The Sudan Handbook

190 thE sudan handbook

spearmasters or prophets often had the greatest degree of inherent

authority. But colonial officers also saw them as a potential source of

resistance or revolt; their power base was too independent of govern-

ment. In some cases, governments were able to overcome this by tying

such leaders more closely into government patronage networks; the most

powerful northern sectarian leaders were entrenched in their privileged

economic and political positions quite deliberately by the Condominium

government.

At a more local level, British officers preferred to appoint secular leaders

as sheikhs or chiefs. But even then, many of these leaders retained close

connections to the prominent local religious authorities, whose support

would be vital to maintaining their position. Since at least the time of

the Funj and Fur sultanates, Islamic and political forms of authority

have been mutually dependent in northern Sudan. Nowadays all across

Sudan, chiefs, sheikhs, omdas and nazirs are often related to the leading

religious or spiritual families in their areas, or maintain close relations

of patronage and allegiance; their different forms of authority tend to be

complementary and interdependent rather than competitive.

It was the judicial role of the government-recognized sheikhs and chiefs

that was first formally legalized in the 1920s and 1930s through a series

of ordinances, culminating in the southern Chiefs Courts Ordinance and

northern Native Courts Ordinance of 1931–32. This legislation conveyed

administrative as well as judicial power: the courts were used not only

to settle disputes and maintain order but also to punish disobedience

towards the sheikh or the government. The chiefs and sheikhs were also

playing a key role in tax collection, and this would gradually be expanded

to include tax assessment and a limited degree of accounting, particularly

as their staff of clerks and retainers expanded. Chiefs and sheikhs were

made responsible for a range of local government functions, including

conscripting labour for roads and construction, overseeing markets and

‘native’ quarters of towns, controlling borders, and enforcing agricultural

or grazing orders. The hierarchies were formalized as the system of idara

ahliya, or Native Administration as the British termed it, (a translation

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors that continues to be employed in northern Sudan, despite its colonial

(www.riftvalley.net).