In the last three articles on the issue above I have discussed the the roots of the background of the formation of the Sudanese identity with regard to the Middle East. Hereby, this article will continue in examining of the African dimension to the formation of the Sudanese identity.
As it has been indicated the early Arab geographers used the term ‘bilad al-Sudan’ (the land of the black people) to include the trans-continental savannah belt stretching from the Red Sea coast to the Atlantic Ocean, and lying between the Sahara Desert and the tropical forests. Some scholars made a furthter distinction between the Sudan in general and the Nubian and the Beja of the Nilotic Sudan in particular. The term Bilad al-Takrur was used to describe the region between Dar Fur and the Atlantic Ocean in the West.
Confining the term Bilad al-Sudan to the sub-Sahara region indicates that the inhabitants were predominantly Muslims. “It witnessed the rise of the earliest Islamic Sultanates of the Sudan; it maintained commercial and diplomatic relations with North Africa and Arab Peninsula. The Islamic states that flourished, gradually adopted Islam as the basis of government, law and education.”
In recent times other scholars divided the Sudanic belt into two zones, namely Western and Eastern Bilad al-Sudan. The first zone comprises the lands west of Darfur; the second consists of the Nilotic Sudan or the eastern Sudan. However, other writers prefer to divide it into three regions: Western, Central and Eastern.
Howerver, the consensus is that cultural ties existed among the people of Bilad al-Sudan for thousands of years and a great deal of interaction and influence radiated from Meroe into Africa notably through iron-making in this metal age. Also a considerable influence “radiated from Nubia in medieval times into the far West of the Nilotic Sudan. Christian traditions existed among the Goramantes, who are identified with the Goraan of Northern Darfur and Waday, since the sixth century AD. The language spoken by the Meidob of Northern Darfur is closely related to river Nubian. There are stories which suggest strong Nile Valley influence in the West.
Whatever the role of Meroe may have been the spread of culture amongst its neighbours of ancient Africa, “Meroe was an African civilization firmly based on African soil, and developed by an African population.”
Such claims inspired romantic ideas among African archaeologists such as the concept of Meroitic hyperdiffusionism of culture throughout sub-Saharan Africa. They claim that Meroe served as a bridge between Asia and the Mediterranean world on the one hand, and the sub-Saharan Africa on the other. To them Meroe was a very special blend of elements, Mediterranean and indigenous to the Sudan. The people lived in the region lived for centuries on Meroitic traditions such as facial marks which is now dying out. But other Meroitic traditions such as the Pharaonic circumcision of girls is stil practiced by the majority of the Sudanese people.
(to be continued).
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