The Sudan Handbook

tRaditional authoRity, loCal GoVERnmEnt & JustiCE 191

connotations; in southern Sudan the usual term now is Traditional

Authorities).

However much the judicial powers of the Native Administration were

related to their government work, the resulting courts nevertheless came

to be utilized by people in their quest to win local disputes. In John’s

area, colonial officials noted that local people quickly realized that the

new courts kept written records and that they were more likely to be

able to make future claims or call in debts if the original transaction or

case had been recorded by the chiefs. Across Sudan, the Native Admin-

istration courts drew on the backing of state force in ways that were

far from traditional, though there was some precedent in precolonial

states such as the Darfur Sultanate. But this backing could also make

them more effective and swift at enforcing their decisions, and so they

gradually became established and accepted, operating alongside other

forms of dispute resolution such as councils of elders or the mediation

of spiritual leaders. In southern Sudan, the chiefs’ courts amalgamated

local judicial principles with those of the colonial government to produce

hybrid legal systems. Across northern Sudan, customary justice was

further complicated by Islamic sharia law. The 1902 Mohammedan Law

Courts Ordinance recognized the pre-eminence of shari’a in matters of

family and marital law, including inheritance. Yet civil courts and the

Native Administration courts have also applied sharia law in such cases,

provided they have a learned or semi-learned alim or religious sheikh as

a court member.

The fusion of judicial and administrative powers in the Native Admin-

istration has long been a source of complaint. Another enduring and

contentious aspect of British policy was the direct relation of administra-

tive structures to territory and land rights. In much of northern Sudan,

communal land rights were entrenched as a system of tribal homelands

or dars, each of which also defined the jurisdiction of a paramount chief,

usually called a nazir or sultan. So the larger tribes gained control of

territory and the privilege of a powerful head, recognized by the govern-

ment. Yet the neat tribal patchwork that British officers envisaged never

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors materialized, because territories were not ethnically homogenous.

(www.riftvalley.net).