THE IRONWORKING INDUSTRY OF PRECOLONIAL NUBIAN KORDOFAN
by Jay Spaulding
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The recent historical resurrection of the precolonial Nubian-speaking
communities of Kordofan invites reflection upon one of the activities for which,
in their time, they were best known--the production of iron.[1]
"Iron smelting is now a forgotten art in Northern Kordofan," wrote inquisitive colonial official
Harold MacMichael
at the dawn of the twentieth century.[2]
Yet a contemporary Sudanese geographer remembered not only
the north Kordofan Nubians themselves, but also the iron articles they had traditionally
exported:
The Nubian Mountains are located between Dongola and Kordofan.
They are numerous, and among them are countless communities.
The best-known is Jabal `Abd al-Hadi [one of the peaks of the hills now known
collectively as Jabal Haraza], the capital of the
Nubian Mountains.
Its inhabitants are Nubians. . . There are places
in the mountains specially dedicated to the manufacture of iron [articles],
such as swords, lances, knives, axes, throwing-blades [trumbash], arrows
and sickles. Mines of iron are found in their mountains.[3]
For reasons to be discussed below, the large ironworks at Jabal Haraza itself
had probably stood idle for some time. However, as MacMichael noted, farther
south, among the Jawama`a community in the vicinity of the precolonial Kordofan
capital of Bara, iron "used to be worked so late as the middle of the nineteenth century."[4]
In 1860, for example, Guillaume Lejean commented that "At Omzerzour I entered the
metalurgical district of which the large village of Tendar is the center;
this district contains numerous forges
in the infancy of the art."[5]
Ernst Marno offered this description in 1875:
The inhabitants of this region are Jawama`a, and they obtain iron
in primitive fashion from a brown ore found in the area.
They erect conical furnaces about one meter in height from clay-like earth.
The firing is accelerated by means of two bellows at the base; they consist of
deep basin-shaped clay pots with a nozzle, over which a goat-skin is stretched loosely.
The ore is mixed with charcoal of hashab wood [acacia verek]
and poured into the furnace.
The metal that gathers at the bottom is a rather impure product, which is reworked
into malot [weeding-machetes], knives, lance-heads and the like.
This refining of iron takes place only during the dry season of the year, for the furnaces must
dry out thoroughly for a long time before their use,
which cannot take place during the rainy season.[6]
In 1838-1839 Ignatius Pallme offered a perspective that adds valuable insight
into the ironworking vocation:
The smiths are the most industrious workmen; they fabricate all the necessary
household and agricultural implements, are at the same time miners, and smelters
of ore; for they dig the iron from the bowels of the earth themselves, and melt it
after a very simple process; but they do not understand how to harden it.
They have no fixed workshops, but arrange them wheresoever they may happen to [p. 255] find work; the
fitting up of the forge costs them but little trouble, for a large stone
is soon found on which they place a piece of iron, this serves them as an anvil;
close to this essential instrument, they construct a small furnace, to which a leather sack, answering the
purpose of bellows, is attached.
They make no heavy objects, for, beyond spear-heads, hashiash (an agricultural implement)
[hoes, but also the small iron currency of Sinnar],
double-edged and arrow-pointed knives of various sizes, they cannot produce any other article.
Their work is not well rewarded; for the minerals, such as the iron or charcoal cost them
scarcely anything, and thus they can only bring their manual labor into calculation.
Their tools are not particularly complicated, and consist merely of a few hammers
and a pair of pincers.
[7]
The most extensive account of iron production among the Jawama`a was that of
the Austrian mineralogist
Joseph, Ritter von Russegger, who came to the Sudan as an expert in the service
of the Egyptian viceroy Mehmet Ali and visited Kordofan in 1837.
The passage below is a draft translation of this eyewitness account.[8]
The translator is unfortunately not fluent in German and
lacks both adequate scientific training and familiarity with Austrian currency.
He welcomes any suggestions for ammendments and improvements to the reading offered here.
Advice would be particularly welcome concerning the chemical designations Eisenoxydhydrat, kohlensaurem Eisenoxydhydrat,
phosphorsauren (Eisenoxydhydrat?).
He may be contacted at the address: jspauldi@kean.edu.
Professor Tom Higel of the US Air Force Academy has most graciously provided the following explanation of
the abbreviated currency entries "8-9 kr. Conv.-Mze”
and "13 to 15 fl. Konv.-Mze":
"Russegger’s currency abbreviations “8-9 kr. Conv.-Mze” and 13-15 fl. Konv.-Mze” refer
to Kreutzers (kr) and florins (fl) in “Convention Coinage”. The particular convention is most likely the
1763 Leipzig Convention which, once again, tried to establish standards of coinage (how many coins of
x denomination) could be struck from a standard weight or unit of silver (the fine Mark).
This was indeed a problem as innumerable entities were issuing their own coinage in varying
amounts and fineness of silver – both a money-changer’s nightmare or opportunity to make a quick profit.
The “hundredweight” of “soft iron” (whatever he means by these terms) could ‘cost’ or be equal
to 168.87-194.85 grams (5.95-6.87 oz.) of fine silver or around $210 at todays rate.
Today’s wrought iron is around $2 per pound so it appears the then and today’s prices are comparable!"
(The full text of Professor Higel's comments may be found in the discussion section of the website below.)
The type of ore discussed is Raseneisenstein or limonite, sometimes referred to in English as "bog iron."
The measures that appear in Russegger's account are translated as follows: Zoll = inch, Fuss = foot,
Klafter = fathom.
In Russegger's day the concept of deep time was not widely accepted. He used the now-obsolete
adjective "diluvian" to
denote deposits left by Noah's flood, as opposed to "alluvium," deposits left by the actions of water in the post-diluvian age.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
RUSSEGGER'S ACCOUNT OF IRONWORKING IN KORDOFAN
[p. 286] West of Glèha, near the village of Domma, we traversed that part of the north Kordofan
plain specially characterized by the frequent presence of limonite.
For this reason, and also because of the widespread use of this mineral—taking place in almost every village—one
may quite appropriately call this area the “iron district” of Kordofan.
This iron district extends westward from Glèha, as far as I know to Bara, and from Chursi to the north as
far as Mugnos.[9]
Very probably this iron ore-bearing terrain has a much greater extent.
I would imagine that the presence of limonite extends not only all across the savanna lands of
northern Kordofan but also eastward to the plains of the White Nile and westwards to Dar
Fur--and doubtless further all across the central and western Sudan.
The formation to which the limonite in Kordofan belongs is the previously mentioned diluvial sand
and diluvial sandstone The latter is in a state of exceptional disintegration and decay into sand,
so that [p. 287] except for the sandstone hills along the banks of the White Nile, only rarely are compact strata
of it to be found.
This sandy ground grown over with thin mimosas and asclepias bushes, consists of a yellowish-red
loose sand tinted by iron oxide and so permeated with it that wherever it is not covered by cultivation
it can be recognized at a distance by its color. This iron-bearing sand is deposited in alternating layers
with equally iron-bearing clay, and at a certain depth both contain concretions of limonite, nodules of
various shape and size, and in great number. On the one hand these concretions, descending down to
the size of grains of sand, comprise an integral constituent of a sand which otherwise consists merely of
rounded-off grains of quartz. On the other hand, as they increase in quantity and size they form discrete
strata of limonite that appear as clearly articulated bedded deposits of these concretions in alternation with
the layers of sand and clay. The limonite of this diluvial sand, which by its outward appearance may be
called "meadow ore" or "pea ore" seems on the basis of reasons given below to be a more permanent
formation. Namely, one may notice that the iron-bearing sand and clay as well as the limonite itself
are full of vegetable remains—pieces of root, etc., and especially of dicots—and that many of these
remains have not yet been changed, though most have been transformed into iron ore. This transformation
itself in part bears a very remarkable character. For example, we find branches whose outer bark,
although the shape is very well preserved, consists of a mixture of clay and ironstone, while the inner
part or core is a mixture of completely pure ironstone and sand. The texture of the small bodies of limonite
that appear scattered amongst the sand also make unmistakable the basic vegetable model. It seems to me
that one is dealing here with entirely the same processes as occur in the formation of the [p. 288]
concretions of calcium carbonate through the petrifaction of organic bodies in the river mud of the
White Nile.
Here it is the components of the limonite, which at least as far as the iron oxide is concerned consist of
sand and sandstone, that were inherited from what was there before [als gegeben vorliegen]; there it is
the oxides of the underlying soil [Erdbasen]. Through the continuous decomposition of organic
bodies, especially of a vegetable nature, which is found in the river mud of the most recent alluvium as
well as the uppermost layers of the diluvium where that is covered by the alluvium of the present
[post-diluvian] age or represents the immediate foundation for soil with growing things [Kulturboden]
such as forest or pastureland, etc., acids are formed--or linkages which play the role of acids in relation
to the above-mentioned oxides—and which bind together with them to form salts, in the one case
predominantly calcium carbonate and in the other
hydrated ferric oxide [Eisenoxydhydrat], iron carbonate [kohlensaurem Eisenoxydhydrat],
ferric oxide phosphate [phosphorsauren (Eisenoxydhydrat)], etc.
These salts, and their frequent formation where their elements are present, indisputably mean that from
time to time the earth is permeated with water on the occasion of periodic floods or periodic rain.
One may determine that these are the essential conditions through the process of concretion,
which in my view is very closely related to the process of crystallization.
Under various circumstances and according to different conditions of purity, they either form polyhedral masses
( nodules, concretions, clusters, etc.) or are laid down in stratified deposits, or finally, directly in the process
of formation, transform the place and the form of those organic bodies they take in and take the place of,
through whose destruction they actually arise. One may observe this gradual conversion especially well in
those places where whole layers of root fibrils and other vegetable remains lie in the sand.
Having once formed the surface of the earth, they were later covered again by iron-bearing sand and clay.
While on the new surface new vegetation took root, the old clearly faced its transformation into limonite.
I was informed of 15 villages in the vicinity of Bara, Chursi and Tendar around which [p. 289] the presence of
limonite may be established definitively through efforts of the natives intended to manufacture iron from ore.
The circumstances in which this happens are everywhere the same. Namely, beneath the uppermost covering of
sand, and usually at a depth of 7 or 8 feet, one finds the first layer of iron. [This is] either pure limonite or strata
of clay and sand filled with limonite concretions. Like all the other layers of this formation these are bedded
horizontally. These ironstone layers vary in thickness from 6 inches to 1 foot and rest upon iron-bearing sand.
Under this sand there follows limonite again. Given the extremely limited excavation techniques of the natives
the sequence of deeper layers is not known, but it is probable that the limonite alternates repeatedly with the
sand and clay and appears over and over. Under the circumstances it follows that the simplest and cheapest
way to investigate this terrain would be to sink a number of shafts to the base of the iron-bearing deposits.
The mining of limonite takes place in the crudest and most inefficient manner conceivable. Near the village of
Farajab [Feradschaab] over an area of approximately 400 or 500 square fathoms I counted some 350 little
exposed shafts, some open and others collapsed. Each such shaft is circular in cross section, with a diameter
at the surface of 4 to 5 feet and a maximum depth of ten feet. As soon as one reaches the uppermost layer of
limonite with such a shaft further excavation is suspended and the mining of ore begins immediately, until one
breaks through the ore deposit to the underlying [stratum]. Then at the bottom of the shaft the ore round
about is taken out as far as may possibly be done without having to fear a sudden collapse, since no use is
made of timber revetments. If that does happen the shaft is abandoned and a new one begun nearby, usually
only a few feet away. The following diagram [p. 290] provides a clear illustration of these mines.
[The character] “a” indicates the layers of sand and clay, “c” the uppermost limonite layer and “b” the
shafts mentioned with their widenings at the bottom.
FIGURE 1
In previous passages I have already had occasion to speak of the originally monopolistic intentions of the
viceroy [Mehmet Ali] to improve both the gathering of limonite and also its further treatment through
bettering the locally customary method of smelting refined iron. [I have also spoken of] the sad fate
of the Englishmen who came to Bara for this reason.[10] I saw the condition of things once again in their
original primitiveness; not a trace of any alien influence having taken place was to be seen—although on
the other hand I must concede that the natives would certainly not be opposed to innovations that would
benefit them.
The limonite won from the above-mentioned shafts is carefully sorted. Only the purest and therefore the richest
pieces are subjected to further processing, the first stage of which consists of crushing them to the size of beans.
In order to smelt, the natives make small, cone-shaped pits in the sand with the tip pointing down. The widest
diameter of such a pit measures 12 to 14 inches, and the depth likewise. Once such a pit is filled with a mixture
of charcoal and crushed ore, without a flux, a heap of charcoal is piled over it and set alight from the top.
As the following drawing shows, the nozzles[11] of a bellows are inserted along the edge of the pit at an angle
of 40 to 45° [p. 291] and the campaign begins. A man to be described below sets the bellows in motion.
FIGURE 2
After a few hours the mass begins to settle and to run together, and when this happens new ore and coals
are added. After about ten hours the greatest part of the easily molten limonite has melted, and the pit is full
of material [Gezeuge]. The bellows and nozzles are taken away, the fire cleared off, and the mass
is left to cool. The results of this first smelting are unmelted baked-together ore, which is set aside for a new
campaign, and slag. This slag is of two kinds. The upper is black, heavy, with thick cracks, and containing
much iron; it is thrown away as useless. The lower is also black and heavy, but more porous, glassy in places,
and mixed with grains of reduced iron, sometimes of significant size. This slag is subjected to a second smelting
The second smelting, that is, of the slag containing metallic iron, is undertaken in the same pits,
with the same bellows, and under the same conditions. However, as a consequence of the nature
of the material, it only lasts a few hours. Now on top one gets a thick slag that bears very much iron,
and this again is thrown away. Deeper is a slag visibly mixed with metallic iron, which will be smelted
again. Finally, at the deepest point, as a final result of the tiresome processes, is a granular bloom of iron
[Eisenkönig], to a greater or lesser degree permeated with slag. It is painstakingly beaten with
clubs and the slag systematically removed. Without further treatment the refined, soft iron is then sold to
the smiths. [p. 292]
Only rarely do these naked black foundrymen succeed in producing a compact, slag-free pure bloom.
I bought one of them on the spot, which weighed about 15 pounds and is a very good,
completely soft iron.[12]
The bellows that serve in this operation correspond to the whole procedure, that is,
[they are] still on the first step of invention.[13] Sometimes they are only ordinary leather water
bags which a man pulls open and then compresses; sometimes they have a quite unique and unusual form.
Namely, as the adjoining drawing shows, a basin-shaped body “b” is prepared out of clay, with a long attached
tube “c” bent slightly down. The open part of the basin “b” is covered with leather “a” which is attached to
the rim of “b,” partly with ties and partly by smearing with clay, in order to make it as airtight as possible.
This skin has a hole at the top, into which the operator thrusts a finger.
FIGURE 3
As he alternately expands the skin (which moment [p. 293] the preceding drawing portrays) and then
presses it down to the bottom of the bowl, he creates a wind that naturally has nowhere else to escape
other than through the tube “c” at the tip of which the nozzles are found, except for what escapes next to the
finger in the hole.[14] As primitive as the blacks are who occupy themselves with this iron production, they
openheartedly recognize their lamentable condition, which they judge rationally; the means at their disposal are
unsatisfactory, so that for example they pressed me to produce better bellows for them. I have made the
most vigorous of representations to the Egyptian government about this. I made them aware that it is important
in many regards to pioneer civilization in these lands by calling forth an industrial endeavor—but in vain.
The coals for smelting are burned from mimosa. This is done in the forests of the `aqaba in a very simple
manner. A small heap of wood, only 2 or three feet high, is set on fire and covered with sand to contain
the blaze within an enclosure. The coals are very small, since for the most part only the wood of branches
and twigs is used, but they are burned well, resonant and with little rubbing off.
The product is sold as raw material on the spot to blacksmiths or other buyers of their iron for a price
of about 1 and 1/3 to 1 and ½ piaster per pound, either through barter or, at least in northern Kordofan,
also for money of the Egyptian government. As high as this price is, by which a hundredweight of soft iron
costs up to 13 to 15 fl. Konv.-Mze., I still find it far less than the effort and the expenditure of
materials and time that the poor blacks put into their iron manufacture.
During both the raw smelting and the slag smelting (as described above) three men
are always involved. Two relieve each other in the operation of the bellows while
the other, in addition to adding the ore and charcoal, leads the operation. The highest luxury in equipping such an
establishment consists of [p. 294] driving four poles into the sand and spreading a straw mat over them
when the sun burns too hot on the reddish-yellow sand.
In the most favorable instances the blacks, in about 12 to 14 hours time, succeed in producing 15 to 20 pounds
of refined iron. Although derived from ore by furnace [aus Erzen erblasen], out of which by our methods
would typically come a brittle product, [theirs] is of exceptional quality, distinguished by softness and flexibility.
For the most part the smelters themselves undertake the further working of this iron, its smithing into lanceheads,
daggers, agricultural implements, coins [15] etc. To do this they use the same pits and bellows already mentioned,
although a few times I had occasion to observe the application of a double bellows, namely two old leather bags.
The nozzles of the smithing fire are inserted at an angle of from 25 to 30°. A large piece of refined iron
serves as an anvil, and an iron club as a hammer. There exists no conception of hardening the iron, nor of
steel, etc. According to our investigations the iron content of the ore subjected to the processing amounts
to 60 – 70%, and out of this amount the blacks—if one believes their statements—bring in at least
20, maximum 40%. Although limonite is well-known to be a very easily melted ore, the blacks do not
succeed in transforming it into a fully liquid state in their pits; rather, they only change it into a half-molten,
doughy mass. Because the iron reduced in this way is not transformed, it is not in a position on the one
hand to enter into bonds with the carbon or the alkali of the soil. On the other, through the strong
piercing wind and the repeated smelting (slag smelting) the oxidation of the phosphorous of the limonite
either takes place quickly or its disoxidation is blocked from the beginning so that it passes completely
into the slag. This explains exactly how out of [p. 295] the very nature of this process, extremely
wanting in its characteristics in regard to the expenditure of time and material and loss of metal,
[comes] the remarkable phenomenon that the blacks succeed in producing a completely flawless soft iron
out of ore which by our manipulations would usually result only in brittle iron.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
WHAT DOES RUSSEGGER'S ACCOUNT ADD TO UNDERSTANDING OF PRECOLONIAL SUDANESE IRONWORKING?
The author will begin a list; everyone is encouraged to contribute.
- The furnaces observed by Russegger do not resemble those of Jabal Haraza and Meroe.
However, the long-necked clay pot bellows he portrayed (FIGURE 3) is clearly similar to those
used at Haraza and Meroe, where the extended neck was placed into a suitably designed
groove
in the front wall of the furnace, leading back into the firing chamber.
Discussion of ironworking at Meroe (see note 16 below) has not been able to describe
the functioning of the long-necked pot bellows found there. Based on analogies with
ancient Egyptian practice, it has been argued that the bellows were operated with the feet.
It has also been suggested that the bellows were perhaps operated in pairs,
each covering skin being lifted and depressed in turn via an attached stick.
Either interpretation must postulate the existence of some form of valve, no tangible
evidence of which remains.
Russegger's account suggests that the bellows were not operated with the feet,
but with the hands.
They were probably not worked in pairs by a
single operator using sticks; rather, a team of men taking turns
might well be required to
run a single bellows.
The operator's finger inserted
into a hole in the bellows cover served as the valve.
-
-
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
POWER, CASTE, SERVITUDE AND THE HISTORY
OF IRONWORKING IN KORDOFAN
Interpretive Essay
The ancient Sudan is internationally famous among students of early Africa
for its ironworking in Meroitic times.[16]
Yet ironworking is not an aspect of historical tradition that modern Sudanese culture
has chosen to remember and cherish.
In part, this may be attributed to the absence of any conspicuous inventory
of existing artifacts to be appreciated.
This may partially be due to the ease with which metal could be repeatedly reworked
as older iron objects became expendable and were reforged into new ones.
Moreover, within the Nubian tradition of Kordofan, there existed
a cultural rule that further
inhibited casual neglect or discard of what might otherwise
have become precious archaeological artifacts:
A superstition prevails now that if the iron implements are allowed to lie
on the land they will attract the strong north wind and the
corn will be overwhelmed by the sand:
in consequence they have diligently been collected and
with due formalities stowed away
by 'fekis' [Sudanese Arabic fuqara', Islamic holy men] in deep
fissures of the rocks [at Jabal Haraza]: it was here that
I unearthed a lot of them, covered by stones.
[17]
(As the subsequent experience of rural folk resident
northwest of Bara dramatically demonstrated, the threat of
innundation by wind-borne sand was real enough.)[18]
When MacMichael searched the remains of the very ironworks visited by Russegger
seventy-five years before, he found only a few overlooked fragments.[19]
The meagre tangible remains of precolonial ironworking, to be sure, are hardly
sufficient to generate much
romantic cultural nostalgia.
Yet it seems probable that the venerable tradition of Sudanese ironworking
was not merely forgotten, but actively rejected. At least three
important historical themes
have contributed to the demise of indigenous Sudanese ironworking; two are
familiar and predictable, but the third is new and potentially controversial.
COMPETITION FROM IRON IMPORTS?
Sudanese ironworking, like many forms of African industrial and craft production,
may in part have succumbed to competition from imported goods.[20]
The late precolonial visitor John Lewis Burckhardt observed that
sword blades were a conspicuous northern import in his generation;
one of these may well be the weapon attributed to the late eighteenth-century Hamaj strongman
Muhammad Abu Likaylik and now displayed in the National Museum in Khartoum.[21]
While detailed analysis of iron imports during the Turkish period of Sudanese
history is not at hand, even superficial impressionistic evidence may
perhaps suffice
to indicate that the trends of this age harmed, not relieved, Sudanese ironworking.
PROGRESSIVE DESERTIFICATION?
Sudanese ironworking in Kordofan may also have suffered
through a long process of progressive desertification
that gradually removed the trees upon which the
industry depended for fuel in the form
of charcoal.
Both changes in the climate and overexploitation by humans may have
contributed.
Unfortunately, this hypothesis would seem difficult to confirm.
While the study of past environments in the Sudan has contributed
significantly to scholarly understanding of very early times,
few attempts have been made to bring forward comparable analyses into historic days.[22]
Studies based upon twentieth-century data might perhaps
be projected backward to imply the presence of progressive desertification.[23]
The result of such reasoning however remains speculative.
PRECOLONIAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND CULTURE?
Historians have often postulated a relationship between innovations in
metalurgy and political, social and cultural development out of a remote
prehistoric "stone age"
into better-documented recent ages of bronze and iron.
In regard to Africa specifically it could thus be said that "quite apart from the
increase in productivity which the use of metals offers (and hence the possibility
of maintaining a more complex administrative system), it is possible to
supervise the technology itself, the weapons and the trade in weapons;
some effective central control of force becomes feasible for the first time."[24]
This interpretive insight, however, has not yet been properly applied to
the post-Meroitic Sudan. For the medieval period the impediment has been
a tradition of
scholarship grounded in Egyptology that found it difficult to expand its
vision far beyond the banks of the Nile; to the best of the author's knowledge,
for example,
no extant treatment of medieval Nubia includes a discussion of
the ironworks of Jabal Haraza.[25]
For the early modern age the
problem has been the intellectual hegemony of an
Orientalist reading of history that overemphasized tribes and denied
any significant role to central authority.[26]
The present study proposes three working hypotheses as a basis for further investigation and discussion:
- The first hypothesis is that in the North Sudan
cultural tradition from Meroitic times until the colonial age the government has played
a central role in the organization of iron production and the distribution of iron
objects, conspicuously though not necessarily exclusively armor and weapons--those
articles
designated "instruments of state" in surviving government records.[27]
In the case of Sinnar, for example, the production and distribution of iron
might thus be visualized in terms analagous to the
production and distribution of slaves.[28]
(The proposed hypothesis may be contrasted with alternative
and otherwise-plausible suggestions that perhaps ironworking
might have
developed in locations especially favored by natural circumstance, or in
situations rendered conducive socioeconomically through the operations of market forces.)
The evidence known to the author does not suffice to prove the proposed
hypothesis. However, it provides a few bones which, when arranged in order,
do begin to resemble a skeleton.
- The last independent governments maintained substantial arsenals
(known in Sinnar as the
bayt al-`udda, in the Mahdist State as the bayt al-mal
and in `Ali Dinar's Dar Fur as the warsha [English, "workshop"]
where articles important to the government were stored,
from which they were dispensed
to the deserving, and in some cases where these articles were manufactured.
The skills preserved in the Mahdist bayt al-mal, for example,
included the venerable tradition of crafting suits of iron chain mail.[29]
- Although the large ironworks for which ancient Meroe was famous are located
in an area where iron ore is abundant, the local material in fact was not smelted.
Production
depended upon ore imported from elsewhere, and since that production was extensive,
so must also have been the arrangements for the importation of ore,
and perhaps charcoal likewise.[30]
Who made these arrangements, and for what specific purposes?
The government would be a plausible candidate for both the roles of producer and consumer.
- The ironworks at Jabal Haraza invite comparison in this regard
to those of Meroe. MacMichael described them as follows:
Old ironworks are still to be seen. . . . Some
are at Arangóg on the south of El Haráza;
others at Kaysay:
the former are at the foot of the mountain in an inlet,
the latter are some 400 feet above the plain
and the old stone village, in a high pass in Jebel Kaysay.
The backwalls (which are of fine burnt brick and two feet high) are
arranged in tiers like the seats of a circus, each higher up the
slope than the others, and in the form of a shallow semi-circle.
The backwall is in each case about 20 yards from point to point,
and consists of four or five smaller consecutive concave divisions,
each of which were presumably used by a different person.
The refuse was thrown on to the top of the backwall.
The ground is strewn with cylinders of very hard burnt clay,
one end of which obviously rested among the molten iron,
and to the other the bellows were presumably applied.
These cylinders lay horizontally side by side on a low brick rest
built into a series of hollows on its upper surface,
into which the cylinders fit.
There are similar ironworks at Kobé at the east end of El Haráza.
[31]
Jabal Haraza possessed absolutely no natural or economic advantages
that could have inspired the establishment of an iron industry there;
the only plausible motives for its existence were political.
The Jawama`a region does not seem to possess ironworks comparable in magnitude or
sophistication to those of Jabal Haraza. Its primary role may have been the
mining of ore and burning of charcoal for use elsewhere. Alternatively since
Bara, perhaps even more than Haraza, was a political center for extended periods,
it is possible that greater ironworks once existed in the vicinity but
later disappeared or
have eluded rediscovery.
- If iron production and the crafting of weapons, sometimes in unexpected
places, were significant
aspects of the command economy of precolonial states, then the destruction
of those states would itself be a significant contributing cause to the
decline of Sudanese ironworking in colonial times.
One of the duties of a precolonial Sudanese ruler was to serve as a talent scout,
to attract to his capital and court individuals with uncommon and valuable goods or skills.
Royal patronage toward Islamic holy men is probably the best-documented example of this
activity, but a close reading of primary sources from the age reveal a similar
preoccupation with physicians, traders with unusual merchandise, and artisans of all
descriptions. For some foreigners this royal interest could provide the opportunity
of a lifetime, but it could seem threatening to those who might wish
to leave the Sudan some day. Representing the latter viewpoint Burckhardt commented:
Travellers in these countries ought to avoid shewing their capacity in the most
trifling things that may be of use or afford pleasure to the chiefs, who will
endeavour to force them into their service.[32]
Yet the fact that many of the extant primary sources happen to concern aliens
such as Burckhardt should not obscure
the probability that most of the artisans gathered to the capital by contemporary
Sudanese governments were Sudanese.
- The second proposed working hypothesis is that the vocation of smith in the
North Sudan cultural tradition was casted. At the moment, evidence concerning this
theme is either circumstantial or fragmentary to the point of evanescence. Yet one must
start with what is available.
(New information or advice would be greatly appreciated. Please contact the author at:
jspauldi@kean.edu).
- Ironworking in most Northeast African societies has been organized
on the basis of blacksmith castes.[33] This should encourage observers of
the northern Sudan to become alert to the possibility that a similar situation
may well have prevailed there in earlier times.
- The author's fieldwork during the early 1970s (Dongola, the Shaiqiyya and Rubatab
country) included occasional encounters with elderly people in marginal situations whose
special status was associated with a craft occupation
either practiced in their youth or by
their families in previous generations.[34] Blacksmithing was one of several
occupations associated with such individuals.
- The third proposed working hypothesis is that in addition to
the casted smiths, some miners or ironworkers were individuals of slave status.
This idea is supported in the case of Sinnar by the conspicuous presence of
slaves in the central government establishment, including the bayt al-`udda.[35]
Nothing presently known concerning the comparable institutions of the Mahdist State
or Dar Fur contradicts the probable validity of this assumption there also.
Adoption of the three hypotheses proposed for heuristic purposes points toward
several new interpretations for the historical experience of the Nubian
community of northern and central Kordofan. Part of that experience included
the formulation and reformulation of ethnicity. Two examples follow.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
IRONWORKING AND ETHNICITY: THE TUNJUR AND THE JAWAMA`A
Interpretive Essay
Approach to a discussion of ethnicity and history in the North Sudan context
requires some historiographical decisions.
- Twentieth-century Arabic-speaking communities of the northern Sudan,
along with some of their Muslim neighbors who
preserved a pre-Arabic rotana,
often preferred to identity themselves as descendants of medieval immigrants
from Arabia. In a biologically literal sense this is probably true,
for if even one such
immigrant existed (and few would doubt that)
then by the laws of historical demography virtually every living Sudanese
is his descendant; whether or not any of the numerous surviving Arabic
genealogical
records accurately
preserve memory of such a relationship is considerably less probable.[36]
There remains the question of whether the realities addressed by this
genealogical endeavor possess historically explanatory power.
The best answer is negative; although the genealogically-based approach to North Sudan
history was defended and exploited thoroughly
by earlier generations of Orientalist scholarship, in recent times it has been challenged and
found
seriously wanting.[37]
The history of Kordofan is particularly ill-served by this dominant
historiographical tradition, for in comparison to the communities of the Nile valley
those of Kordofan can offer
only truncated genealogical records that
even with every license of the imagination
claim to address no age earlier than the
period of Dar Fur rule during the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth century.[38]
- From the disciplinary perspective of history, as opposed to Orientalism,
the ethnicities of North Sudan were shaped politically within the
constraints of nature, technology and the prevailing system of political
economy, notably mediated through the operation of institutions of land tenure.[39]
The sequence of major political regimes in Kordofan therefore requires specification.
In medieval times, though evidence is not as generous as would be desired,
the communities of North Kordofan were apparently subject to the king of Makuria,
most commonly visualized as resident in his riverine capital of
Old Dongola.[40]
During the subsequent era of the Funj kingdom (c.1500 - c.1800) the North Kordofan
Nubian communities were subject in the first instance to the governor
of the large northern province, whose capital lay at Qarri
near the Nile confluence, while central Kordofan, along with western portions of
the Nuba Mountains, formed a separate province of Kordofal with its capital at Bara.[41]
The period of Dar Fur hegemony in Kordofan (c. 1770-1820) and the age of Ottoman
dominance to follow brought about extensive ethnic reorganization.[42] The
realities of this epoch may therefore not be projected uncritically backward into
earlier times.
The twentieth-century North Sudan communities self-defined through Arab genealogy
appear most commonly from an historian's perspective as the descendants of
either a precolonial ruling house or a group of precolonial subjects.
To choose examples from the Nile valley, the `Abdallab were the ruling house
of the large northern province,
and the Rubatab a community of their subjects.
It is important to avoid primordialism, for the fortunes of groups might
well rise or decline with the vicissitudes of history.
During the later eighteenth century
the leaders of the
Jamu`iyya rose from subject to elite status, only to fall back again within
decades; the elite immigrant followers of Hashim of the Musabba`at were
reduced to subject cultivators, and the conquering Turks threatened the
Shaiqiyya nobility who resisted them with a similar fate.
To return to Kordofan, the Sinnar provincial ruling house of Kordofal became a colonial
Arab tribe called the Ghudiyat, while their subjects in the eastern
ironworking environs
of Bara became the Jawama`a.[43]
This study will propose, as a working hypothesis, that the
history of the subject community who became the Jawama`a of colonial days
requires consideration of an earlier elite who established--or perhaps
emphatically reconfirmed out of a still more remote past--a forgotten but
longstanding political and socioeconomic order
of precolonial times.
THE TUNJUR
The Tunjur of the twentieth century were a small, Arabic-speaking community of Dar Fur
who considered themselves to be descendants of the followers of Abu Zayd
al-Hilali who had immigrated to the medieval Sudan from the northwest via the Maghrib.[44]
Historically, the Tunjur have been seen as a ruling dynasty of Dar Fur,
who supplanted an earlier Daju
ruling house and annexed also the Chadian lands that would eventually
become the kingdom of Wadai. Chronological estimates suggest that the Tunjur
dynasty in Dar Fur came to an end near the beginning of the seventeenth century,
with the rise of a new Fur-speaking dynasty, the Keira, and the birth of modern
Dar Fur. One may therefore place the Tunjur in the sixteenth century and perhaps before.
Alternative traditions have long suggested an eastern, Nubian origin for the Tunjur;
however, late medieval Dongola was hardly more plausible than Tunis as a
potential source
for a conquering dynasty of Dar Fur and Wadai.
But the rediscovery of the extensive Nubian-speaking community of
precolonial North Kordofan invites
a reconsideration of the alternative traditions,
which specifically link the Tunjur dynasty not only to North Kordofan Nubian
archaeological sites but also to ironworking:
Some Zagháwa from Dárfûr say the Tungur were once great workers in iron,
and it may be that some of the old iron-workings, whose sites are still to be
seen in Northern Kordofan, are traceable to the Tungur.[45]
This study would suggest that the same
Tunjur kings who were reputed to have mobilized their subjects
to level the tops of mountains
in order to construct elaborate stone capitals such as `Ain Farah in
northern Dar Fur would also be
plausible candidates for the organization of ironworking at Jabal Haraza
(and
perhaps elsewhere.)
The sixteenth century witnessed not only an age of Tunjur hegemony over Dar Fur
and Wadai, but also the rise of the new Nile valley kingdom of the Funj.
The present author has argued that the Funj were southern Nubians from the
White Nile region.[46] This putative homeland may now wish to be extended
westward into Nubian Kordofan.
The interpretation proposed here would ask for three revisions in the received
tradition of historiography.
- The most significant theme that marked the transitional age in North Sudan history
from 1300 to 1500 was not an invasion of Arabs from Egypt nor the decline
of the medieval riverine kingdoms, but the rise of new Kordofan-based
dynasties, the Tunjur in the west and the Funj in the east.
- Upon reexamination, precolonial Kordofan does not appear to be peripheral to anything,
but rather a womb of Nubian rulers.[47]
- Since the ironworks excavated at Meroe seem in fact to be post-Meroitic in date,
it may be possible to correlate the rise of Nubian-speakers to medieval prominence
with an early efflorescence of the Kordofan iron industry.[48]
The community that was to become the Jawama`a should be visualized as
participants in the ironworking organization of the kings who ruled Kordofan
before the eighteenth-century incursions from the west
of Fur-speaking Musabba`at and Keira.
THE JAWAMA`A
Before the Dar Fur incursions of the late eighteenth century the
ironworking zone
introduced above formed a part of the Funj province of Kordofal, whose
ruling house, the Ghudiat, was based at Bara.[49]
No primary sources concerning ironworking in that place and age are known
to the present writer.
However, some tentative inferences may be drawn through comparison with
other parts of the Funj kingdom.[50]
The subjects were normally taxed in kind, and the subjects of southern
districts were often taxed in the form of non-agricultural items that
diverted attention from life-giving crops and livestock.
It is known that subjects in gold-producing districts were forced through
taxation policy to pan for gold; it would seem likely that the subjects in
the iron-mining zone may have been similarly constrained to produce ore, and
perhaps charcoal also.
Southern subjects were ruled through a system of "institutionalized insecurity" in which
the threat of enslavement was the basic tool in the discipline of labor.
Under these circumstances it is easy to imagine the gradual concentration of
enslaved individuals in locations where less desirable activities such as mining
were conducted.
The special role probably played by a blacksmith caste has been postulated, but
in the absence of evidence this theme may not be presently pursued.
With the Dar Fur conquest the state role in iron production in Kordofan diminished,
and without state organization and coercion, the industry gradually disappeared.
By the twentieth century, it was only a rapidly-fading memory.
Erstwhile subjects in the iron-mining zone were delighted to abandon
humble, sometimes casted or servile ancestry, for a new Arab identity
that matched their more completely agricultural new livelihoods. [51]
Their community was characterized unkindly by MacMichael:
A collection of members of various tribes . . . a much debased race . . . .
they have mixed so largely with other races that they are uniformly
dark in color and in their features present many characteristics of the blacks.[52]
They had become Jawama`a.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
DISCUSSION FORUM FOR EVERYONE
- This website encourages every sort of feedback concerning the materials and
issues presented above.
- Corrections, improvements and alternative interpretations are very welcome.
- The sitekeeper will incorporate new ideas and materials from time to time.
- Please send submissions to: jspauldi@kean.edu.
Professor Dierk Lange (26 March 2008) writes:
Thank you for sending me your paper on iron-working. I have been reading
the relevant passages on ancient history. There are only two suggestions
which I dare to submit to you. First I wonder whether the question of
the introduction of the iron technology should not be addressed more in
depth? And second, it seems to me that the connection between the Tunjur
and the Maghrebinian Banu Hilal is secondary as compared with the Nile
valley.
Later I will certainly send you more details on the second point,
especially since you are reading German.
Professor Tom Higel (4 April 2012) writes:
I have been studying the introduction and use of coinage in the Sudan for some time
and was pleased to happen upon your website and article on ironworking in Kordofan .
As per your query, Russegger’s currency abbreviations “8-9 kr. Conv.-Mze” and 13-15 fl. Konv.-Mze” refer
to Kreutzers (kr) and florins (fl) in “Convention Coinage”. The particular convention is most likely the
1763 Leipzig Convention which, once again, tried to establish standards of coinage (how many coins of
x denomination) could be struck from a standard weight or unit of silver (the fine Mark).
This was indeed a problem as innumerable entities were issuing their own coinage in varying
amounts and fineness of silver – both a money-changer’s nightmare or opportunity to make a quick profit.
The “hundredweight” of “soft iron” (whatever he means by these terms) could ‘cost’ or be equal
to 168.87-194.85 grams (5.95-6.87 oz.) of fine silver or around $210 at todays rate.
Today’s wrought iron is around $2 per pound so it appears the then and today’s prices are comparable!
Early travelers and explorer accounts concerning currencies and money are always difficult to interpret.
This is much the case as when a modern American brings something back from a trip to Korea and
comments he paid six dollars for whatever. Of course, he didn’t pay dollars in Korea, he paid Won.
However, if he happened to be returning from Iraq in Saddam’s days when there was a flourishing black
market, he could have literally paid six U.S. paper dollars. Then, there are also intangibles in
taste of style and size of coins per se that determine their acceptance. I think it is safe to say early
travellers were wise to carry a variety of coins and trinkets (whose value they knew) for bartering
rather than simply thinking of currency transactions.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
NOTES
- Jay Spaulding, "Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture and the Fate of the Nubians of Northern and
Central Kordofan under Dar Fur Rule, c. 1750 - c. 1850," International Journal of African Historical Studies 39, 3 (2006), 393-412.
- H.A. MacMichael, The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), p. 60, note 1.
- National Records Office, Khartoum. Miscellaneous 1/15/182. Hadha kitab al-dar
al-farid fi al-akhbar al-mufida al-muhtawi `ala mulakhkhas ta'rikh al-umma al-Nubiyya
wa-jughrafiyat biladiha [wa-]asbab dukhul al-atrak min al-sultan Salim al-awwil wa-min
Muhammad `Ali basha, wa-`ala Allah ahsan al-khitam. Amin. 4 Ramadan 1330/17 August 1912.
- MacMichael, Tribes, p. 243.
- Guillaume Lejean, Voyage aux deux Nils (Paris: Hachette, 1865), p. 41.
- Ernst Marno, Reise in der Egyptischen Aequatorial-Provinz
und in Kordofan in den Jahren 1874-1876 (Wien: Hölder, 1879), p. 235.
- Ignatius Pallme, Travels in Kordofan (London: Madden, 1844), pp. 254-255.
- Joseph von Russegger, Reisen in Europa, Asien und Afrika.
(Stuttgart: Schweitzerbart, 1841-1848.
The excerpt translated is from Volume 2, Part 2, Section 4, pp. 286-295.
- The places named are located among the Jawama`a in the vicinity of Bara.
On the 1:250,000
map of the Sudan, sheet 55-I/ND36 I "El Obeid," Farajab is about 25 miles
due east of Bara,
Khursi about ten miles southeast of Bara,
and Domma five miles north-northeast.
- Russegger's footnote: " I was not able to learn anything about Mehmet Ali’s attempt to
have this iron ore smelted by Albanians, as Rüppell says." The reference is to
Eduard Rüppell, Reisen in Nubien, Kordofan und dem Peträischen Arabien
(Frankfurt am Main: Wilmans, 1829), p. 152.
- It has become customary among writers in English to refer to these nozzles
with the French term tuyères.
- Russegger's footnote: "This piece of iron may be found in the mineral cabinet of the head
mint administration building [Hauptmünzamtsgebäude] in Vienna."
- In an extended footnote Russegger correctly observes, from his reading of Mungo Park
and perhaps other explorers of the Western Sudan, that a considerably more elaborate system of iron
production was in use in that region at that time. Russegger compares the Mande ironworks as described
by Park to those of the Turkomans of the Taurus Mountains observed by himself.
Americans might wish to add as a local point of reference the reconstructed colonial
ironworks at Batsto Village, where southern New Jerseyites refined bog iron in George
Washington’s day using a system very similar in method and scale to those of the Mande or Turkomans.
- Russegger apparently did not understand that the operator would open the fingerhole to
admit fresh air on the upstroke, and then block the hole with his finger on the downstroke to force air
down the tube of the bellows and out through the tuyères.
- The reference is to hashhash, the small, hoe-shaped iron coins of precolonial Sinnar,
including Kordofan. For an extended discussion of hashhash
in Kordofan see MacMichael, Tribes, p. 67, note 1.
For the use of this coinage in Sinnar see Jay Spaulding,
The Sudanese Travels of Theodoro
Krump. (Entry for 8 May 1701.)
- For example, see Peter Shinnie, Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1967),
William Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977),
Derek Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush: the Napatan and Meroitic Empires
(London: British Museum Press, 1996).
- MacMichael, Tribes, p. 91 note 2. The author has not yet been able to
trace the subsequent
fate of the artifacts recovered at Jabal Haraza by MacMichael.
- Leif O. Manger, The Sand Swallows our Land.
(Bergen: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, 1981).
- MacMichael, Tribes,
Appendix V "Objects found at Faragáb in middens," pp. 242-244.
"Few iron objects were to be seen, but there was a plain rough iron ring,
an inch in diameter, and two iron pins with dangling rings as shewn in the
accompanying illustration.
These may have been used as hairpins
or for applying 'kohl' [antimony] to the eyelids.
There
was little iron otherwise, save a few indeterminate scraps that had evidently
been parts of the blades of spears or hoes. Iron is procurable in the
immediate vicinity and used to be worked so late as the middle of the
nineteenth century." (p. 243
- The importance of this historical process to the continent as a whole
was emphasized in
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,
(London: Bogle-L'Overture Publications, 1972). The process was by no means
unique to Africa; for northern North America see Harold Adam Innis, The Fur Trade
in Canada (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962).
- John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London: J. Murray, 1819), pp. 303-304.
For the sword of Abu Likaylik see Derek Welsby and Julie R. Anderson, eds.,
Sudan: Ancient Treasures (London: British Museum Press, 2004),
PLATE 217 p. 245.
- For example, see David N. Edwards, "The Archaeology of Sudan," in
Peter Gwynvay Hopkins, ed.,
The Kenana Handbook of Sudan (London: Kegan Paul, 2007), pp. 41-64.
- Two serious attempts to address the recent history of climate in
the western Sudan may be found in Dennis Tully, Culture and Context in Sudan
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989) and
Alexander De Waal, Famine that Kills
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
David Sterling Decker contributed a useful analysis of nineteenth-century
conditions based upon the considerably more limited primary sources of that
period in his 1990 Michigan State University PhD thesis, "Politics and Profits:
The Development of
Merchant Capitalism and its Impact on the Political Economy of Kordofan."
All the authors cited believe in the progressive desertification of the region,
though with somewhat different emphases, degrees of certainty, and sense of time-depth
involved.
- Jack Goody, Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa
(London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 46.
- Brief hints may be found in Jay Spaulding,
"A Premise for Precolonial Nuba History," History in Africa XIV (1987), 369-374 and
"Early Kordofan," in Michael Kevane and Endre Stiansen, eds., Kordofan Invaded:
Peripheral Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 46-59.
- An extended critique may be found in Lidwien Kapteijns and Jay Spaulding
"The Orientalist Paradigm in the Historiography of the Late Precolonial Sudan,"
in Jay O'Brien and William Roseberry, eds.,
Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 139-151.
- Lidwien Kapteijns and Jay Spaulding,
"Gifts Worthy of Kings: An Episode in Dar Fur - Taqali Relations,"
Sudanic Africa I (1990), 61-70.
- Jay Spaulding, The Heroic Age in Sinnar (Trenton and Asmara: Red Sea Press, 2007), pp. 41-47,219-231.
- A. J. Arkell, "The Making of Mail at Omdurman," Kush 4 (1956), 83-84.
- P.L. Shinnie and F.J. Kense, "Meroitic Iron Working," Meroitica 6 (1982), 17-28.
- MacMichael, Tribes, p. 95.
- Burckhardt, Travels, p. 286.
- For the tumaal of the Somali-speaking world see I. M. Lewis,
A Modern History of Somalia (Boulder: Westview, 1988).
For the central Ethiopian tradition see
Donald N. Levine, Wax and Gold (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).
For southern Ethiopia see Dena Freeman and Alula Pankhurst, eds.,
Peripheral People (London: C. Hurst, 2002).
For Dar Fur see R. S. O'Fahey, State and Society in Dar Fur
(London: C. Hurst, 1980).
For South Sudan see Stephanie Beswick's forthcoming
Southern Sudan's Slaving Grounds.
- Author's notes, 1970, 1977-1978. The most significant encounters took place
in Dongola and the Shaiqiyya country early in 1970. The artisans concerned were
potters, elderly female individuals whose livelihoods were threatened by the
sale to China of the Sudanese cotton crop in the year of the May Revolution, which
led to an innundation of even rural districts with a tidal wave of Chinese tupperware
and enameled bowls. Sudanese-made clay drums and pots became collectors' items
overnight. The only pottery artifact that seemed to survive the age of Sudanese
Socialism was the clay incense-burner. Most of the few blacksmiths encountered were
identified as "Gypsies" (Halab), and although unquestionably a caste group,
in the author's opinion they may well have been
recent immigrants from the Middle East rather than Sudanese of long historical standing.
- Spaulding, Heroic Age, pp. 41-48.
- For an extended discussion see Jay Spaulding,
"The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition," History in Africa, 27 (2000), 325-337.
- Kapteijns and Spaulding, "Orientalist Paradigm."
- For a discussion of the historical context
see Spaulding, "Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture."
- Lidwien Kapteijns and Jay Spaulding,
"The Conceptualization of Land Tenure in the Precolonial Sudan: Evidence and Interpretation,"
in Donald Crummey, ed., Land, Literacy and the State in Sudanic Africa
(Asmara: Red Sea Press, 2005), pp. 21-41.
- Spaulding, "Early Kordofan."
- Spaulding, "Premise."
- Spaulding, "Pastoralism, Slavery, Commerce, Culture."
- MacMichael, Tribes, p. 77; A History of the Arabs in the Sudan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), I, 224.
- MacMichael, Tribes, pp 52-60. "The Tungur no doubt were at one time a
great tribe," he wrote, "though little is known of their history or whence they came."(p. 52)
- Ibid., p. 60, note 1.
- Jay Spaulding, "The Funj: A Reconsideration," Journal of African History XIII, 1 (1972), 39-54.
- Contrast the central theme of Kevane and Stiansen, Kordofan Invaded, which is sound analysis
of colonial and post-colonial situations but is not a good guide to precolonial realities.
- Shinnie, "Meroitic iron working," p. 24. Shinnie believed that ironworking
had been practiced on a small scale in the northern Sudan as early as the fifth or fourth
centuries BCE (p. 21); however, the large works for which Meroe has enjoyed
perhaps unjustified historiographical
prominence seem to date from the sixth century CE, and are therefore more likely early Nubian
than (extremely) late Meroitic.
- For the Funj rulers of Kordofal see Jay Spaulding and Muhammad Abu Salim,
Public Documents from Sinnar (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press,
1989), p. 385.
- For a discussion see Spaulding, Heroic Age, pp. 49-62.
- Compare the new identities forged by former slaves during the twentieth century; see
Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Slaves into workers: emancipation and labor in Colonial
Sudan (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1996).
- MacMichael, Tribes, p. 76
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