The Origin of the Sudanese 'Africans'

[Nilo-Saharan]

Arab nationalism, to mention a few states, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, is not similar to being of an Arab lineage and hence through extension, a tribe, e.g., Ja'ali. The first notion is strictly based on nationalistic elements, speaking Arabic as a language and being Muslim. That identity facet formed quite in the modern age, roughly around the 50s for Egypt. None of those people, besides peripheral bedouin tribes in those countries, a demographic that forms less than a fraction of the country's populace, trace ancestry to Arabia.

Right, so you're disregarding the more recent notion of Arab identity and instead trying to enable a focus more on the Ancestral, genealogical, and tribal aspects that would make someone Arab. Noted.

None of those people, besides peripheral bedouin tribes in those countries, a demographic that forms less than a fraction of the country's populace, trace ancestry to Arabia.

They definitely have Arab ancestry, to varying extents but just because they don't overzealously wave it around in people's faces the same way Sudanese Arabs do, does not mean it's not there. People like the Mozabites have virtually 0 Arab Ancestry but this is also true of many of Sudan's non-arab tribes. On the other hand the Arab-identifying communities of the Maghreb, unsurprisingly don't have such a purely North African composition and I've seen calculations that approximate for around 10%. At the same time, some studies show Berbers and Non-Berbers having little Genetic differentiation between the two and that the distinction of Arab, in this case, is merely a superficial sort but this same pattern exists in Sudan between specific Arab and Non-Arab tribes.

A Bataheen is not an Arab on abstract terms alone, unlike an Egyptian.

Bataheen generally have high levels of Arab ancestry, that is true but this doesn't discard any Arab Ancestry an Egyptian will have. Unless we were to be speaking solely to the genealogical side of things in which you could say the Bataheen have an undisputable strictly paternal connection to Peninsular Arabs in difference to Egyptians who have a more messy scatter of bits of Arab ancestry, genetically they both are bearers of Arab compositions. So what makes it that the Egyptian is Arab on abstract terms alone?

Identity on tribal collective and culture and lineage-based tradition is what I am speaking of

Even this notion of Arab identity in Sudan that pre-dates the more inclusive modern perceptions, didn't exactly come to form or be based around these specific things alone. Arab Identity in Sudan in a way came about in a form of being able to get in on religious prestige, moving up the ranks in the Sudanese social ladder. It also existed similarly as an outage from what was considered the "cultural infidelity" of being African, and not African in relation to the continent but being African as in deviating from Arabs, speaking a native language, or practicing a native culture, its no wonder the various pre-arab languages of the many Arab tribes in Sudan all miraculously disappeared in the last couple of centuries either going extinct or a non-arab counterpart group keeps the language alive whilst the Arabs abandon their roots. Sudanese people at one point mass-produced genealogical literature tracing their ancestry to all sorts of noble Arab men whom no reputable sources even support existed. It was folklore that otherwise today has no evidence to uphold the crazy and historically illogical and baseless citations that constituted it. Again as mentioned, the Funj Sultanate is very significant in initiating this Religious spin on Arabization and eventually leading to the final steps of its near completion. Jay Spaulding has a lot of literature surrounding this era of Sudanese history, he provides a lot of important details to correct misconceptions about how Arabness came to be in Sudan.
Some work he's did that covers the societal structure of Sudan in this time period and how it overlaps with the slow growing rise of Arab tribal identity and obviously some backstory into the Funj, their systems of government and how they are significant.

The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition, History in Africa, Vol. 27 (2000), pp. 325-337

www.jstor.org

An Incident of Dynastic Succession in Sixteenth-Century Sinnār on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, An Incident of Dynastic Succession in Sixteenth-Century Sinnār, Northeast African Studies, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1997), pp. 23-28

www.jstor.org

Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan Under Dar Fur Rule, "ca." 1750-"ca." 1850 on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan Under Dar Fur Rule, "ca." 1750-"ca." 1850, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2006), pp. 393-412

www.jstor.org

The Government of Sinnar on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, The Government of Sinnar, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1973), pp. 19-35

www.jstor.org

If you want education on Northeast African genetics, search this sub-forum, and you will learn a thing or two.

What specifically to search for if you don't mind? I also wasn't claiming Ancient Egyptian, Levantine, Arabian, Non-AEA are homogenous components of ancestry. I was using them as examples of ancestries that are often linked or used interchangeably with what is understood in Population Genetics to be West-Eurasian ancestry. They are all distinct, I get that, but they all have a broad region of land in which these ancestries originate

 

[Ibn Amer]

North Sudanese are just confusing to me because they clearly don't look Arab but speak Arabic as a mother tongue and their culture is basically Arab. They are essentially Sub-Saharans that are larping as Arabs but why though? They are not an Arab colony anymore, they are free!

Dumbass they have some of the highest levels of Arabian ancestry in the Arab world outside the Arabian peninsula, it’s honestly astonishing how people on here talk about shit they obviously know nothing about lol

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

Dumbass they have some of the highest levels of Arabian ancestry in the Arab world outside the Arabian peninsula, it’s honestly astonishing how people on here talk about shit they obviously know nothing about lol

How high Arab ancestry actually is definitely ranges greatly among all the Arab tribes of Sudan. Some Sudanese Arabs have Arab ancestry so high because they're literally entirely descended from Arabs bearing no indigenous connections to the land they inhabit. But if we were to say an average for the indigenous Sudanese Arab tribes, we would need a much wider database of Genetic information on Sudanese Arabs than we currently have. As of right now, it appears to me that only Arabized Nubians, some Butana tribes, and the Messiria have actually had their DNA sequenced to provide us with a deeper look into this Arab Ancestry.

And relax on his ass lol, he's not even Sudani. They're Somali and they're asking questions about Sudan to learn more, you should respond with what you know and help where you can, not insult or demean someone for not knowing every little detail about you and your people. Smells like you felt attacked by that dude's statement

 

[Som]

Discussion about Sudanese people eh? Let me slide right into this. Before I start I want to say I will not be disclosing my specific Sudanese Ethnicity for my own personal reasons and beliefs one of them being how in Sudanese society one's tribe is often asked upon in casual conversation and it leads people to form prejudices and negative opinions on someone simply based on that piece of information. I've honestly in the past also had my opinions and viewpoints on certain Sudanese discussions entirely discredited simply due to me making the mistake of mentioning my ethnicity. It's something that has fueled tribalism greatly in Sudan and I am all against this degeneracy of obsessing so much over one's ethnic origin so as a result, I make it a strict rule for myself to not discuss my tribal lineage/ethnic background regardless of if I'm online or in-person to avoid blatant tribalism from Sudanese people I speak to and because I just don't believe it's important. So if you are looking for a more personal answer I can try but I won't be able to really do that without exposing too much about myself but I will give you the basic facts, what I've observed and how it all breaks down into the whole Arab Identity crisis in Sudan today.

"Sudanese people look like other Africans how can they be Arab?"
While the first half of this statement is undeniably true (with the exclusion of some Sudanese people), being Arab has nothing to do with ones appearance. It is very clear from my Sudanese experience, appearance does however play a role in how easily you are accepted as "Arab" by other Arabs. I myself have found despite me speaking better Arabic (but not reading very well lol) than some Arabs they still have always seen me as some sort of "Fake-Arab" or "Outsider". I've even had Arabs directly tell me that Sudanese people aren't "Real Arabs" whereas others have been more cut-throat and straightforwardly racist. Appearance definitely does play a role in acceptance otherwise countless Sudanese people would not be called numerous racial slurs (specifically targeted towards black people) by Arabs. But appearance is only really limited to how Arabs really perceive you and how easily they welcome you and accept you. In some instances, a Sudanese person could possibly have more Arab blood than a Tunisian but in the eyes of a racist Saudi man, he is most likely going to be much more respectful and welcoming creating a spirit of Arab Brotherhood towards the Tunisian man for the obvious reasons that the Sudanese man is very different in appearance to the former two and is, therefore associated to Black Africans due to his appearance and his Arab card is pretty much revoked by some individuals for this very reason. But who's to say a Sudanese person isn't Arab just because some Saudi dude doesn't like his skin color or hair texture? As various there are interpretations and understandings of what makes someone Arab, none of them seem to initiate an explicit focus on physical appearance or anything merely along the lines of phenotype. And in this regard, Sudanese people looking like Black Africans is totally irrelevant when pondering "Why do Sudanese people claim Arabs?". Personally, I am against Sudan trying to tie itself with Arabs and I am in favour of a culturally and politically autonomous future separate from Arabs only maintaining ties with our Age-old allies, the Egyptians but I'm just being honest here, this isn't good counter to Sudanese people regarding themselves as Arab and I don't even want Sudanese people to be calling themselves that.

"Sudanese people have been Arabized so why do so many Indigenous languages still exist?"
The process of Arabization has been especially significant in Africa and the state of North Africa is living evidence of that. The extent to which Berber languages for example have been reduced shows how rapidly the expansion of the Arabic language and cultural identity occurred and it also shows the utter expanse to which it reached. However, I think this is more common sense than it is deeper knowledge. Arab culture sure was influential but North Africa, Sudan included are very vast areas of land in comparison to smaller regions like the Levant which Arabs were capable of completely assimilating and influencing to the point of most indigenous languages being wiped out and a couple of isolated languages in neighboring regions being the only remnants of the prior age. To cut to the chase, Sudan is large and very diverse given its history and geography, it has allowed for various cultures and languages to be created along with numerous civilizations being created that contributed to further diversifying the land on both linguistic and cultural grounds. It is no surprise that the process of Arabization in Sudan didn't go very far but then again 70% of the country identifying as Arab is still a considerably large fraction of the country depending on how you want to look at it. This is also paired with how Sudan (to my current knowledge) was one of the only nations in the Arab world that brandished the Arab identity without having to suffer any sort of external military conquest. It all happened with slow gradual migration, trade, and internal influences, with no external military conquest involved at all. Arabs attempted military conquest into Sudan seeing as it was the gateway into Sub-Saharan Africa and possibly provided an opportunity for conquering the prosperous lands of Ethiopia but they failed on both attempts in Nubia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Dongola#:~:text=The%20First%20Battle%20of%20Dongola,Kingdom%20of%20Makuria%20in%20642.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Dongola

All the factors above show why Sudan unlike other Arab nations still retains so much of its indigenous Pre-Arab heritage and why the myth that Sudanese Arabs are purely "invaders/settlers" also holds not much truth to it.
It's also important to mention that while many Sudanese ethnic groups still have an indigenous language that they speak, culturally many of these tribes are still very Arab-oriented. Nubians and Beja being a perfect examples of this, they both speak indigenous languages but their culture is massively influenced by Arab culture and shares many similarities. Unfortunately, indigenous languages are on the decline and some have gone extinct as recently as the 70s. I pray for when we as Sudanese people can realize the importance of our true and original heritage and uplift and teach the original languages of our land, Inshallah.

As for Genetics, I will tackle that separately.

interesting but i'd say Sudan was indeed in some ways counquered, not as hard as the maghreb but still the arabs forced Nubians to provide many slaves annualy in exchange for peace, this treaty was known as the baqt treaty. Later migration form Hejaz arabized Sudanis relatively peacefully but the first contact between arabs and Sudan was military

 

[Som]

How high Arab ancestry actually is definitely ranges greatly among all the Arab tribes of Sudan. Some Sudanese Arabs have Arab ancestry so high because they're literally entirely descended from Arabs bearing no indigenous connections to the land they inhabit. But if we were to say an average for the indigenous Sudanese Arab tribes, we would need a much wider database of Genetic information on Sudanese Arabs than we currently have. As of right now, it appears to me that only Arabized Nubians, some Butana tribes, and the Messiria have actually had their DNA sequenced to provide us with a deeper look into this Arab Ancestry.

And relax on his ass lol, he's not even Sudani. They're Somali and they're asking questions about Sudan to learn more, you should respond with what you know and help where you can, not insult or demean someone for not knowing every little detail about you and your people. Smells like you felt attacked by that dude's statement

Arab tribes in Sudan are mostly arabized nubians, from studies i've seen they have 40-50% west eurasian Dna so similar to somalis,ethiopians etc. Part of that recent western eurasian Dna is ancient and part is because of recent arab migrations.
Overall Rashaida are the most arab since they migrated only 150-200 from Saudi Arabia. Baggara seem to have less arab ancestry on average and ironically are not that different from darfuris.

 

[Som]

Overall Sudanese are arabs because they have partial arab blood,arab culture and they speak arabic. They are no less arab than maghrebis who are berber+some arab mixture. egyptians who are copt+ arab mixture. The majority of sudani,maghrebi and egyptian dna is NOT arab, but arabness isn't just genes otherwise only Yemenis and Saudis would be arab. Sudanese arabness is questioned only because they are black that's the reality

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

interesting but i'd say Sudan was indeed in some ways counquered, not as hard as the maghreb but still the arabs forced Nubians to provide many slaves annualy in exchange for peace, this treaty was known as the baqt treaty. Later migration form Hejaz arabized Sudanis relatively peacefully but the first contact between arabs and Sudan was military

Conquered? No. A peace treaty was signed and terms needed to be met of course but the Arabs never succeeded militarily in Sudan. The Maghreb was actually conquered and brought under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Migration from the Hijaz did occur but from what I've seen regarding historical accounts, it seems that most migration for Arabs into Sudan happened through Egypt instead of crossing the Red sea.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

Overall Sudanese are arabs because they have partial arab blood,arab culture and they speak arabic. They are no less arab than maghrebis who are berber+some arab mixture. egyptians who are copt+ arab mixture. The majority of sudani,maghrebi and egyptian dna is NOT arab, but arabness isn't just genes otherwise only Yemenis and Saudis would be arab. Sudanese arabness is questioned only because they are black that's the reality

Yeah pretty much.

 

[Khaem]

Conquered? No. A peace treaty was signed and terms needed to be met of course but the Arabs never succeeded militarily in Sudan. The Maghreb was actually conquered and brought under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Migration from the Hijaz did occur but from what I've seen regarding historical accounts, it seems that most migration for Arabs into Sudan happened through Egypt instead of crossing the Red sea.

So Sudan wasn't conquered but they still got arabized into an identity crisis?
I'm scared for Somalia's future knowing these scheming Arabs are right across the red sea from us

I'm telling you guys, the Arabs will squeeze you clean just like their Jewish brothers, all these Semetic niggas are scary

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

So Sudan wasn't conquered but they still got arabized into an identity crisis?
I'm scared for Somalia's future knowing these scheming Arabs are right across the red sea from us

I'm telling you guys, the Arabs will squeeze you clean just like their Jewish brothers, all these Semetic niggas are scary

Sudan became Arabized from a number of reasons. Military conquest was not one of them.
Sudanese people themselves are much more involved with their own Arabization than what most people make it out to be. Arabs could have easily been repelled and their culture been a meaningless symbol of difference that can be a target for marginalization but WE CHOSE to let their culture and their identity replace ours. I only speak for some tribes in Sudan though, other tribes are having a blast proudly asserting their indigenous identities and appreciating their cultures. Other Sudanese people on the other hand find themselves obsessed with the idea of bearing cultural similarities to the Human master race known as the Khaleejis.

Yall are good, just put those "Ana Arabs" to sleep with a couple of Ak rounds, and differentiate Arabic Culture from Islam and you won't make the same mistakes as us.

 

[KelAhaggar]

Right, so you're disregarding the more recent notion of Arab identity and instead trying to enable a focus more on the Ancestral, genealogical, and tribal aspects that would make someone Arab. Noted.

They definitely have Arab ancestry, to varying extents but just because they don't overzealously wave it around in people's faces the same way Sudanese Arabs do, does not mean it's not there. People like the Mozabites have virtually 0 Arab Ancestry but this is also true of many of Sudan's non-arab tribes. On the other hand the Arab-identifying communities of the Maghreb, unsurprisingly don't have such a purely North African composition and I've seen calculations that approximate for around 10%. At the same time, some studies show Berbers and Non-Berbers having little Genetic differentiation between the two and that the distinction of Arab, in this case, is merely a superficial sort but this same pattern exists in Sudan between specific Arab and Non-Arab tribes.

Bataheen generally have high levels of Arab ancestry, that is true but this doesn't discard any Arab Ancestry an Egyptian will have. Unless we were to be speaking solely to the genealogical side of things in which you could say the Bataheen have an undisputable strictly paternal connection to Peninsular Arabs in difference to Egyptians who have a more messy scatter of bits of Arab ancestry, genetically they both are bearers of Arab compositions. So what makes it that the Egyptian is Arab on abstract terms alone?

Even this notion of Arab identity in Sudan that pre-dates the more inclusive modern perceptions, didn't exactly come to form or be based around these specific things alone. Arab Identity in Sudan in a way came about in a form of being able to get in on religious prestige, moving up the ranks in the Sudanese social ladder. It also existed similarly as an outage from what was considered the "cultural infidelity" of being African, and not African in relation to the continent but being African as in deviating from Arabs, speaking a native language, or practicing a native culture, its no wonder the various pre-arab languages of the many Arab tribes in Sudan all miraculously disappeared in the last couple of centuries either going extinct or a non-arab counterpart group keeps the language alive whilst the Arabs abandon their roots. Sudanese people at one point mass-produced genealogical literature tracing their ancestry to all sorts of noble Arab men whom no reputable sources even support existed. It was folklore that otherwise today has no evidence to uphold the crazy and historically illogical and baseless citations that constituted it. Again as mentioned, the Funj Sultanate is very significant in initiating this Religious spin on Arabization and eventually leading to the final steps of its near completion. Jay Spaulding has a lot of literature surrounding this era of Sudanese history, he provides a lot of important details to correct misconceptions about how Arabness came to be in Sudan.
Some work he's did that covers the societal structure of Sudan in this time period and how it overlaps with the slow growing rise of Arab tribal identity and obviously some backstory into the Funj, their systems of government and how they are significant.

The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition, History in Africa, Vol. 27 (2000), pp. 325-337

www.jstor.org

An Incident of Dynastic Succession in Sixteenth-Century Sinnār on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, An Incident of Dynastic Succession in Sixteenth-Century Sinnār, Northeast African Studies, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1997), pp. 23-28

www.jstor.org

Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan Under Dar Fur Rule, "ca." 1750-"ca." 1850 on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan Under Dar Fur Rule, "ca." 1750-"ca." 1850, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2006), pp. 393-412

www.jstor.org

The Government of Sinnar on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, The Government of Sinnar, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1973), pp. 19-35

www.jstor.org

What specifically to search for if you don't mind? I also wasn't claiming Ancient Egyptian, Levantine, Arabian, Non-AEA are homogenous components of ancestry. I was using them as examples of ancestries that are often linked or used interchangeably with what is understood in Population Genetics to be West-Eurasian ancestry. They are all distinct, I get that, but they all have a broad region of land in which these ancestries originate

It's interesting how you dismiss indigenous Sudanese claims of Arab ancestry out of hand when their paternal haplogroups literally back up their claim.

 

[KelAhaggar]

Sudan became Arabized from a number of reasons. Military conquest was not one of them.
Sudanese people themselves are much more involved with their own Arabization than what most people make it out to be. Arabs could have easily been repelled and their culture been a meaningless symbol of difference that can be a target for marginalization but WE CHOSE to let their culture and their identity replace ours. I only speak for some tribes in Sudan though, other tribes are having a blast proudly asserting their indigenous identities and appreciating their cultures. Other Sudanese people on the other hand find themselves obsessed with the idea of bearing cultural similarities to the Human master race known as the Khaleejis.

Yall are good, just put those "Ana Arabs" to sleep with a couple of Ak rounds, and differentiate Arabic Culture from Islam and you won't make the same mistakes as us.

That's just cope. Arab tribes overran the Nubian kingdoms by the 13th-14th centuries and the Mamluks were regularly installing kings of their own choosing in Makuria as the kingdom collapsed, and Arabs including the forefathers of the Baggara known as the Juhaynah were rampaging as far as Bornu. The rapid replacement of Nubian paternal haplogroups with the Arab J haplogroup that did not happen in populaces that today call themselves Nubian tracks with other examples of violent population replacements like that of the Mongols in much of Asia. Saying that the Funj are the reason for Arabization is also questionable since well... they conquered the region from Arabs who had already conquered and overthrown Alodia by the time of their arrival. If it weren't for the Funj, actually, it's likely that Arabization may have taken place even faster, because Arabs already possessed supremacy in Nubia.

 

[KelAhaggar]

Right, so you're disregarding the more recent notion of Arab identity and instead trying to enable a focus more on the Ancestral, genealogical, and tribal aspects that would make someone Arab. Noted.

They definitely have Arab ancestry, to varying extents but just because they don't overzealously wave it around in people's faces the same way Sudanese Arabs do, does not mean it's not there. People like the Mozabites have virtually 0 Arab Ancestry but this is also true of many of Sudan's non-arab tribes. On the other hand the Arab-identifying communities of the Maghreb, unsurprisingly don't have such a purely North African composition and I've seen calculations that approximate for around 10%. At the same time, some studies show Berbers and Non-Berbers having little Genetic differentiation between the two and that the distinction of Arab, in this case, is merely a superficial sort but this same pattern exists in Sudan between specific Arab and Non-Arab tribes.

Bataheen generally have high levels of Arab ancestry, that is true but this doesn't discard any Arab Ancestry an Egyptian will have. Unless we were to be speaking solely to the genealogical side of things in which you could say the Bataheen have an undisputable strictly paternal connection to Peninsular Arabs in difference to Egyptians who have a more messy scatter of bits of Arab ancestry, genetically they both are bearers of Arab compositions. So what makes it that the Egyptian is Arab on abstract terms alone?

Even this notion of Arab identity in Sudan that pre-dates the more inclusive modern perceptions, didn't exactly come to form or be based around these specific things alone. Arab Identity in Sudan in a way came about in a form of being able to get in on religious prestige, moving up the ranks in the Sudanese social ladder. It also existed similarly as an outage from what was considered the "cultural infidelity" of being African, and not African in relation to the continent but being African as in deviating from Arabs, speaking a native language, or practicing a native culture, its no wonder the various pre-arab languages of the many Arab tribes in Sudan all miraculously disappeared in the last couple of centuries either going extinct or a non-arab counterpart group keeps the language alive whilst the Arabs abandon their roots. Sudanese people at one point mass-produced genealogical literature tracing their ancestry to all sorts of noble Arab men whom no reputable sources even support existed. It was folklore that otherwise today has no evidence to uphold the crazy and historically illogical and baseless citations that constituted it. Again as mentioned, the Funj Sultanate is very significant in initiating this Religious spin on Arabization and eventually leading to the final steps of its near completion. Jay Spaulding has a lot of literature surrounding this era of Sudanese history, he provides a lot of important details to correct misconceptions about how Arabness came to be in Sudan.
Some work he's did that covers the societal structure of Sudan in this time period and how it overlaps with the slow growing rise of Arab tribal identity and obviously some backstory into the Funj, their systems of government and how they are significant.

The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition, History in Africa, Vol. 27 (2000), pp. 325-337

www.jstor.org

An Incident of Dynastic Succession in Sixteenth-Century Sinnār on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, An Incident of Dynastic Succession in Sixteenth-Century Sinnār, Northeast African Studies, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1997), pp. 23-28

www.jstor.org

Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan Under Dar Fur Rule, "ca." 1750-"ca." 1850 on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and Central Kordofan Under Dar Fur Rule, "ca." 1750-"ca." 1850, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2006), pp. 393-412

www.jstor.org

The Government of Sinnar on JSTOR

Jay Spaulding, The Government of Sinnar, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1973), pp. 19-35

www.jstor.org

What specifically to search for if you don't mind? I also wasn't claiming Ancient Egyptian, Levantine, Arabian, Non-AEA are homogenous components of ancestry. I was using them as examples of ancestries that are often linked or used interchangeably with what is understood in Population Genetics to be West-Eurasian ancestry. They are all distinct, I get that, but they all have a broad region of land in which these ancestries originate

Spaulding also literally thought that the Kingdom of Alwa spoke Meroitic and weren't actually Nubian. He's not exactly infallible or without bias on this topic.

 

[Nilotic]

These are useful sources but something that often goes ignored in the contemporary discourse of Sudanese history of Arabization is the role of the Sudanese in initially Arabizing themselves.

The Funj sultanate has an underlying but very impactful role in this case and they are responsible for gradually weakening Nubian states, linking Islam to Arab interests and then spreading it like that, Starting the hilarious Sudanese tradition of making false genealogical claims to Arab Nobility (Often relatives of the Prophet (pbuh)), Slave raids in villages that were mainly populated by Non-Muslims and those of lower social statuses (going hand in hand with lacking some sort of Arab identification) etc.

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=nelc_papers#:~:text=Neil%20McHugh's%20Holymen%20of%20the,heartland%20of%20the%20Funj%20sultanate.

The Darfur Sultanate even played a slight role. You'd think the Fur were always proud Africans that could tell the difference between Islam and Coonery but they were almost exact parallels of the Funj except for the fact that the Fur eventually put an end to these traditions whilst the rulers of Funj went on to intermarry with Arabs creating many of the same Arabs that control the Sudanese political elite today.

The Fur were actually the biggest source of foot soldiers against the South; we told them to rebel against the Arabs in the 90s and they literally crucified the Darfurian we dispatched to get them organised for war...

..I don't see them as particularly prideful; Darfur (homeland of the Fur) wasn't even part of Sudan until 1916, so one would expect them to have more pride than they did.

It's remarkable that it was the South that made the Nuba, Blue Nile and Eastern Sudan to assert themselves in the first place.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

View attachment 260112

It's interesting how you dismiss indigenous Sudanese claims of Arab ancestry out of hand when their paternal haplogroups literally back up their claim.

Totally misread my whole response or you just didn't read it at all

I never said Sudanese Arabs don't have Arab ancestry, of course they do. In fact, that small concentrated region of Haplogroup J smack in the middle of the country is actually also where I believe exists Arab-associated sub-clades of J1 in their highest frequencies so this is reliable evidence for the prevalence of Arab ancestry. My point is that I want to make a distinction between Arab Ancestry and the Genealogical claims many Sudanese Arab tribes makes. I don't think it's quite plausible to believe that nearly more than half of Sudan's population are descended from one or two men who were close relatives of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Not even the Rashaida who are of purely Arab origin claims such nobility yet the ones who not too long ago were fighting Arab intrusions, we're supposed to believe they descend from who they claim to descend from.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

That's just cope. Arab tribes overran the Nubian kingdoms by the 13th-14th centuries and the Mamluks were regularly installing kings of their own choosing in Makuria as the kingdom collapsed, and Arabs including the forefathers of the Baggara known as the Juhaynah were rampaging as far as Bornu. The rapid replacement of Nubian paternal haplogroups with the Arab J haplogroup that did not happen in populaces that today call themselves Nubian tracks with other examples of violent population replacements like that of the Mongols in much of Asia. Saying that the Funj are the reason for Arabization is also questionable since well... they conquered the region from Arabs who had already conquered and overthrown Alodia by the time of their arrival. If it weren't for the Funj, actually, it's likely that Arabization may have taken place even faster, because Arabs already possessed supremacy in Nubia.

The Noba overran the Kushite Kingdom leading to instability and its weakening along with severe decline, yet no historian ever asserts the idea that the Noba "conquered Kush". The Axumites initiated a military campaign to that effortlessly wiped Kush off the map, Axum is given the title of conquerer for putting a few troops on the ground to an already severely declined state ravaged by internal conflicts yet the Noba who had been in conflict, and made centuries of attempts to overthrow Kushite rule are simply brushed off as angry Nomads. Arabs were definitely detrimental to the decline of Makuria, they were not conquerors. Had they been conquerers, organized military action would have led to their success in Sudan. They attempted that twice and it failed, thrice with the Nomadic intrusions and it just lead to bloodshed. The Arabs then had a light bulb moment that Makuria and many other Sudanese kingdoms seemed to be experiencing a period of decline, the Arabs sat back, grew their population, and watched everything burn to wait to spread and dominate. This is only partially how Arabization came about however and I want to make it clear by referring back to the Funj, Arabs don't seem to be the only yielders of blame behind Sudan being Arabized.

The Funj being in conflict with Arabs is not a good argument at all to say they were opposed to Arabization and/or were not responsible for it. I'll have you know the Sudanese government is very adamant about Arabizing the remaining minorities in the country today and have made partial success in doing so yet at the same time they don't mind deploying troops in Yemen to slaughter innocent civilians. If you disagree with my take on the Funj I'd be interested to see any other sort of argument you have.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

Spaulding also literally thought that the Kingdom of Alwa spoke Meroitic and weren't actually Nubian. He's not exactly infallible or without bias on this topic.

Definitely, all scholars, historians, scientists, researchers, etc. are prone to bias and having that bias leak through to their work. In fact, specifically in the field of science, some scientists can make revolutionary discoveries yet have a past of making really unsound conclusions, theories, and unsupported speculations. We are human, we will never be free from bias nor mistake. My response to Spaulding in specific is that we assess what he has written and pair it with what is currently available in alternate sources.

I haven't probed too deeply into Spaulding's other work in specific but he is often referenced by Sudanese scholars amidst discussion of the Funj so I know him mostly for this specific set of research. There exist historical accounts from travelers to Sudan, letters from Sultans and Kings outside of the Funj, Historical documents/records still probably in Sudan today, and Literature that the Funj directly produced that is still intact. I would refer you to these things separately but Spaulding's work on the Funj seems to acknowledge most of these pieces of evidence and in some cases, he discovers this evidence himself and puts it forward. Spaulding holds a really good position in this area of study and centers himself around the evidence he has found, while not free of mistake, Spaulding definitely seems to make a reasonable approach and an extremely reliable one given the evidence available. I wouldn't be so harsh on him as a person. You're free to criticize his ideas however you like so long as your criticism comes with valid reasoning and from a logical point of understanding.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

The Fur were actually the biggest source of foot soldiers against the South; we told them to rebel against the Arabs in the 90s and they literally crucified the Darfurian we dispatched to get them organised for war...

..I don't see them as particularly prideful; Darfur (homeland of the Fur) wasn't even part of Sudan until 1916, so one would expect them to have more pride than they did.

It's remarkable that it was the South that made the Nuba, Blue Nile and Eastern Sudan to assert themselves in the first place.

I'm not really surprised about the Fur. While it's sad to see how they're suffering in Darfur now, it wasn't that long ago that they were larping as the same Arabs that are now genociding them now. I think I recall the Darfur sultanate also having a lesser-known tradition of tracing lineage to Arab nobility. Furawis only really decided they wanted to be proud Fur, Africans after the collapse of their Sultanate which encompassed all their pride. It'd be crazy to go back during that era of Sudanese history and watch the roles being reversed, the Furawis dominating Darfur and keeping the Arab tribes in check, how quickly things change.

Yeah, other regions of Sudan seem to empathize a lot more with the South than Darfuris in this regard. I honestly think religion might play a role. Darfuris generally speaking are some of the most religious Sudanese people and some of them were among the first to accept Islam so I sense their distaste with wanting to align with the south may be misunderstanding and wrongly taking an opportunity for an alliance against a common enemy as religious apostasy, siding with the "infidels" sorta thing.

 

[Smif-N-Wessun]

I'm not really surprised about the Fur. While it's sad to see how they're suffering in Darfur now, it wasn't that long ago that they were larping as the same Arabs that are now genociding them now. I think I recall the Darfur sultanate also having a lesser-known tradition of tracing lineage to Arab nobility. Furawis only really decided they wanted to be proud Fur, Africans after the collapse of their Sultanate which encompassed all their pride. It'd be crazy to go back during that era of Sudanese history and watch the roles being reversed, the Furawis dominating Darfur and keeping the Arab tribes in check, how quickly things change.

Yeah, other regions of Sudan seem to empathize a lot more with the South than Darfuris in this regard. I honestly think religion might play a role. Darfuris generally speaking are some of the most religious Sudanese people and some of them were among the first to accept Islam so I sense their distaste with wanting to align with the south may be misunderstanding and wrongly taking an opportunity for an alliance against a common enemy as religious apostasy, siding with the "infidels" sorta thing.

ya zools, is the population of Sudanese Arab 70% of the country? I keep running into more of the other groups like Nuba, Southeners, and Darfurians.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

ya zools, is the population of Sudanese Arab 70% of the country? I keep running into more of the other groups like Nuba, Southeners, and Darfurians.

What in real life? Or online lol. Sudan is populated 70% Arab tribes and a 30% minority of Non-Arab tribes.