The Sudan Handbook

PeoPles & cultuRes of tWo sudans 79

ethnically heterogenous population that included both nomadic Arab

groups and non-Arab farming communities. Today, though, Fur territory

and other parts of the Darfur region are in increasingly disputed political

space. Due to a significant extent to the government’s use of militias

drawn from Arab nomadic groups and the ethnic divide-and-rule strategy

of which this is a part, tribal identities in Darfur have become militarized;

and rights to land brutally contested.

Another non-Arab group involved in the Darfur conflict is the

Zaghawa, whose territory extends across the border into Chad. Tradition-

ally camel pastoralists, over the last two generations many Zaghawa have

metamorphosed into transnational traders. Their truck convoys span

the Sahara from the oases of the Sahara to Suq Libya on the outskirts of

Omdurman. But Zaghawa communities, also, have participated in, and

suffered from, the effects of civil war. In recent years large numbers of

Darfuris – including Zaghawa, Fur, Masalit and other ethnic groups – have

been driven from their villages and forced into displaced camps on the

outskirts of towns, contributing to a wider drift towards urbanization.

In scattered communities in western Sudan and, to a greater extent,

in the central Nile Valley – particularly in the Gezira – descendants of

migrants from West Africa have a significant presence. Before the advent

of air travel, Muslims from West Africa travelled through Sudan on the

overland pilgrimage route to Mecca; some remained, encouraged by the

opportunities offered by colonial development schemes, and settled as

wage labourers, principally in the Gezira, on the vast irrigated cotton-

growing project between the Blue and White Nile south-east of Khartoum.

The majority of these settlers were Hausa from northern Nigeria; the

rest were drawn from other West African ethnic groups, some of them

speaking Hausa as a lingua franca. In Sudan the settlers became known

as Fellata. This was originally a term for the Fulani, one of the non-Hausa

groups; in Sudan it was applied by other Sudanese to all descendants of

West Africans and acquired a pejorative connotation. Today the term

‘Hausa’ is often used to refer to all Sudanese of West African descent,

but communities of Fulani-speakers, mainly seasonal cattle nomads,

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors maintain^ distinct^ cultural^ features.^ In^ recent^ years^ Sudanese^ Hausa^ have^

(www.riftvalley.net).