Sudanese Arabs
عرب سودانيون | |
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Nilo-Saharans |
Sudanese Arabs (
Sudanese Arabs make up 70% of the population of
Regional variation
Arab tribes arrived in Sudan in three main waves, beginning with the Ja'alin in the 12th century. The Ja'alin trace their lineage to Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib and their culture was closely linked with that of the Bedouin in Arabia. The second main wave was the migration of the Juhaynah before the 17th century in two main subgroups, the Baggara and Kabbabish. The final main wave was the migration of Bani Rashid in the mid-19th century.[4]
Most Sudanese Arabs speak modern
Sudanese Arabic
In 1889 the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain claimed that the Arabic spoken in Sudan was "a pure but archaic Arabic". The pronunciation of certain letters was like Hijazi, and not Egyptian, such as g being the pronunciation for the Arabic letter Qāf and J being the pronunciation for Jeem.[12]
Religion
Islam
Most Sudanese Muslims are of the Sunni branch of Islam.[20] Sunni Islam in Sudan is not marked by a uniform body of belief and practice, however. Some Muslims opposed aspects of Sunni orthodoxy, and rites having a non-Islamic origin were widespread, being accepted as if they were integral to Islam, or sometimes being recognized as separate. Moreover, Sunni Islam in Sudan (as in much of Africa) has been characterized by the formation of religious orders or brotherhoods, each of which made special demands on its adherents.
Five pillars
The pilgrimage to Mecca is less costly and arduous for the Sudanese than it is for many Muslims. Nevertheless, it takes time (or money if travel is by air), and the ordinary Sudanese Muslim has generally found it difficult to accomplish, rarely undertaking it before middle age. Some have joined pilgrimage societies into which members pay a small amount monthly and choose one of their number when sufficient funds have accumulated to send someone on the pilgrimage. A returned pilgrim is entitled to use the honorific title hajj or hajjih for a woman.
Another ceremony commonly observed is the great feast
Islam imposes a standard of conduct encouraging generosity, fairness, and honesty towards other Muslims. Sudanese Arabs, especially those who are wealthy, are expected by their coreligionists to be generous.
Islam in Sudanese law
In accordance with Islamic law Sudanese Muslims do not eat pork.
In Sudan (until 1983) modern criminal and civil, including commercial, law generally prevailed. In the north, however, the sharia, was expected to govern what is usually called family and personal law, i.e., matters such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In the towns and in some sedentary communities sharia was accepted, but in other sedentary communities and among
In September 1983, Nimeiri imposed the sharia throughout the land, eliminating the civil and penal codes by which the country had been governed in the twentieth century. Traditional Islamic punishments were imposed for theft, adultery, homicide, and other crimes.[21]
Other influences
Islam is
In Sudan as in much of African Islam, the cult of the saint is of considerable importance, although some Muslims would reject it. The development of the cult is closely related to the presence of the religious orders; many who came to be considered saints on their deaths were founders or leaders of religious orders who in their lifetimes were thought to have barakah, a state of blessedness implying an indwelling spiritual power inherent in the religious office. Baraka intensifies after death as the deceased becomes a wali (literally friend of God, but in this context translated as saint). The tomb and other places associated with the saintly being become the loci of the person's baraka, and in some views he or she becomes the guardian spirit of the locality. The intercession of the wali is sought on a variety of occasions, particularly by those seeking cures or by barren women desiring children. A saint's annual holy day is the occasion of a local festival that may attract a large gathering.
Better-educated Muslims in Sudan may participate in prayer at a saint's tomb but argue that prayer is directed only to God. Many others, however, see the saint not merely as an intercessor with and an agent of God, but also as a nearly autonomous source of blessing and power, thereby approaching "popular" as opposed to orthodox Islam.
Movements and religious orders
Islam made its deepest and longest lasting impact in Sudan through the activity of the Islamic religious brotherhoods or orders. These orders emerged in the Middle East in the twelfth century in connection with the development of Sufism, a reaction based in mysticism to the strongly legalistic orientation of mainstream Islam. These orders first came to Sudan in the sixteenth century and became significant in the eighteenth. Sufism seeks for its adherents a closer personal relationship with God through special spiritual disciplines. The exercises (or dhikr) include reciting prayers and passages of the Qur'an and repeating the names, or attributes, of God while performing physical movements according to the formula established by the founder of the particular order. Singing and dancing may be introduced. The outcome of an exercise, which lasts much longer than the usual daily prayer, is often a state of ecstatic abandon.
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A Dancing dervish
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A dervish from the 1920s
A mystical or devotional way (sing. tariqa; pl. turuq) is the basis for the formation of particular orders, each of which is also called a tariqa. The specialists in religious law and learning initially looked askance at Sufism and the Sufi orders, but the leaders of Sufi orders in Sudan have won acceptance by acknowledging the significance of the sharia and not claiming that Sufism replaces it.
The principal turuq vary considerably in their practice and internal organization. Some orders are tightly organized in hierarchical fashion; others have allowed their local branches considerable autonomy. There may be as many as a dozen turuq in Sudan. Some are restricted to that country; others are widespread in Africa or the Middle East. Several turuq, for all practical purposes independent, are offshoots of older orders and were established by men who altered in major or minor ways the tariqa of the orders to which they had formerly been attached.
The oldest and most widespread of the turuq is the
Much different in organization from the other brotherhoods is the
The Khatmiyyah had its center in the southern section of Ash Sharqi State and its greatest following in eastern Sudan and in portions of the riverine area. The Mirghani family were able to turn the Khatmiyyah into a political power base, despite its broad geographical distribution, because of the tight control they exercised over their followers. Moreover, gifts from followers over the years have given the family and the order the wealth to organize politically. This power did not equal, however, that of the Mirghanis' principal rival, the Ansar, or followers of the Mahdi, whose present-day leader was Sadiq al-Mahdi, the great-grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, who drove the Egyptian administration from Sudan in 1885.
Most other orders were either smaller or less well organized than the Khatmiyyah. Moreover, unlike many other African Muslims, Sudanese Muslims did not all seem to feel the need to identify with one or another tariqa, even if the affiliation were nominal. Many Sudanese Muslims preferred more political movements that sought to change Islamic society and governance to conform to their own visions of the true nature of Islam.
One of these movements,
In the century since the Mahdist uprising, the neo-Mahdist movement and the Ansar, supporters of Mahdism from the west, have persisted as a political force in Sudan. Many groups, from the
A movement that spread widely in Sudan in the 1960s, responding to the efforts to secularize Islamic society, was the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimin). Originally the Muslim Brotherhood, often known simply as the Brotherhood, was conceived as a religious revivalist movement that sought to return to the fundamentals of Islam in a way that would be compatible with the technological innovations introduced from the West. Disciplined, highly motivated, and well financed the Brotherhood became a powerful political force during the 1970s and 1980s, although it represented only a small minority of Sudanese. In the government that was formed in June 1989, following a bloodless coup d'état, the Brotherhood exerted influence through its political wing, the National Islamic Front (NIF) party, which included several cabinet members among its adherents.
Genetics
In 2007, the mtDNA haplotype diversity for 102 individuals in Northern Sudan was analysed. The haplogroup distribution was 22.5% of Eurasian ancestry, 4.9% of the East African M1 lineage, and 72.5% of sub-Saharan affiliation.[22]
According to
Maternally, Hassan (2009) observed that over 90% of the Sudanese Arabs samples carried various subclades of the
Dobon et al. (2015) identified an ancestral autosomal component of West Eurasian origin that is common to many modern Sudanese Arabs (as well as other North Sudan populations). Known as the Coptic component, it peaks among Egyptian Copts who settled in Sudan over the past two centuries. The scientists associate the Coptic component with Ancient Egyptian ancestry, without the later Arabian influence that is present among other Egyptians.[25] Hollfelder et al. (2017) analysed various populations in Sudan and observed close autosomal affinities between their Nubian and Sudanese Arab samples, with both groups showing notable admixture from Eurasian populations.[26] Genetic distance analysis in 1988, showed that the Beja and Gaalien tribes have more pronounced Arab genetic characteristics than the Hawazma and Messeria.[27]
Music
Clothing
Given the cultural differences within the country, Sudanese clothing varies among the different parts and peoples of Sudan. However, most individual Sudanese wear either traditional or western attire. A traditional garb widely worn in Sudan is the
References
- ^ "The Arab-Sudanese people group is reported in 18 countries". Retrieved 9 January 2019.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "The Arab-- Sudanese people group is reported in 18 countries". The Joshua Project. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
- ^ Hale, Sondra (1973). Nubians: A Study in Ethnic Identity. Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum. p. 24. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-84162-413-6.
- ISBN 978-1-5026-2602-8.
- ^ Richard A. Lobban Jr. (2004): "Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia". The Scarecrow Press. P. 37
- PMID28837655.
- ^ "المشاهير | الصفحة الرئيسية". almshaheer.com. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
- )
- ^ Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, JSTOR (Organization) (1888). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 17. The Institute. p. 16. Retrieved 8 May 2011.
jaalin.
- ISBN 978-1-7936-2277-8.
- ^ a b Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, JSTOR (Organization) (1888). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 17. The Institute. p. 11. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
- ^ public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Jā'alin". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 103. Citation: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905) This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ "Sudan", The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 31 August 2022, retrieved 4 September 2022
- ISBN 978-0-472-05481-7.
- ISBN 9780511696947.
- ^ Rashaida People History, Niaz Murtaza The pillage of sustainability in Eritrea 1998, p.177
- ^ The Darfur Conflict: Geography Or Institutions? By Osman Suliman, Mohamed Osman Suliman, P:115
- ^ Religion in Sudan according to the CIA World Factbook
- ISBN 9781400829989. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
- JSTOR 4328194.
- ISSN 1875-1768.
- PMID 18618658.
- ^ Hassan, Hisham Y. "Genetic Patterns of Y-chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Variation, with Implications to the Peopling of the Sudan". University of Khartoum. pp. 90–92. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
- PMID 26017457.
- PMID 28837655.
- PMID 3414791.
- ^ "(30) AL TOUB - THE NATIONAL COSTUME FOR SUDANESE WOMEN". Sudanese National Ich. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
Further reading
- A History of the Arabs in the Sudan and Some Account of the People who ... (1922)
- A history of the Arabs in the Sudan and some account of the people who preceded them and of the tribes inhabiting Darfur (1922)
- A history of the Arabs in the Sudan and some account of the people who preceded them and of the tribes inhabiting Dárûr (1922)
- A history of the Arabs in the Sudan and some account of the people who preceded them and of the tribes inhabiting Darfur (1922)
- A history of the Arabs in the Sudan and some account of the people who preceded them and of the tribes inhabiting Dárûr (1922)
- A History of the Arbas in the Sudan and Some Account of the People who Preceded Them and of the Tribes Inhabiting Darfur3
- A History of the Arabs in the Sudan: And Some Account of the People who Preceded Them and of the Tribes Inhabiting Dárfūr
- A History of the Arabs in the Sudan and Some Account of the People who Preceded Them and of the Tribes Inhabiting Dárfūr, Volume 2
- A History of the Arabs in the Sudan: The native manuscripts of the Sudan