Baggara Arabs

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The Baggara Arabs or Baqqarah (Arabic: البقارة) are a nomadic Bedouin people inhabiting Africa from between Lake Chad and the Nile, in the states of Sudan (particularly Darfur), Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic. They are also known as Shuwa Arabs. They are cattle-herders, migrating seasonally between grazing lands in the wet season and river areas in the dry season. They are mostly speakers of the Shuwa dialect of Arabic.

[edit] Origins and divisions

Baggara are Muslims, who are descendants of Arab tribes who settled the region primarily from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, descendants of the Juhayna group in Saudi Arabia, who came through North Africa who settled there and fought and ruled in Al-Andalus, Spain and returned to North Africa after the collapse of the Umayyad Dynasty, and settled in Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Also Baggara can be found West Africa in northern regions of Mauritania, Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic. Modern day Baggara trace their ancestors to Juhayna sub-tribe group which is mainly in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Those Juhayna who moved south where rainfall was more plentiful, such as south of the Marrah Mountains, took up the herding of cattle and became known as the Baggara, literally "cattelers" or "cattle people". Their kinspeople who stayed north remained Abbala, "camel-men".^[1]

The Baggara in Sudan include several tribes, such as the Rizeigat, Ta’isha, Bani Halba, Habbaniya in Darfur, and Misseiria, Kababish, Humur and Hawazma in Kordofan. The Misseiria of Jebel Mun speak a Nilo-Saharan language, Tama (also called Miisiirii).

[edit] History

Baggara belt

Arab horseman photographed by French Colonials, at Dékakiré, Chad. c.1910s. From L'Afrique Équatoriale Française: le pays, les habitants, la colonisation, les pouvoirs publics. Préf. de M. Merlin. (published 1918).

The Baggara of Darfur and Kordofan were the backbone of the Mahdist revolt against Turko-Egyptian rule in Sudan in the 1880s. The Mahdi's second-in-command, the Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, was himself a Baggara of the Ta'aisha tribe. During the Mahdist period (1883-98) tens of thousands of Baggara migrated to Omdurman and central Sudan where they provided many of the troops for the Mahdist armies. After their defeat at the Battle of Karari in 1898, the remnants returned home to Darfur and Kordofan. Under the British system of indirect rule, each of the major Baggara tribes was ruled by its own paramount chief, known as Nazir. Most of them were loyal members of the Umma Party, headed since the 1960s by Sadiq el Mahdi.

The main Baggara tribes of Darfur were awarded "hawakir" (land grants) by the Fur Sultans in the 1750s. As a result, the four largest Baggara tribes of Darfur--the Rizeigat, Habbaniya, Beni Halba and Ta’isha--have been only marginally involved in the Darfur conflict. However, the Baggara have been deeply involved in other conflicts in both Sudan and Chad. Starting in 1985, the Government of Sudan armed many of the local tribes among them the Rizeigat of south Darfur and the Missiriya and Hawazma of neighboring Kordofan as militia to fight a proxy war against the Sudan People's Liberation Army in their areas. In Darfur, a Benni Halba militia force was organized by the government to defeat an SPLA force led by Daud Bolad in 1990-91. However, by the mid-1990s the various Baggara groups had mostly negotiated local truces with the SPLA forces. The leaders of the major Baggara tribes have stated that they have no interest in joining the fighting.

[edit] Notes and references