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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan under Dar Fur Rule, ca. 1750-ca. 1850 |
Author: | Spaulding, Jay |
Year: | 2006 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 393-412 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Sudan |
Subjects: | mercantile history political history slave trade agricultural history Nuba Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034824 |
Abstract: | This paper examines the transitional century from c. 1750 to c. 1850 in Kordofan (Sudan), focusing on the fate of the Nubians, an ancient community of African people who dominated the history of the Nile valley for a thousand years following their arrival in the 4th century AD. During the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries the kingdom of Sinnar ruled and taxed both northern and southern Kordofan. The Nuba of Kordofan practised a mixed economy of cultivation and the herding of livestock. Slaves were an export good found in abundance in South Kordofan. In the 1770s, the then Keira sultan annexed both North and South Kordofan to Dar Fur, and the age of Dar Fur rule introduced important transformations in political economy and culture. Pastoralism was now officially encouraged at the expense of mixed transhumance and new, Arabic-speaking elites were allowed to rise at the expense of their local Nubian-speaking rivals. Dar Fur's late 18th-century shift toward a private commerce in slaves was soon felt throughout Kordofan. Danagla settlers came to be known as 'jallaba' (traders) and for a long generation their language dominated the new diaspora. Their enterprise was totally dependent upon slavery. In 1821, the Turco-Egyptians annexed North Kordofan, while the southern realm of Taqali and other mountain districts struggled toward independence. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |