Search

(Arabic spelling: Kasala and Kasalā), a town and province ( mudīrīya) of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The town, which is situated about 25 miles from the Eritrean frontier, derives its name from Ḏj̲ebel Kassala, a picturesque granite hill crowned by seven peaks, which rises to a height of 2,791 feet and forms a conspicuous landmark in the surrounding plain. In the older literature it is referred to as Ḏj̲ebel Kassala al-Lus (Bed̲j̲a: To-Lus). The site of the present town, which originally contained a settlem…

, name of a country [and people?] to the South of Egypt. The names Nubia, Nubian, Nūba are commonly used without scientific precision’ and it is only in the linguistic sense that they have an unambiguous meaning. The frontier separating Nubia from Egypt proper is well defined as the first cataract of the Nile in the neighbourhood of Aswān, and the area where Nubian is spoken nowadays ends in the vicinity of the 18th parallel, but the southern limit of Nubia is sometimes placed as far south as the junction of the Atbara and the Nile or even the confluence of the two N…

(Eastern). The Sūdān of the medieval Arabic writers is the area of West and Central Africa south of the Sahara. It was only in the xixth century that the name came to be applied also to the countries of the Nile basin, which were conquered by the troops of Muḥammad ʿAlī in 1820—1822 and thereafter known as the Egyptian (now the Anglo-Egyptian) Sūdān. In a firmān granted to Muḥammad ʿAlī by the Porte in 1841 the territory committed to his rule is described as comprising Nubia, Dār Fūr, Kordofān, and Sennār with their dependencies. Subsequently Egyptian rule wa…

(Sulṭān-i G̲h̲āzī Yamīn al-Dawla Bahrām S̲h̲āh b. Masʿūd b. Ibrāhīm), G̲h̲aznavī sulṭān (511—552 = 1118—1157). The greater portion of his long reign was quiet and uneventful, but in the year 1148 G̲h̲azna was attacked by the G̲h̲ūrī chief Saif al-Dīn Sūrī whose brother Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Maḥammad had been put to death by the G̲h̲aznavī king. Bahrām S̲h̲āh was forced to retire to India aad G̲h̲azna fell into the hands of Saif al-Dīn. He did not however hold his conquest long, for Bahrām S̲h̲āh returned with fres…

, misspelling for Abu Ṭulayḥ, so called after the ṭalḥ tree ( Acacia seyal ), the name of a well-centre on the road through the Bayūḍa desert which, avoiding the Nile bend of Abū Ḥamad, leads from Korti (Ḳurtī) south of Dongola to al-Metamma, a distance of 192 miles. The place is famous as the scene of a battle fought on 17 Jan. 1885 between the darwīs̲h̲ forces of Muḥammad Aḥmad [ q.v.] and a "desert column" of some 1800 British troops who were advancing from Korti to the relief of Ḵh̲arṭūm where the Egyptian garrison and General Charles Gordon were besieged by the…

(Umm Durmān), a town of the Anglo-Egyptian Sūdān situated on the west bank of the main Nile immediately below the junction of the Blue and White Niles. A seven-span steel bridge built in 1925—1928 connects Omdurman with Ḵh̲arṭūm [q. v.], and the two towns (together with Ḵh̲arṭūm North on the right bank of the Blue Nile) form for practical purposes a single city; but whereas Ḵh̲arṭūm as the seat of the government and the centre of foreign commerce has acquired a European character blended of Briti…

, a Hamitic tribe in N. E. Africa belonging to the Bed̲j̲a [q. v., i. 687b] group and closely allied to the Bis̲h̲ārī, Hālanga and Banī ʿĀmir tribes. They live in the country between the river Atbara and the Red Sea and extend towards the South as far as the borders of Eritrea and Abyssinia. Politically nearly the whole tribe belongs to the Red Sea and Kassala provinces of the Anglo-Egyptian Sūdān. They are a nomadic or semi-nomadic tribe of camel-owners and caravan-guides; in their general characteristics and customs they do not differ materially from the rest of t…

Modern Sennār is a village situated on the Blue Nile about 170 miles south of Ḵh̲arṭum. It is the seat of a District Commissioner, and the headquarters of an administrative district of the Blue Nile Province. The district has a population of about 50,000, which is composed of a mixture of Sūdān tribes and Fellata immigrants from West Africa. The Sennār dam, which irrigates a large cotton growing area, is situated at Makwar, about six miles to the south of Sennār village. The older usage which extended the name of Sennār to the triangular territory between the Blue and the Whi…

a mountainous district in the Anglo-Egyptian Sūdān situated between lat. 10 and 11 N. and extending from the Blue Nile to the Abyssinian frontier and beyond. The chief places are Fāzōg̲h̲lī and Fāmaka on the Blue Nile. The district is inhabited by backward Negroid tribes among whom Islām and the Arabic language have spread to a certain extent since the time of the Fung conquest; their ethnological position has not yet been determined, the principal tribes are Burūn, Barta, Hamad̲j̲ (Hameg) and …

(Fūkd̲j̲), a tribe or mixture of tribes in the Anglo-Egyptian Sūdān. The name is said to be derived from a S̲h̲illuk word denoting “stranger” and is originally applied to a negroid race related to or identical with the S̲h̲illuks on the White Nile. They became prominent at the end of the 15th century a. d. by conquering an extensive portion of the eastern Sūdān where they founded the famous kingdom of Sennār. At the time of the conquest and subsequently to it their kings and notables intermarried with Sūdān Arabs and ultimately claimed Arab descent…

, the mediaeval Islamic form for the land of Nubia, lying to the south of Egypt, and its peoples. 1. Definition The names Nubia, Nubian, Nūba are commonly used without scientific precision and it is only in the linguistic sense that they have an unambiguous meaning. The frontier separating Nubia from Egypt proper is well defined as the first cataract of the Nile in the neighbourhood of Aswān, and the area where Nubian is spoken nowadays ends in the vicinity of the 18th parallel, but the southern limit of Nubia is so…

, a tributary of the Nile, known to the ancients as Astaboras. It rises in Abyssinia not far from Gondar and, entering the Sūdān near Gallabat (Ḳallabāt) is joined lower down by the Salām and Setīt; it joins the Main Nile at a point about 200 miles north of Ḵh̲artūm. During the flood season (end of May to end of September) it contributes a considerable amount of silt-laden water to the Nile; for the rest of the year it dries up into a series of pools. The town of Atbara near the river mouth is important as the headquarters of the Sūdān railways (population of the Municipal counci…

(his name is invariably pronounced as ʿAbdullāhi ), the successor of Muḥammad Aḥmad [ q.v.], the Sudanese Mahdī. He belonged to the Awlād Umm Ṣurra, a clan of the Ḏj̲ubarāt section of the Taʿāʾis̲h̲a, a tribe of cattle-breeding Arabs (Baḳḳāra) in Dārfūr. His great-grandfather is said to have been a Tunisian s̲h̲arīf who married a woman of the tribe. His father Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Karrār bore the nickname of Tōr S̲h̲ayn (Ugly Bull). Religious pretensions were hereditary in the family, and both father and son were fakīs of repute. Zubayr Raḥma, the famous merchan…

(sg. ʿAbbādī ), an Arabic-speaking tribe of Bed̲j̲a [ q.v.] origin in Upper Egypt with branches in the northern Sudan. The northern limis of their territory in Egypt is the desert road leading from Ḳena to Ḳusayr, and their nomad sections roam the desert to the east of Luxor and Aswān. The original ʿAbābda stock is most truly represented by the nomads but there are also sedentary sections who have intermarried with the fallaḥīn and adopted much of their way of life. On the Red Sea coast there is a small clan of fisher-folk, the Ḳirayd̲j̲āb, who by some are not recognized as true ʿAbābda. Like the r…