The Sudan Handbook

PeoPles & cultuRes of tWo sudans 81

increasingly, affected by the expansion of the state and its attempts to

control the periphery, and the conflicts this has brought in its wake.

Chiefs and Tribes

In the twentieth century, under British rule in Sudan, tribal identities such

as these, in rural areas of the north and the south, were institutionalized

in a system of indirect rule that was adapted from colonial administra-

tion in British West Africa. In Sudan the British administrators aimed

to restore the authority of certain of the ruling families and structures

of authority that had been destroyed during the preceding era of the

Mahdiyya. Where these did not exist they were created. Local leaders

and men of influence in rural areas were recognized as omdas, sultans or

chiefs, in a system known as idarra ahliya, native administration.

Native administration served to increase the power of local elites, and

perpetuate ethnic distinctions, sometimes deepening them. Some groups

were amalgamated with one another by edict; others were effectively

created as an indirect result of the colonial dispensation. British rule

thus simultaneously exploited the mutability of ethnicity and exalted the

frequently mythical notion of common descent on which many ethnic

identities were based. Native administration in northern Sudan also

involved the recognition of collective rights to tribal lands or dur (plural

of dar, homeland or territory). This further entrenched the authority of

leading families of those groups that were recognized by the government,

and left, in some cases, a problematic legacy of land tenure. Although the

system of native administration was formally abolished by the regime of

Jaafar Nimeiri in 1971, elements of the system of rule through chiefs and

omdas have endured, and some have been restored in recent years, both

by the government in the north and by the government in the south.

Tribal identity may be reinforced in other ways. Some Sudanese carry

outward signs revealing ethnicity. Despite official disapprobation, tradi-

tions of facial scarring, shulukh, continue in rural areas of both north and

south. Ritualized surgery of this kind may be for beautification or for

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors therapeutic^ purposes;^ or^ it^ may^ provide^ an^ indication^ of^ the^ community^

(www.riftvalley.net).