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Sudanese Historiography and Oral Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim
Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

One of the most curious aspects of Sudanese historiography is that it has almost completely ignored the ongoing attempts to apply the methods of historical criticism to oral tradition in reconstructing the African past. Though an awareness of these attempts on the part of Sudanese historians is not lacking, it has not gone beyond vague indications, casual remarks, and limited use of oral data. This paper investigates the apathy of Sudanese historiography with respect to oral traditions, drawing on articles on the writing of history in the Sudan, as well as on historical writings that have actually made use of oral traditions.

Sudanese historiography here means writings by Sudanese on history-writing in the Sudan; general histories of the Sudan; and local histories of the Northern Sudan. The history of the Southern Sudan is excluded because the contribution of oral tradition in reconstructing the history of this region has been markedly different. I also distinguish between traditional (biographers, genealogists, etc.) and amateur historians on the one hand and modern historians on the other. The modern historians, with whom this article will deal exclusively, are graduates of the Department of History in the University of Khartoum (or a similar university by extension), which was established in the late 1940s,and who have been exposed to the Western critical spirit and modern techniques of historical research and writing.2 Unlike the modern historians, traditional and amateur historians have always made use of both oral traditions and written sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 12 , 1985 , pp. 117 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. Sanderson, G.N., “The Modern Sudan, 1820-1956: The Present Position of Historical Studies,” JAH, 4 (1963), 454–57.Google Scholar For a critical and lucid assessment of the use of oral tradition in the reconstruction of the history of the southern Sudan see Johnson, Douglas H., “The Future of the Southern Sudan's Past,” Africa Today, 28/2 (1982), 33–41.Google Scholar

2. Ḥasan, Yūsif Faḍl, Some Aspects of the Writing of History in Modern Sudan (Khartūm, 1978), 19–20.Google Scholar

3. Presented to the annual conference of the Philosophical Society of the Sudan, on modern nation-building, Khartūm, January 1971.

4. 'Ismāʿil, ʿUthmān Sīd 'Aḥmad, “History and Modern Nation-Building,” in Modern Nation Building; Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the Philosophical Society of the Sudan, 1971, (Khartūm, 1971), 126–27.Google Scholar

5. The proceedings of this conference were published in two separate books: Mahmūd, ʿAbd al-Qādir, ed., Studies on Ancient Languages of the Sudan (Khartūm, 1974)Google Scholar; and Hurreiz, Sayyid and Bell, Herman, eds., Directions in Sudanese Linguistics and Folklore (Khartūm, 1975).Google Scholar The papers that surveyed the sources of the history of the Sudan, however, were not included in either of these. I used the originals of the papers as presented to the conference.

6. aṭ-Ṭabaqāt's author was Muḥammad an-Nūr Ḍayf Allah (1727-1810). The book exists presently in three editions: Sīdayq (Cairo, 1930); Mindīl (Cairo, 1930), and Yūsif Faḍl Ḥasan (Khartūm 1970, 1974); Yusif Faḍl Ḥasan, “al-Maṣādir as-Sūdāniyyah qabl al-Mahdīyyah,” Paper presented to the Second International Conference of the Sudan Research Unit on Language and Literature in the Sudan, Khartūm (1970), 8.

7. Ibid., 11.

8. Ḥasan, , Some Aspects, 35.Google ScholarPubMed

9. Ibid., 30.

10. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Rahīm (d. 1966); a Mahdiyyah veteran and historian. His seminal works on the Mahdiyyah still await publication. ʿAlī al-Mahdī (1881-1944), a son of the Mahdī and a historian.

11. Muḥammad 'Ibrāhīm 'Abū Salīm, “al-Maṣādir al-'awaliyyah Lifatrat al-Mahdiyyah,” presented to the Second International Conference of the Sudan Research Unit on Language and Literature in the Sudan, Khartūm (1970), 2.

12. Ibid., 6; Holt, P.M., “The Source-Materials of the Sudanese Mahdia,” St. Antony's Papers, 4 (1958), 115.Google Scholar

13. Ḥasan, , Some Aspects, 33.Google ScholarPubMed

14. ʿUthmān Sīd 'Ahmad 'Ismāʿ īl, “Primary Literary Sources for the Modern Period (of Sudan History),” Paper presented to the Second International Conference of the Sudan Research Unit on Language and Literature in the Sudan, Khartūm (1970), 3.

15. Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition (London, 1965), 19.Google ScholarHenige, David P., The Chronology of Oral Tradition, 2.Google ScholarFinnegan, Ruth, “Oral Tradition and Historical Evidence,” History and Theory, 9 (1970), 199Google Scholar; Curtin, P.D., “Field Techniques for Collecting and Processing Oral Data,” JAH, 9 (1968), 375–76Google Scholar, are not as strict and demanding as Vansina and Henige and would take these personal testimonies for personal recollections, which is a class of oral tradition.

16. The ʿAbdallāh project. See below.

17. Sayyid Ḥasan Muḥammad Kḥalīl, “Jawanib,” p.c.

18. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 20.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., 121. The notion of the archetypal text, as stated by Vansina, harks back to the Finnish (Historical-Geographical) Method, which dominated the study of folklore in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since then this notion has come under increasing attack that resulted in various restatements of the notion. Dorson, R.M., Folklore and Folklife (Chicago, 1972), 8–12.Google ScholarLord, Albert B. ruled out the original/variant dichotomy, for “we cannot speak of a variant since there is no original to be varied.” The Singer of Tales (New York, 1965), 101.Google Scholar Performance-oriented folkloristics elaborated Lord's notion to underscore the totally emergent nature of the text in oral tradition. In this perspective the construction of the archetypal text is not only hypothetical but also illegitimate. The text, according to this view, is not an entity that can be “handed down,” or “passed on,” and which “varies” and “changes” accidently or unavoidably. Georges, Robert, “Toward an Understanding of Storytelling Events,” Journal of American Folklore, 82 (1969), 324.Google Scholar

20. Vansina, Oral Tradition, chapter 4.

21. The conference was sponsored by the Sudanese Socialist Union and held in Khartūm in February 1979.

22. ʿAbdīn, Ḥasan, “Khawāṭir wa 'Arā'ḥwal Kitābat Tārīkh as-Sūdān,” Majalat ath-thaqāfah as-Ṡūdaniyyah, 3 (05 1979), 48–54.Google Scholar

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24. Curtin, , “Field Techniques,” 368.Google Scholar

25. al-Mūbārak, Mūsa, Tārīkh Dārfūr as-Sīyāst, 4.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 224.

27. Ibid., 4.

28. Of the 27 uses Mūsa al-Mūbārak made of oral tradition 17 were relegated to the footnotes. Sixteen of these uses were made in supplementary capacity (anecdotal, digression, backdrop, etc) and 11 were properly used (independently cited, contradicting a written source, etc.).

29. al-Qaddāl, Muḥammad Saʿīd, al-Mahdiyyah wa al-Ḥabashah, 160.Google Scholar

30. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 53.Google Scholar

31. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿAbd al-Wahāb, Tūshkī, 154, 162.Google Scholar

32. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 117–18.Google Scholar

33. Sanderson, , “Modern Sudan,” 430, 436.Google Scholar Administrative history could be even worse. Drawing on the oral tradition of the Nuer of the southern Sudan, D.H. Johnson elegantly demonstrated how the image of the Nuer as “truculent and aggressive warriors” is in variance with their oral tradition. He argued that the colonial administrative bias was responsible for this stereotype of the Nuer, “The Fighting Nuer: Primary Sources and the Origins of a Stereotype,” Africa, 52 (1982), 508–27.Google Scholar

34. (Oxford, 1959).

35. Sanderson, , “Modern Sudan,” 437–38.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., 450, 454, 461.

37. Ibid., 450.

38. These are successful M.A. and Ph.D. theses dealing with the history of the Sudan and submitted between 1964 and 1979 to the History Department of Khartūm University (23), Egyptian universities including Cairo University-Khartūm Branch (5), British universities (1), and the American University in Beirut (2).

39. Sanderson, , “Modern Sudan,” 450.Google Scholar

40. One of the reasons for the schism was depriving Shaykh Ṣalih Faḍ Allah (d. 1887) of the office of the paramount chief because of his birth to an 'um-walad (a son's mother; literally, a concubine). Subsequently shaykh Ṣalih's desperate and uncompromising resistance to the Mahdiyyah sprang from his ambition to promote his claims to the chieftainship of the Kabābīsh: 'Ibrāhīm, ʿAbdullahi 'Alī, “Firsān Kanjarat,” (M.A. thesis, University of Khartūm, 1980), 113–15.Google Scholar

41. Cunnison, Ian, Baggara Arabs: Power and Lineage in a Sudanese Nomad Tribe (Oxford, 1966), vi.Google Scholar

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43. Asad, Talal, “A Note on the History of the Kababish,” Sudan Notes and Records, 47 (1966), 87.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., 86.

45. Asad, Talal, The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe (London, 1970), 158.Google Scholar

46. Aḥmad, ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Muḥammad, Shaykhs and Followers, (Khartūm, 1974), 13.Google Scholar

47. Sauvaget, Jean, Introduction to the History of the Muslim East (Berkeley, 1965), 23.Google Scholar

48. Hair, P.E.H., “How African is the History of the Sudan,” Sudan Society (1969), 48.Google Scholar

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50. Holt, , “Source-Material,” 112–13Google Scholar; Hill, Richard, “Historical Writings on the Sudan Since 1820” in Lewis, Bernard and Holt, P.M., eds., Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962), 362.Google Scholar

51. Sudan Notes and Records, 9 (1926), 79–82Google Scholar; Holt, , “Source-Material,” 115.Google Scholar

52. Diwān al-Ḥārdallū, edited by ʿAbdïn, ʿAbd al-Majīd and al-Mubārak 'Ibrahīm, (Khartūm, 1957).Google Scholar

53. Hill, Richard, “Historical Writings,” 366.Google Scholar

54. Ḥasan, Yūsïf Faḍl, ed., Kitāb aṭ-Ṭabaqāt, 21Google Scholar; “al-Maṣādir as-Sudāniyyah,” 4. The Funj Chronicle dates back to the eighteenth century and exists in two editions; Shibaykah (Khartūm, 1947); Buṣaylī (Cairo, 1961).

55. Hill, , “Historical Writings,” 360.Google Scholar In a paper presented to the International Conference on the History of the Mahdiyvah (Khartūm, 1981), Muḥammad 'Ibrāhim 'Abū Salīm analyzed Na ʿūm Shuqayr's methodology in using oral testimonies for his narrative of the Mahdiyyah history. The first portion of this paper has since been published in al-Khartūm, 9/4 (12 1981), 1–17.Google Scholar

56. Holt, , “Source-Material,” 113.Google Scholar

57. Ḥasan, Yūsif Faḍl, The Arabs and the Sudan, (Khartūm, 1973), 204.Google Scholar

58. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 187.Google Scholar

59. Curtin, , “Field Techniques,” 370.Google Scholar

60. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 187.Google Scholar

61. Ḥamad, al-Ḥāj, “Matrilineal Elements in the Political Organization of the Medieval Eastern Sudan,” (M.A. thesis, University of Khartūm, 1977), 185.Google Scholar

62. 'Ibrāhīm, , “Firsan Knajarat,” 51–54.Google Scholar

63. Ḥasan, , Kitāb aṭ-Ṭabaqat, 242.Google Scholar

64. Naṣr, 'Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Tārīkh al- ʿAbdallāb min Khilāl Riwdyatihim as-Samaʿ iyyah (Khartūm, 1969), 75.Google Scholar

65. Thompson, Paul, The Voice of the Past (Oxford, 1978), 44.Google Scholar

66. Ibid., 64. Thompson dealt with the British intellectual setting in which this skill developed. For similar accounts on America and France see Dorson, Richard M., “Oral Tradition and Written History: The Case for the United States,” in his American Folklore and the Historian, (Chicago, 1971), 129–44Google Scholar; Rearick, Charles, Beyond the Enlightenment: Historians and Folklore in Nineteenth Century France (Bloomington, 1974).Google Scholar

67. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 109, 112.Google Scholar