a shoRt histoRy of sudanEsE PoPulaR musiC 245European goods were bought and sold. Its population grew from an
estimated 40,000 in 1860 to about 70,000 in the early 1880s. Residents
included Arabic-speaking Jaaliyin and Shaigiya, and Mahas and Danagla
who migrated from Nubia, in the far north and found employment as
boat builders and sailors, accompanying ivory and slave raiding expedi-
tions to the White Nile. There were also West African immigrants such
as Hausa, Fulani, and Borno, most of whom came as pilgrims en route
to Mecca. Some of these pilgrims were stranded in the Sudan either on
their way to Mecca or on their return, establishing a bridgehead for later,
more extensive migration from West Africa.
Khartoum was also the home of a large number of foreigners from
the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. The largest of these groups
were the Egyptians, most of whom were soldiers, traders or employees
of the government. The Egyptian community included Coptic Christians
who were traders, accountants and bookkeepers. Numbering about five
hundred families, the Copts established their own school and church
and became a well-established community in the Sudan. Even after the
collapse of the Turco-Egyptian regime in 1884, many Copts were employed
as clerks and bookkeepers during the Mahdiyya (1884–98).
To vary daily routine in the inhospitable climate, Khartoum’s foreign
residents engaged in a wide range of leisure activities that reflected
their diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Leisure activities in
Khartoum also reflected its social and class distinctions. Turco-Egyptian
officials held lavish parties in their homes where Middle Eastern singers
performed and young female slaves danced. The leisure activities of
local Sudanese, including slaves themselves, involved the reproduction
of cultural practices from the Sudanese hinterland and adjacent regions
such as Abyssinia and Ubangi-Chari. Pellegrino Matteucci, the Italian
explorer who lived in the Sudan in the late 1870s, described at some
length a slave carnival in Khartoum. He relates that one day each year
the slaves would cease work and gather at the Muqran, then a poor
neighborhood at the confluence of the Blue and the White Niles. They
dressed in the style of their home areas, played music, and danced.The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors They elected a ‘king of the slaves’ and staged satires on the behaviour of
(www.riftvalley.net).