94 the sudan handbookcalled down, through the music and song they specially respond to, and
possess the women involved.
Sennar is a bustling town with a mixed population and its religious
life (today including four churches) reflects this scene. In Sennar, some
women are practitioners of zar; some are involved in the parallel cult of
tembura (which emerged historically from ex-slave and displaced military
communities). There is also a holy woman of the family of the Khalifa
Abdallahi, the successor to the Mahdi, who acts as a consultant to patients
in the manner of the ubiquitous feki or holy man of the Islamic tradition.
Within the ‘Three Towns’ (Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman)
the tembura cult is also active among former military families (many of
slave descent) in Omdurman. The spirit world is acted out there in the
hierarchies of Sudanese military history, with all its accompaniment of
bugles, uniforms, and marching.Christianity, Ancient and Modern: Anglo-Egyptian
Policies and their AftermathChristianity is the other key world religion of the modern Sudan. Its
history goes back further than Islam. But apart from archaeological
remains, there are few signs left in the modern Sudan of the string of
Christian kingdoms which extended along the Nile valley in medieval
times, and were linked with Ethiopia. In the early medieval period, as
far as we know, Christian teaching and practice was largely confined to
a monastic elite, but its impression on ordinary Nubian communities
is suggested by the persistence of the cross in some aspects of popular
culture. The small number of Coptic Christians in Sudan today are more
recent arrivals from Egypt, who came, along with Greek and other trading
and professional families, in the wake of the Ottoman conquest in the
nineteenth century. It was in the middle of that century too that Christian
missionaries from the West, specifically Catholic priests of the order of
the Verona Fathers, under the inspiring leadership of Daniel Comboni,
began to establish outposts in the southern regions of the Sudan.The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors From^ its^ inception,^ the^ Anglo-Egyptian^ Condominium^ government^
(www.riftvalley.net).