Nuba peoples

This article is about indigenous ethnic groups who inhabit the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan state in Sudan. For Nilo-Saharan ethnic group, see Nubians. For the people in Uganda, see Nubians (Uganda).

The Nuba people are indigenous inhabitants of central Sudan. The Nuba are made up of 50 various indigenous ethnic groups who inhabit the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan state in Sudan,^[4] encompassing multiple distinct people that speak different languages which belong to at least two unrelated language families. Since 2011, when the southern part of Sudan became an independent state as South Sudan, the Nuba now live in the southern part of Sudan. Estimates of the Nuba population vary widely; the Sudanese government estimated that they numbered 2.07 million in 2003.^{[5][better source needed]}

Nuba

Total population
3.7 million^[1]
Regions with significant populations
Sudan (Nuba Mountains) and South Sudan
Sudan	3.7 million^[2]
South Sudan	70,000^[3]
Languages
Kordofanian languages, Sudanese Arabic
Religion
Islam, Traditional African religions, Christianity

The term Nuba should not be confused with the Nubians, an unrelated ethnic group speaking the Nubian languages living in northern Sudan and southern Egypt,^[6] although the Hill Nubians, who live in the Nuba Mountains, are also considered part of the Nubian people.^[7]

Description

Dwellings

 

A Nuba village in the Nuba Mountains

The Nuba people reside in the foothills of the Nuba Mountains. Villages consist of family compounds. A family compound consists of a rectangular compound enclosing two round mud huts thatched with sorghum stalks facing each other called a shal. The shal is fenced with wooden posts interwoven with straw. Two benches run down the each side of the shal with a fire in the middle where families will tell stories and oral traditions. Around the shal is the much larger yard, the tog placed in front. The fence of the tog is made of strong tree branches as high as the roof of the huts. Small livestock like goats and chickens and donkeys are kept in the tog. Each compound has tall conical granaries called durs which stand on one side of the tog. At the back of the compound is a small yard where maize and vegetables like pumpkin, beans and peanuts are grown.^{[citation needed]}

Languages

Main article: Languages of the Nuba Mountains

The Nuba people speak various languages not closely related to each other. Most of the Nuba people speak one of the many languages in the geographic Kordofanian languages group of the Nuba Mountains. This language group is primarily in the major Niger–Congo language family. Several Nuba languages are in the Nilo-Saharan language family.^[8]

Over one hundred languages are spoken in the area and are considered Nuba languages, although many of the Nuba also speak Sudanese Arabic, the common language of Sudan.

Culture

The Nuba people are primarily farmers, as well as herders who keep cattle, chickens, and other domestic animals. They often maintain three different farms: a garden near their homes where vegetables needing constant attention, such as onions, peppers and beans, are grown; fields further up the hills where quick growing crops such as red millet can be cultivated without irrigation; and farms farther away, where white millet and other crops are planted.^[9]

A distinctive characteristic of the Nuba people is their passion for athletic competition, particularly traditional wrestling.^[10] The strongest young men of a community compete with athletes from other villages for the chance to promote their personal and their village's pride and strength. In some villages, older men participate in club- or spear-fighting contests. The Nubas’ passion for physical excellence is also displayed through the young men's vanity—they often spend hours painting their bodies with complex patterns and decorations. This vanity reflects the basic Nuba belief in the power and importance of strength and beauty.^{[citation needed]}

Religions

The primary religion of many Nuba people is Islam, with some Christians, and traditional shamanistic beliefs also prevailing.^[11] Men wear a sarong and occasionally a skull cap. Older women and young women wear beads and wrap a sarong over their legs and sometimes a cloak tie on the shoulder. Both sexes practice scarification and circumcision for boys and female genital mutilation for girls. Some Men shave their heads, older men wear skull caps and grow beards, women and girls braid their hair in strands and string it with beads.

The majority of the Nuba living in the east, west and northern parts of the mountains are Muslims, while those living to the south are either Christians or practice traditional animistic religions. In those areas of the Nuba mountains where Islam has not deeply penetrated, ritual specialists and priests hold as much control as the clan elders, for it is they who are responsible for rain control, keeping the peace, and rituals to ensure successful crops. Many are guardians of the shrines where items are kept to insure positive outcomes of the rituals (such as rain stones for the rain magic), and some also undergo what they recognize as spiritual possession.^{[citation needed]}

Politics

In the 1986 elections, the National Umma Party lost several seats to the Nuba Mountains General Union and to the Sudan National Party, due to the reduced level of support from the Nuba Mountains region. There is reason to believe that attacks by the government-supported militia, the Popular Defense Force (PDF), on several Nuba villages were meant to be in retaliation for this drop in support, which was seen as signaling increased support of the SPLA. The PDF attacks were particularly violent, and have been cited as examples of crimes against humanity that took place during the Second Sudanese Civil War^[12]

During the military dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, Nuba people in the capital Khartoum were repeatedly attacked and some even killed by pro-government students and agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service. As a result of discrimination by governments and parts of the Sudanese society, Nuba people have been largely excluded from the official national Sudanese identity, and hardly ever been represented in the government.^[13]

Nuba people in Khartoum

Following the Nuba Cultural Heritage Festival in 2011 in Omdurman, Nuba residents of Greater Khartoum have been celebrating Nuba culture in the capital. Part of these celebrations has been the selection of educated, young Nuba women as Beauty Queens of the Nuba Mountains. In 2014, Natalina Yacoub, at the time a student at Ahfad University for Women, was chosen as Nuba Beauty Queen and subsequently gave the first TEDx talk of a Nuba person.^[13] Being a member of the Christian minority in Sudan, she presented a Christmas gift on 24 December 2019 to then-Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who subsequently tweeted: "This is the Sudan we dream of. One that respects diversity and enables all Sudanese citizens to practice their faith in a safe and dignified environment."^[14]

Nuba Mountains

 

 

Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan, Sudan

The Nuba people reside in one of the most remote and inaccessible places in all of Sudan, the foothills of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. At one time the area was considered a place of refuge, bringing together people of many different tongues and backgrounds who were fleeing oppressive governments and slave traders.

The Nuba Mountains mark the southern border of the sands of the desert and the northern limit of good soils washed down by the Nile River. Many Nuba, however, have migrated to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to escape persecution and the effects of Sudan's civil war. Most of the rest of the 1,000,000 Nuba people live in villages and towns of between 1,000 and 50,000 inhabitants in areas in and surrounding the Nuba mountains. Nuba villages are often built where valleys run from the hills out on to the surrounding plains, because water is easier to find at such points and wells can be used all year long. There is no political unity among the various Nuba groups who live on the hills. Often the villages do not have chiefs, but are instead organized into clans or extended family groups with village authority left in the hands of clan elders.^{[citation needed]}

War in the Nuba Mountains

Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005)

After some earlier incursions by the SPLA, the Second Sudanese Civil War started full scale in the Nuba Mountains when the Volcano Battalion of the SPLA under the command of the Nuba Yousif Kuwa Mekki and Abdel Aziz Adam al-Hillu entered the mountains and began to recruit Nuba volunteers and send them to SPLA training facilities in Ethiopia. The volunteers walked to Ethiopia and back and many of them perished on the way.

During the war, the SPLA generally held the mountains, while the Sudanese Army held the towns and fertile lands at the feet of the mountains, but was generally unable to dislodge the SPLA, even though the latter was usually undersupplied. The Governments of Sudan under Sadiq al-Mahdi and Omar al-Bashir also armed militias of Baggara Arabs to fight the Nuba and transferred many Nuba forcibly to camps.

In early 2002, the Government and the SPLA agreed on an internationally supervised ceasefire. International observers and advisors were quickly dispatched to Kadugli and several deployed into the mountains to co-located with SPLA command elements, with the base camp located in Kauda.

At that time, al-Hillu was the governor of the Nuba Mountains. During the course of the following months, relief supplies from the UN were airdropped to stem the starvation of many in the mountains.

The ceasefire in Nuba Mountains was the foundation for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in January 2005. This fragile peace remains in force, but infighting in the south, plus the Government of Sudan involvement in Darfur have resulted in issues which may break the peace agreement.

Secession of South Sudan (2011)

Southern Sudan voted for secession from Sudan in the Southern Sudanese independence referendum, 2011. This provision was agreed to in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The secession victory established the formation of a new country, South Sudan, from the southern portion of Sudan. However, conflict between Northern and Southern forces, and against the Nuba peoples, renewed again in the region in 2011 — see Sudan–SPLM-N conflict (2011) for detailed information.

Media

• Local filmmaker Roopa Gogineni documented Bisha TV,^[15] a satirical muppet show popular throughout the Nuba lands, which serves as an "example of how people use comedy to deal with authoritarian rule." The show mocks Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, depicting him as the killer of children and bomber of hospitals. A short documentary by Gogineni includes an apparent bombing of Kauda by an Antonov An-12 aircraft, as well as a public screening of Bisha TV in front of dozens of local residents.^[16]
• Eyes and Ears Of God – Video surveillance of Sudan (2012) film by peace activist Tomo Križnar on YouTube. The documentary film shows ethnic Nuba civilians defending themselves with the help of over 400 cameras distributed by Križnar and Klemen Mihelič, the founder of humanitarian organisation H.O.P.E., to volunteers across the war zones in the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile, and Darfur, documenting the (North) Sudanese military's war crimes against local populations.^[17][18]
• Leni Riefenstahl, known for her 1930s documentary films Triumph of the Will and Olympia of Nazi Germany, published two collections of her photographs of Nuba peoples, entitled The Last of the Nuba (1973) and The People of Kau (1976).
• Nuba Conversations (2000), a documentary and ethnographic film directed by Arthur Howes.

See also

• Dilling people
• Heiban Nuba
• Ghulfan people
• Kadaru people
• Katla people
• Kanga people
• Karko people
• Keiga people
• Keiga Jirru
• Koalib Nuba
• Krongo Nuba
• Logol people
• Moro Nuba
• Nuba fighting
• Nyimang
• Otoro Nuba
• Tagale people
• Talodi people
• Tira people

• Index: Nuba peoples

• Languages of the Nuba Mountains

Footnotes

1. "Sudan: Nuba". Miniority Rights Group. 19 June 2015.
2. "Sudan: Nuba". Miniority Rights Group. 19 June 2015.
3. "Nuba refugees from South Kordofan State seek out a new life in Yida, South Sudan". Retrieved 21 September 2023.
4. Rottenburg, Richard; Calkins, Sandra; Gertel, Jörg (2014). Disrupting Territories : Land, Commodification and Conflict in Sudan. Suffolk, England: James Currey. p. 124. ISBN 9781847010544.
5. South Kordofan
6. Guarak, Mawut Achiecque Mach (2011). Integration and fragmentation of the Sudan : an African renaissance. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse. pp. 30–31. ISBN 978-1-4567-2355-2. OCLC 704063380.
7. Winter, Roger (2000), Spaulding, Jay; Beswick, Stephanie (eds.), , White Nile Black Blood: War, Leadership, and Ethnicity from Khartoum to Kampala, Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, archived from the original on 2000-04-09
8. Bell, Herman (1995-12-03). "The Nuba Mountains: Who Spoke What in 1976?". A Communication Presented to the Third Conference on Language in Sudan.
9. Bedigian, Dorothea; Harlan, Jack R. (1983). "Nuba Agriculture and Ethnobotany, with Particular Reference to Sesame and Sorghum". Economic Botany. 37 (4): 384–395. doi:10.1007/BF02904199. JSTOR 4254532. S2CID 41581798.
10. Anele, Uzonna (January 20, 2020). "Nuba Wrestling: A Look into Sudan's Nuba People and their Traditional Wrestling Culture". listwand.com.
11. "Sudan: Nuba". Miniority Rights Group. 19 June 2015. Some traditional religions survive but most Nuba have been converted to Islam or Christianity.
12. Salih (1999)
13. Elbagir, Yousra (2016-07-07). "Meet the radical beauty queen taking on the Sudanese regime". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-06-26.
14. Amin, Mohammed (2019-12-25). "Sudan celebrates Christmas publicly for first time in 10 years". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 2023-06-27.
15. "Bisha TV". Facebook.
16. Gogineni, Roopa (2017-10-03). "The Rebel Puppeteers of Sudan". The New York Times.
17. About the documentary on Tomo Križnar's website
18. Žerdin, Ali (3 June 2016). "Portret tedna: Tomo Križnar". old.delo.si (in Slovenian).

Further reading

• Op 't Ende, Nanne (2007). Proud to be Nuba: Faces and Voices : Stories of a Long Struggle. Code X Publishing. ISBN 978-90-78233-02-2.
• Salih, Mohamed (1999). Environmental Politics and Liberation in Contemporary Africa. Environment & Policy. Vol. 18. Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9165-2. ISBN 978-0-7923-5652-3.
• Seligmann, Brenda Z. (1910). "Note on the language of the Nubas of Southern Kordofan". Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen. D. Reimer. 1: 167–88.
• Stevenson, R. C. (1963). "Some Aspects of the Spread of Islam in the Nuba Mountains". Sudan Notes and Records. 44: 9–20. ISSN 0375-2984. JSTOR 41716839.
• Stevenson, R.C., Adjectives in Nyimang offprint, as above
• Stevenson, R. C. (1962). "Linguistic Research in the Nuba Mountains - I". Sudan Notes and Records. 43: 118–130. ISSN 0375-2984. JSTOR 41716826.
• Stevenson, R. C. (1964). "Linguistic Research in the Nuba Mountains - II". Sudan Notes and Records. 45: 79–102. ISSN 0375-2984. JSTOR 41716860.
• Stevenson, R. C. (1940). "The Nyamang of the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan". Sudan Notes and Records. 23 (1): 75–98. ISSN 0375-2984. JSTOR 41716394.
• Stevenson, R. C. (1984). The Nuba people of Kordofan Province: an ethnographic survey. Khartoum, Sudan: Graduate College, University of Khartoum. ISBN 978-0-86372-020-8.
• Samuel, Totten (2012). Genocide by Attrition : The Nuba Mountains of Sudan. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203790861. ISBN 978-0-203-79086-1.
• Totten, Samuel; Grzyb, Amanda F., eds. (2015). Conflict in the Nuba Mountains : From Genocide-by-Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203755877. ISBN 9781135015350.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nuba people.

• "Tomo križnar in Sudan". - A Slovenian peace activist in Sudan, helping the Nuba peoples
• . Archived from the original on 2019-01-24. Nuba indigenous rights organization
• Winter, Roger (2000). "The Nuba and their Homeland".
• . Archived from the original on 1999-01-28.
• . nubasurvival.com. Archived from the original on 2004-12-05.
• The Nuba Mountains Homepage
• The Linguistic Settlement of the Nuba Mountains
• Nuba People by Fr. Yousif William
• Full documentary about the sufferings of the Nuba