II. Katla, which holds both Katla and Tima, is spoken in the hills southwest of Dilling. I didn’t even find any sources related to their origin. III. Rashad can be divided into three languages: Tegali, spoken in the Tegali hills, the Rashad hills and the town of Rashad; Tagoi, spoken in Tagoi, Moreb and Tumale, and Tingal, also in the Tegali Hills. The Nuba of the Tegali kingdom are basically the only ones to have a documented history that goes back beyond the 19th century. It doesn’t provide any clues however, to their origins. The founding stories of the kingdom speak of a ‘wise stranger’ coming to Tegali and starting a dynasty – a common theme in Sudanese traditions29 . I will gladly get back to the kingdom in the next chapter. IV. Talodi is a group of languages mainly found in the southern part of the Mountains. It can be devided into Lafofa on the central Eliri range and some adjacent hills, and a large Talodi proper group that can be broken down into four groups: Talodi is spoken in Talodi town and on Jebel Talodi; Eliri on the southern Eliri range; Masakin, with Dagik and Ngile as two separate languages, is spoken in the Masakin hills; in Buram, Reikha and Daloka, and finally Tocho, branched into Acherun, Limun and Tocho. The first Nuba people to hit the coffee tables in an impressive book by Leni Riefenstahl, were the Masakin Qisar, as she calls them. Reifenstahl stayed with the Masakin on several occasions, for weeks or months, but she doesn’t seem to have inquired after their origin. To her, they were ‘Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern’: people that might just as well have come from another star. And of course, in a sense, that is true. We don’t know where the Masakin came from, just as we don’t know where the other Nuba from the Talodi group originated. 5. Nyimang, Temein and Kadugli These three language groups are unique, like the Kordofanian languages, in the fact that they are only spoken in the Nuba Mountains. Judging from the large internal linguistic diversity within each group, the Nyimang, Temein and Kadugli speaking tribes might well have been in the Mountains for more than 2000 years.30 They seem to have come to the Nuba Mountains in tough times, with a lot of people on the move, losing touch with one another. In the words of Thellwal and Schadeberg: All three groups have a reasonably compact distribution within the NubaMountains: Kadugli along the southwestern edge, Temein to the West, and Nyimang to the north. This suggests outside origins and immigration from these respective directions. Assuming that equal internal diversity corresponds to some roughly consistent time depth we may argue that at this particular time in history conditions prevailed in the NubaMountains which resulted in population scattering and reduced inter-group communication. As it is more likely that such conditions originated outside the refuge area we may further speculate that migration to the NubaMountains and diversification occurred in close historical union.31 There is not an awful much to tell about the origins of each individual group, but let’s have a look at them anyway: I. Nyimang is spoken by the people living on the seven hills of Nyimang: Salara, Tendiya, Kurmeti, Nitil, Fassu, Kelara and Kakara. It is also spoken by the people in the Mandal Hills and at Sobei, and by the more distantly related Afitti in Jebel Dair. The Nyimang call themselves Ama – ‘People’ – or ama mede kolat: people of the seven hills. Little is known about their origin, but S. F. Nadel reports that: the tribe [migrated] from a country ‘in the west’, ‘beyond Tima and Abu Ginuk’, whose name is given as Kugya.32 With R. C. Stevenson this becomes Kwuja or Kwija, which could be Kubja in the El Odaiya area. According to Stevenson the Nyimang: say that they settled first in the eastern hillsof the Nyimang range – Nitil, Kurmiti and Fassu – which they found unoccupied, and only later pushed westwards to Tendia and Salara. [At Salara] they claim to have found the Kunit (one of the Hill Nubian groups) there and to have driven them north after a severe struggle. The way the Hill Nubian tribes surround the Nyimang makes this scenario rather improbable. Stevenson remarks that it’s more likely that the Nyimang occupied a larger territory – stretching at least as far as Dilling, until the Hill Nubians arrived.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 23:49:43 +0000
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