Online Encyclopedia

BAGGARA (" Cowherds ")

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V03, Page 200 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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BAGGARA (" Cowherds ")  ,
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African "
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Arabs of Semitic origin, so called because they are
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great cattle owners and breeders . They occupy the country west of the White Nile between the
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Shilluk territory and
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Dar Nuba, being found principally in
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Kordofan . They are true nomad Arabs, having intermarried little with the Nuba, and have preserved most of their
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national characteristics . The date of their arrival in the Sudan is uncertain: they appear to have drifted up the Nile valley and to have dispossessed the
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original Nuba population . A purely pastoral
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people, they move from pasture to pasture, as food becomes deficient . The true Baggara tribesmen employ oxen as saddle and pack animals, carry no shield, and though many possess firearms the customary weapons are
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lance and sword . They have always had the reputation of being resolute fighters . Engaged from the earliest times in the slave trade, they were among the first, as they were certainly the most fervent, sup-porters of the
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mandi when he rose in revolt against the Egyptians (1882) . They constituted his real fighting force, and to their fanatical courage his victories were due . Their decision to follow him out of their own country to
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Khartum brought about the fall of that city . The mandi's successor, the
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khalifa Abdullah, was a Baggara, and throughout his
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rule the tribe held the first place in his favour . They have been described as " men who look the fiends they really are—of most sinister expression, with
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murder and every crime speaking from their savage eyes .

Courage is their only

good quality." They are famous, too, as hunters of big
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game, attacking even elephants with sword and spear, G . A . Schweinfurth declares them the best-looking of the Nile nomads, and the men are types of
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physical beauty, with
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fine heads, erect athletic bodies and sinewy limbs . There is little that is Semitic in their appearance . Their skins vary in colour from a dark red-brown to a deep black; but their features are
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regular and
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free of negro characteristics . In
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mental power they are much
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superior to the indigenous races around them . They have a passion for fine clothes and ornaments, tricking themselves out with glass trinkets, rings and articles of ivory and horn . Their mode of hair-dressing (
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mop-fashion) earned them, in
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common with the Hadendoa, the name of " Fuzzy-wuzzies " among the
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British soldiers in the
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campaigns of 1884–98 . See G . A . Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa (1374) ;
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Sir F . R .

Wingate, Mandism and the
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Egyptian Sudan (1891), Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count
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Gleichen (19o5); A . H . Keane,
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Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884) .

End of Article: BAGGARA (" Cowherds ")
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JENS IMMANUEL BAGGESEN (1764-1826)

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