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African Writing; Essays; Mohammed Jalal Hashim; The Arabization of Sudan
18 - 23 minutes

The Scramble for Arab Genealogies

With the weakening of the Christian kingdoms, between the 14th and 16th centuries,
new Islamic and Arabized kinglets began appearing and eventually succeeded in
replacing the old regime [Yusuf Fadl, 1973; Shibeika, 1991]. The first was the
Kunuz (Bani al-Kanz) kingdom around Asuan area in present-day Egyptian Nubia, to be
followed a little later by the Rabi?a-Beja Islamic kinglet of Hajar. In the late
15th century the Islamic kinglet of Tegali (Togole) in the Nuba Mountains came into
existence. A century later the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Second made a thrust deep
in Nubia in the aftermath of which appeared the Northern Nubian Islamic kinglets of
the Kushshaf, Mah$as, and Argo. Two centuries later the Fur kingdom of Keira was
established upon the fall of the Tunjur kinglet. But the most important was the
Funj Sultanate which came into existence in the early 16th century and which
succeeded in spreading its influence over most of these kinglets. In fact the
unification of such kinglets along with many other tribal shaykhdoms is what has
constituted the State in ancient and present-day Sudan.

The Funj Sultanate came into existence with slavery looming in the background and
with the black colour fully stigmatized by being synonymous to ‘slave’. By the turn
of the 15th century, Soba, the capital of the last Christian kingdom of Allodia,
fell at the hands of the Arabized Nubians (known in Sudan as the Arabs) led by ?
Abdu Allah Jamma? al-Girenati (‘Jamma?’, an adjective literally meaning the
‘gatherer’ for unifying the divided Arabs (?Arab al-Gawasma); ‘Girenati’, a
diminutive adjective literally meaning ‘of the horns’ in reference to the royal
horned headgear as was the case in the Christian Kingdoms). Immediately after the
fall of Soba, a black African people called the Funj appeared led by ?Amara Dungus.
He achieved a treaty with the Arabs after defeating them following which the Funj
Sultanate was established. As the founders were mostly blacks, it was also called
“al-Salt,ana al-Zarqa’”, i.e. the ‘Black Sultanate’. As it came in response to the
growing influence of the Islamo-Arabized Sudanese it explicitly showed an Arab and
Islamic orientation. The new formations of Arabized tribes began claiming Arab
descent supported with traditionally authenticated genealogies. The transformation
from African identity to Arab identity is reflected in the ideological cliché of
dropping the ‘matrilineal system’, where descent through the mother’s lineage is
only recognized, and adopting the ‘patrilineal system’, where descent through the
father’s lineage is only considered. The small family units compensated for their
vulnerability by claiming the noble ‘sharif’ descent, i.e. descendants of Prophet
Muhammad. Eventually they would be enabled by this claimed descent to appropriate
both wealth and power, something the immediate descendants were not ordained to
have while Prophet Muhammad was still alive. To be on an equal footing with these
tribes in matters pertaining to power and authority, the black Funj also claimed an
Umayyad descent. Scholars in Arabic and Islamic sciences from other parts of the
Islamic world were encouraged to settle in the Sudan.

The Paradox of the Black Arab who is Anti-Black

Thenceforward the Arabized Africans of middle Sudan will pose as non-black Arabs.
Intermarriage with light-skinned people would be consciously sought as a process of
cleansing blood from blackness. A long process of identity change has begun; in
order to have access to power and to be at least accepted as free humans, African
people tended to drop both their identities and languages and replace them with
Arabic language and Arab identity. The first step in playing that game is to
overtly deplore the blacks and dub them as slaves while being themselves black. A
new ideological awareness of race and colour came into being. The shades of the
colour of blackness were perceived as authentic racial differentiations [cf. Deng,
1995]. A Sudanese-bound criterion for racial colour was formed by which the light
black was seen as an Arab, wad ?Arab and wad balad, i.e. white or at least non-
black. The jet-black Sudanese was seen as an African, i.e. slave (?abd). The shades
of blackness go as follows, starting from jet-black (aswad), black (azrag,
literally blue), brownish-black (akhdar, literally green), light-brownish (gamh%i,
i.e. wheat-coloured), then dark-white, which is considered as ‘properly’ white.
This last sub-category is paradoxically stigmatized more than the jet-black. Then a
host of derogatory terms was generated in the culture and colloquial Arabic of
Middle Sudan, which dehumanized the black Africans, such as farikh, gargur, etc. In
this context the properly white or light-coloured, as mentioned above, are also
discredited. They are given the derogatory name of ‘h%alab’ i.e. gypsy. A Sudanese
Arab proverb says that ‘the slaves, i.e. black people, are second class, but the
h$alab are third class’.

Stigma vs. Prestigma

It is in these folk racial attitudes that the seeds of a Sudanese ideology of Arab-
oriented domination over Africans was sown. It works through the mechanism of
categorization, using:
(1) the stigma of slavery, which condemns blackness and people of African
identity to the margins or bottom of society and the cultural hierarchy, forcing
them to dwell at the periphery of Sudanese national life, and
(2) the prestigma (coined by the present writer from prestige to serve as a
countering term to stigma) of the so-called free, non-black and Arabs, to entrench
them in the power, affluence and influence centers of Sudan. This racial ideology,
in its drive to achieve self-actualization, underlines a process of alienation and
domination, creating a category of black African people who do not recognize
themselves as black Africans. While posing to be whites, they do not hold proper
white people in high esteem. They tend savagely to dominate the Africans by
enslaving and stigmatizing them, and then they largely indulge themselves in the
process of arabization to be more like the Arabs with whom they identify.

This ideology of alienation has prevailed for the last five centuries up to the
moment. It has been consolidated by successive political regimes – whether under
the Turco-Egyptian or Egyptian-British or national rule. It finds its roots in the
vice of slavery. No wonder slavery was once again in full swing by the late 20th
century as a result of an extreme intensification of arabization, or the process of
prestigmatic Islamo-Arabism, by the State. By sublimating the Arab as their model
through this erroneous and confused concept of race, the Arabized people of Sudan
have made themselves permanent second-class Arabs. The consequences of this do not
only affect them, but also their whole country, now split up between Arabism and
Africanism. It has never dawned on them that speaking a language does not
necessarily equate becoming of the nationality bearing that language. In fact the
so-called Arabs in Sudan comprise different peoples with different cultures but one
language: they are Arabophone. The Sudanese people are Arabophone Africans just as
there are Francophone and Anglophone Africans.

A Belated Self-Discovery?
The weak fabric of this colour concept was torn into tatters when Sudanese
prestigma or arabization came in contact with the Arabs Proper in the mid 1970s,
when they worked as expatriates in the rich petroleum countries of Arabia. There,
at the historical milieu of this racial bigotry, they were regarded as nothing more
than black Africans, i.e. slaves. It caused a turmoil that triggered a slow process
of self-discovery as a result of which the ideology of domination was eventually
weakened. By the mid 1990s the image of the rebel leader of SPLM/SPLA, John Garang,
who is a jet-black African from Southern Sudan was much more acceptable to a great
number of the Arabized Sudanese as the real leader of the whole movement of the
political opposition to the Islamic regime of Khartoum. The military weight of
SPLM/SPLA would have never mattered in making that acceptance possible if the
ideology of domination was still intact.
Centro-Marginalization
Although roughly situated in the middle of the country if considered in terms of
urbanization, the Sudanese economic centre is neither restricted to geography nor
to ethnicity. Rather it is a centre with its own culture that comprises both power
and wealth. Making Islamo-Arabism its main ideology, the centre poses as
representing the interests of the Arabized people of middle Sudan, a notion
erroneously believed by many sectors. People from the periphery are continually
encouraged and tempted to join the centre by renouncing their African cultures and
languages, in order to become Arabized. This complex process is made to look like a
natural cultural interaction that takes place out of the necessity of leaving one’s
home village and coming to live in a town dominated by Arabs. The cultural
relegation of the periphery eventually ends up as developmental relegation. Within
the Arabized people of middle Sudan itself there are different circular castes. As
the centre is basically made up of Arabized Africans, an Arab proper would not
merit any prestige. This is how the purely Arab tribe of Rashayda has become
marginalized to the extent of taking to arms against the centre. The Sudanese power
centre is very complex. In essence it is not only racial nor cultural nor
geographical, not merely about Islamic nor Arabic origins and associations, but
really about elitism, existing as an elitist centre of power and wealth, which
makes use of all available sectarian clichés to determine and entrench status and
privilege among the people of Middle Sudan. Its depiction as Islamo-Arabist is
merely a reference to its core ideological bearing or leaning.

This centre of power and wealth does indeed processes itself through the cultural
agenda of Islam and Arabism. This ploy has lured many with power and wealth to
identify with Islam and Arabism, and then implicating them in the oppression or
subjugation of those who remain black and African.. Usually the spearheads used by
the Centre to maintain its hierarchy of privileges and denials are people who
originally belong to the margin, but subsequently chose with their own free will to
alienate themselves from their people in order to appropriate wealth and power. The
Arabized people of Sudan are in fact also victims of the country’s racial
processing though they are deluded to believe themselves winners. This is because
the basis of their imagined centralization are embedded in the permanent
marginalization of the Arabized Sudanese by Arabs proper.

However, where the process of prestigmatization is cultural, the process of

stigmatization is racial. Swung upon this paradoxical axis, the ideology of
domination is characterized by high maneuverability. If the charge is that some
particular Sudanese people are anti-African or pro-Arab, the case of the Rashayda
and other pastoral nomads such as the Baggara can be brought forward. On the other
hand the evidence of anti-Arab prejudice in the Sudanese centre can present a
sufficiently strong counterweight to the more prevalent accusations of anti African
oppression. For five centuries, this confused and confusing game, which is based on
deception and alienation, has been played. It has had its indigenous contributory
factors as well as its foreign factors, such as the Turco-Egyptian rule and
British-Egyptian colonial rule.

The “Melting Pot” Perspective

There remains the opportunity for a discourse on unity. As different ethnic groups
from the periphery are being culturally reproduced in the centre, the mesh of these
is being hailed as the real Sudan. Hence we now have the concept of the “Melting
Pot” as the basis of discourses on national unity. The process of a centred
assimilation of cultural and racial differences at the periphery seems to be
gaining approval, but being based originally on the processes of stigmatization vs.
prestigmatization it will always fall short of achieving integral unity right at
the moment when the assimilation is deemed complete. The jet-blacks of Sudan who
have been completely assimilated in the Islamo-Arab culture and religion are not
only being racially discriminated against, but are still stuck with the stigma of
slavery and consequently being dehumanized. This is so because the whole process is
built on contradiction and paradox. Where the process of prestigma would draw the
people toward Islam and a pro-Arab culture, the process of stigmatization continues
to dismiss them on racial grounds. One can acquire a new culture in a relatively
short time, but one can hardly change skin colour. So, blackness is always taken as
a stigmatic clue to slavery. It is very usual to hear a dark-skinned Sudanese
assuring others that there are also family members who are light-skinned.

The Degree of Stigma

The more black and African you are, then, the more stigmatized you become.
Essential African features become part of this process of stigmatization – thick
lips, broad nose, and fuzzy short hair. Other factors are blackness of colour,
having an African language, and, lastly, being a non-Muslim. The most stigmatized
are those who combine the three factors of physical features, cultural traits and a
non-Islamic religious faith, like the majority of Southerners. The Africans of Nuba
Mountains and Ingassana come immediately after the Southerners. Then come the
peoples of Western Sudan regardless of their different tribal affiliations, and of
whom the most stigmatized people are those who are originally from either Central
or Western Bilad al-Sudan, like the Fulani and Hausa etc. Then comes the Beja
people of Eastern Sudan who, although light-skinned, have their own non-Arabic
language and are very poorly educated and can hardly speak either standard or
colloquial Arabic fluently, and they are Bedouins, leading a life that is -
according to the unjust evaluation of the center - very backward at its best.
Higher up in the process than the Beja are the Nubians in Northern Sudan who are
the least stigmatized for one main reason. These people of Middle Sudan, generally
speaking, are nothing but Arabized Nubians, with some survival of Christian customs
still manifested in their cultures. Nothing is wrong with the Nubians of the North
except their twisted tongue, that is, their language, which clearly betrays their
African origin. In fact all the people under the stigma have their non-Arabic
languages, or rut$ana, their ‘vernacular’ (an equally infamous, colonial derogatory
term). In Arabic the word rut$ana means the language of the birds, and this
indicates just how far Arab dehumanization of the Sudanese people has gone. Some
people of the Mahas of middle Sudan, who are the last of the Nubians to be
completely Arabized, now vehemently deny to have ever been of any rut$ana. They
claim to be of Aws and Khazraj, two antagonistically neighbouring tribes in ancient
Arabia. The fact is that only 100 years ago Maha elders used to speak an African
tongue, a rut$ana.