BAGGARA (" Cowherds ")

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 200 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: AUD-BAI

BAGGARA (" Cowherds ") , African " Arabs of Semitic origin, so called because they are

great

GREAT

cattle owners and breeders. They occupy the country west of the White Nile between the Shilluk territory and Dar Nuba, being found principally in Kordofan. They are true

nomad

NOMAD (Gr. voµas, voµabes, wandering)

Arabs, having intermarried little with the Nuba, and have preserved most of their national characteristics. The date of their arrival in the Sudan is uncertain: they appear to have drifted up the Nile valley and to have dispossessed the

original

ORIGINAL

Nuba population. A purely

pastoral

PASTORAL (from Lat. pastor, a shepherd)

people, they move from pasture to pasture, as food becomes deficient. The true Baggara tribesmen employ oxen as saddle and

pack

animals, carry no shield, and though many possess firearms the customary weapons are lance and sword. They have always had the reputation of being resolute fighters. Engaged from the earliest times in the slave trade, they were among the first, as they were certainly the most fervent, sup-porters of the mandi when he rose in revolt against the Egyptians (1882). They constituted his real fighting force, and to their fanatical courage his victories were due. Their decision to follow him out of their own country to Khartum brought about the fall of that city. The mandi's successor, the khalifa Abdullah, was a Baggara, and throughout his

rule

RULE

the tribe held the first place in his favour. They have been described as " men who look the fiends they really areof most sinister expression, with murder and every crime speaking from their savage eyes. Courage is their only good quality." They are famous, too, as hunters of big game, attacking even elephants with sword and spear, G. A. Schweinfurth declares them the best-looking of the Nile nomads, and the men are types of physical beauty, with fine heads, erect athletic bodies and sinewy limbs. There is little that is Semitic in their

appearance

APPEARANCE (from Lat. apparere, to appear)

. Their skins vary in colour from a dark red-brown to a deep black; but their features are regular and free of negro characteristics. In mental power they are much superior to the indigenous races around them. They have a passion for fine clothes and ornaments, tricking themselves out with glass trinkets, rings and articles of ivory and horn. Their mode of

hair

HAIR (a word common to Teutonic languages)

-dressing (mop-fashion) earned them, in common with the Hadendoa, the name of " Fuzzy-wuzzies " among the British soldiers in the campaigns of 188498.
See G. A. Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa (1374) ; Sir F. R. Wingate, Mandism and the Egyptian Sudan (1891), Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by

Count

COUNT (Lat. comes, gen. comitis, Fr. comte, Ital. conte, Span. conde)

Gleichen (19o5); A. H.

Keane

KEANE, JOHN JOSEPH (1839– )

, Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884).

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