care to hear. Every one of every ethnic group laughs at and mocks the Jallaba, when they do not resent them deeply. They know that the Jallaba do not fight back and submit to any power that rules over them. They know that the Jallaba are extremely lazy and the Jallaba get upset when they hear that. They know that the Jallaba have extremely bad habits that make them primitive and ignorant, and that they are sensitive to every word spoken. They see the Jallabi bow down and kiss the feet of any Arab leader and any Arab people, and they resent it like fire on their bellies. They know that the Jallaba are the first and the last to check any progress or positive development, perhaps because they want everyone to be as worthless and as absolutely pathetic and as devoid of any honor or pride as they are.

Everyone who is not Jallabi hates the Jallabi with a consuming rage. And given the opportunity to exact their revenge, they will. In the event of a US occupation (which is very likely), or a coup that brings a non-Jallabi to power, everyone knows what to expect. Gang members, criminals and psychopaths will come of their homes, with axes and machetes, looking for Jallaba to kill. In the span of a few days, a few thousand Jallabis will be killed if nothing is done about it. What the current regime inflicted on Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the South, for daring to rebel against their rule, has remained in their hearts as an open wound. At the very first instance of the Jallaba’s weakness, they will turn their suffering back on the Jallaba, perhaps in the same coin, knowing full well that the Jallaba are cowards of the highest caliber and are quick to fold to any display of courage.

**

[…merely a geographical term corresponding to no national sentiment:]

[…brought together by conquest:]

In 1821, an ambitious ruler in Egypt, Mohammed Ali Pasha, sought to build an empire, by expanding southwards. He conquered the Funj sultanate, the independent Shayqi state, the Beja sheikhdoms, Kordofan and the Kingdom of Darfur, the Kingdom of Bahr-al-Ghazal, the Dinka and Nuer and Shilluk lands and the lands of the Fertit and Azande and Murle and Toposa between 1823 and 1876, having a glorious empire to extract wealth and summon brave African soldiers from. In 1882, amidst oppressive taxes and brutal rule, a certain Mohammed Ahmed abdul-Rahman, teaming up with Abdullah al-Ta3ayshi, proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi and led a revolt against the Egyptian rulers. Khartoum, the capitol of its region was taken in 1885, and the Sudanese Caliphate was declared. He took 4/5ths of that empire under his own rule. The Caliphate’s borders were exactly that of post-1956 Sudan.

When Haykal, the Egyptian political analyst, said that Sudan is nothing more than a stretch of geography, he was right. But the Jallaba were upset on hearing this, as the truth to them is something they can never handle.

There are so many nations enclosed by the common border of Sudan, who are so different from one another and cover altogether so vast a region, that this country could not have been sustained without being an empire, much like Napoleon’s or ancient Rome. To make it a republic that idealizes democracy and secular law, and then give it to confused Arabized Nubians who idealize the caliphate, rule by sheikhs and imams, and Shariah law, was perhaps the biggest mistake ever done in this part of Africa.

**

[…ruled forcibly through terror and tyranny:]

1956 – 1958        (2y)   First Republic, weak and plagued by sectarianism.

ABBOUD’S COUP

1958 – 1964        (6y)   Abboud’s rule, not as brutal as successors but imprisoned politicians.

OCTOBER REVOLUTION

1965 – 1969        (4y)   Second Republic, strong and effective under al-Azhari, but overthrown.

MAY COUP

1969 – 1985        (26y) May Regime, socialist and secular, brutal and corrupt to the bone.

APRIL INTIFADA

1986 – 1989        (3y)   Third Republic, weak and failed.

JUNE 30 COUP

1989 – Now         (25y) June 30 regime, Islamist, the worst regime to have ruled Sudan, short of the Mahdi Caliphate.

**

Shout-out to Lebanoniznogood.

Sudan's National Anthem - what an embarassment

This is the national anthem of the Republic of Sudan. No matter how you spin it, it sounds like it was composed by a 7 year old. The lyrics are just horrible:

نحن جند الله، جند الوطن

إن دعا داعي الفداء، لن نخــن

نتحدى الموت عند المحن

نشتري المجد بأغلى ثمن

هذه الأرض لنا فليعش

سوداننا علماً بين الأمم

يابني السودان هذا رمزكم

يحمل العبء ويحمى أرضكم

"We are the soldiers of Allah, soldiers of the nation,

If the caller for sacrifice summons, we will not betray.

We challenge death (at times of) hardship,

We purchase glory with the highest cost .

This land is for us, so may it live!

Sudan is eminent among the nations.

O son of Sudan, this is your symbol!

It carries the burden and protects your land."

**

This was the former anthem of the Sudan Defense Force, which after independence became the Sudanese Armed Forces, whose former anthem became the national anthem of the whole country! It seems like the whole country was unprepared for independence by 1956. There wasn't a laid down constitution, there was a draft working constitution, and it was written in Arabic, much to the chagrin of the majority that didn't speak Arabic as a first language. 

There was a desire by the Jallab, and only the Jallab really, to rid themselves of the British before anything else. Self-rule came in second. The Jallab used to call the British colonizer Nusrani and (pl.) Nassara, as though they never met a Christian before. They were humiliated that, as Muslims, infidels should rule over them. They did not understand what they inherited: it was a gift of potential that a handful of other countries throughout the whole world had surpassed in potential. They ruined it because Sudan must be ruled by the law of Allah yada yada yada.

They do not know themselves, simply because they do not know their past. And for that, they have no future, but one of perpetual poverty and anguish. If that is the life they want, then they should go and drown themselves in the Nile, for being happy pariahs and being dangerous to everyone around them. They were going to establish an Islamic state anyway, despite all other pretensions. The suits, the Shakespearian English, the political theories and the excesses were just luxuries or accessories. What truly matters to a Jallabi is what the Sheikh said and what the Quran says.

**

Sometimes I hope to God that a new people arrive, and throw these fear-paralyzed, constantly-upset narrow-minded honorless spineless Jallaba's into the Nile river and watch them swim. Then let those people have the Jallaba women. Thank God that South Sudan broke away; at least someone can move forward. (In all truth, the South Sudanese rebelled constantly until they got what they asked for; they fought and fought since 1956 and never gave up, while the Jallab submitted to any master and accepted any humiliation and oppression from any dictator that ruled over them.)

**

This ought to be the national anthem of a new Kush:

The first 2 minutes and 49 seconds of the "Epic of October", written by Hisham Mirghani and performed by Mohammed al-Amin's band just behind him.

(With important modifications, of course. I'd like the post-intro to be slower, with a louder, better-timed percussions, and perfectly timed crashing snares just before the loop picks up. And a few other proposals too.)

LYRICS:

When the night of oppression prolonged,

And that dawn of light in our eyes vanished,

We said, "Let restore

the past of yore,

the past of our forefathers

who defeated the tyrant

and demolished the castle of the tyrant's oppression (?)!"

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/

**

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.

**

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.

**

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.

**

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.

**

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. 

**

END.

**

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!