Hadendoa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hadendoa is the name of an East African nomadic tribe. They, like the Bisharin and Ababda, belong to the Beja people. The area inhabited by the Hadendoa is today parts of Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea.

The language of the Hadendoa is a dialect of Bedawi, a Cushitic Afro-Asiatic language. Arabic is also spoken among the Hadendoa. Sunni Islam is the religion of the majority of living Hadendoa. However, Coptic and Sufi Hadendoa are far from uncommon especially in Upper Egypt and Egypt's Western Desert.

According to Roper (1930), the name Haɖanɖiwa is made up of haɖa 'lion' and (n)ɖiwa 'clan'. Other variants are Haɖai ɖiwa, Hanɖiwa and Haɖaatʼar (children of lioness). Their name links them to the ancient naturalistic philosophy of Amen, and more specifically, to the Maahes caste of warriors responsible for the protection of High Priestesses of Amen. These matrilineal clan mothers were the founders of many important Egyptian and Cushitic dynasties.

The Hadendoa are traditionally a pastoral people, ruled by a Hereditary Chief, called a Ma'ahes, who, in colonial times, was directly responsible to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan government. Osman Digna, one of the best-known chiefs during the Mahdia, 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. This, however, was the result of Egyptian misgovernment rather than religious enthusiasm, as the Hadendoa of the time were true Beja, and Muslims only in name. Their elaborate hairdressing gained them the name of Fuzzy-wuzzies among the British troops (this was likely the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's poem, "Fuzzy Wuzzy".) 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

[edit] See also

• Osman Digna

[edit] References

From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

• Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905)
• Sir F. R. Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan (London, 1891)
• G. Sergi, Africa: Anthropology of the Hamilic Race (1897)
• A. H. Keane, Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884)

Roper, E.M.: Tu Bedawie : an elementary handbook for the use of Sudan government officials. (Hertford, 1930)

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.