HADENDOA (from

See also:

• BEJA (or BiJA)
• BEJA (probably the ancient Pax Julia)

Beja Hada,

See also:

• CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

chief, and endowa,

See also:

• PEOPLE

people)  , a nomad tribe of Africans of " Hamitic " origin . They inhabit that part of the eastern Sudan extending from the Abyssinian frontier northward nearly to Suakin . They belong to the Beja people, of which, with the Bisharin and the Ababda, they are the modern representatives . , They are a pastoral people, ruled by a hereditary chief who is directly responsible to the (Anglo-Egyptian) Sudan government . Although the official capital of the Hadendoa country is Miktinab, the town of Fillik on an affluent of the Atbara is really their headquarters . A third of the total population is settled in the Suakin country . Osman Digna, one of the best-known chiefs during the Madhia, was a Hadendoa, and the tribe contributed some of the fiercest of the dervish warriors in the wars of 1883–98 . So determined were they in their opposition to the Anglo-Egyptian forces that the name Hadendoa grew to be nearly synonymous with " rebel." But this was the result of Egyptian misgovernment rather than religious enthusiasm; for the Hadendoa are true Beja, and Mahommedans only in name . Their elaborate hairdressing gained them the name of " Fuzzy-wuzzies " among the British troops . They earned an unenviable reputation during the wars by their hideous mutilations of the dead on the battlefields . After the reconquest of the Egyptian Sudan (1896–98) the Hadendoa accepted the new order without demur . See Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905) ; Sir F .

R .

Wingate, Mandism and the Egyptian Sudan (London, 1891); G . Sergi, Africa: Anthropology of the Hamitic Race (1897); A . H . Keane, Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884) .