The Habab Tribe -Sudan Notes And Records

The Habab and Hedareb
SUDAN NOTES AND RECORDS
VOL.36, 1955, KHARTOUM
Pages 183-187.
THE HABAB TRIBE
by 0. G. S. CRAWFORD Editor of Antiquity
The accompanying genealogical table is a conflation from the following sources
1 . Newbold's File ii, 484: a mere list of names showing the ancestry of Sheikh
Mahmud for 54 generations, through Adnan to Nuh. No authority is given
for this list.
t2. Ibid. 317: a genealogical table of the descendants of
Hassan, son of Hidad, and a list of his ancestors up to Hibteis, attached
to C. H. Thompson's history of the Habab.
t 3. Ibid. 318-20: a history of the Habab by Hassan Kantibai Mahmud who
lived eight years in Akkele Guzai, where he learnt it: written down in January,1932.
4. Giuseppe Sapeto: Viaggio e missione cattolica (Rome, 1857), 160.
5. Carlo Conti Rossini: Note sul Sahel Eritreo, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, Vol. VI (Rome,
1914), 381. This pedigree agrees with the others, but omits three generations between
Hadembes and Bumnet.
6 .Enno Littmann : Bemerkungen uber den Islam in Nordabessinien: Der Islam I, 1910, 68-71.
Of the above, the last three sources are certainly independent of the first three and probably of
each other. The third is probably independent of the first two. There are thus at least three
independent sources, and perhaps four. It is satisfactory that they are all consistent.
Adopting c. 1920 as the date of Kantibai Mahmud, who was alive (but deposed) in 1932, we
get, by dead reckoning backwards at 30 years for a generation, a date of c. 1680 for K.Habtas,
c. 1500 for Asgade and c. 1200 for Zoudi.
The middle date is in agreement with an independent source of 1482 (1) which mentions "un
altro Signore chiamato Aschadi". This tribal chief was encountered by Suriano sight days
after leaving another called Syonsirave; this seems to mean the Shum (chief) of Seraé, and
may safely be identified with Debaroa, the chief residence or capital of the Barnagash.
Now Mansfield Parkyns marks a district called Asgaddy, W.N.W. of Axum. It was part of the
province of Shire, and if we take about eight days to represent about 80 miles in hilly and
difficult country, it is possible to equate the Asgaddy of Mansfield Parkyns with the Aschadi
of Suriano.(2). (It is quite usual for the personal names of prominent chiefs to be used as the
names of districts.)
The exact location is not, however, important for the present purpose, which is to point out
that, in 1482, Asgade had not yet migrated northwards into the present Habab region ; and
that this passage of Suriano's enables us to date the formation of the Habab tribe there not
long after 1482, which agrees very nicely with the date (c. 1500) already assigned to Asgade
by dead reckoning.
Tribal tradition puts Asgade's frist home in Akkele Guzai, which Lejean calls Kollo Gouzay,
in 'I'igré-but it is not and never was in 'I'igré. According to the author he three sons, Abil,
Takles and Tamariam, from the first of whom the Habab were descended. (Littmann (3)
makes these three the sons of Maflas, the Asgade.)
'I'he names indicate that they were Christian; according to Littmann Takles means Takla
Iayasus, the plant of Jesus; Hebtes means Habta Iayasus, the gift or Jesus; Temariam means
Habtamariam, the gift of Mary.
Rossini puts (4) Asgade’s arrival in the Habab district at about the first half of the sixteenth
centiury-a date based presumably on dead reckoning only. He settled on a plateau (rora) at a
place called l.aba, which is the name of a tributary wadi of the Anseba immediately south of
Asgede Bakla, near the ruins of Tzertzera where lived the Fung. He had many quarrels with
the Fung, mostly the usual nomad squabbles about cattle.
When Asgade came there he found the Balau and the Fung in occupation, but on his arrival
the Fung went away, and there remains of them only one family. The Balau came from the
Baraka, and there still remains a few of them.
Both these accounts were certainly based on traditions recorded by the two
authors who were personally familiar with the regions. They agree in the
main with a rather confused, but independent, account written down in
January, 1932, by, Kantibai Mahmoud.(5)
The ancestor of the Habab, Zod Abu Sahl, emigrated from Akilli Kazai at the Muslim
conquest. Later he occupied Nacfa and Rora. Asgedi, son of Babinit, came to Rora, in a
district called Indilal (6), and with his brother Bigilai formed clans.
They then divided up the country between them and made treaties with the Bellu and
Baira.( (this seems to correspond with the reference to the Balau and Fung in the
preceding account.) 'I'hese were tribes of the Baraka, and they intermarried with them. (The
rest of the story does not concern us here.)
Sapeto, a missionary who lived for some years in the region and knew it and its inhabitants
well and could speak their language, states that the Habab were no about their original home.
Some said that it was Tzana Daglié in Kolugusa: Tedarar in Hamasen. (This would appear to
be Munzinger's Tadarar in Akkele Guzai 37 miles S. by E. of Asmara.)
In any case it was certainly
from such places that they came, for amongst their progenitors (antenati) he
had found the names of Barnagashes of Addi Baro and Dbaroa, such as
Karm-medas, 'I'aluq, Giammin-oi, Giann-oi, Addam-bas, Abu-amnat. At Enzelal
Sipeto found considerable (grandissime) ruins of an "Abyssinian" city with
remains of churches and monasteries, "e alcune lettere d'iscrizione" defaced
by Muslims. He concluded that the city was like that of Ilha [Yeha] in
'I'igré and the letters Himyarite.
His companion and guide Muhammed Faqaq (also called Naod) insisted that Enzelal was the
same as Asgade Baqle, where there was nothing to be seen but a sheepfold or village like
Tzertzera. This latter place was a large ruined village with many burial-cairns (sepolchri a
bica).
Sapeto states that Habab was the plural of a personal name Habib, and that Habib was the
father of Te-Miriam. His language is not always exact and his meaning sometimes obscure;
but his book contains much valuable information. He was the first European to explore the
region, though Mansfield, Parkyns had passed through the Southern parts in 1843.
The ruins of Anzelal are marked on the Italian 1: 400,000 map of Eritrea (Sheet 2, Nacfa) 19
kilometres E.S.E. of Ghirghir, and those of Tzertzera 8 kilometres S. by E. of Enzelal, both
sites being on high ground some 10 to 15 kilometres E. of the Anseba. A full account of them
has been published By Conti Rossini.(9)
The traditional history of the Habab is important because it may confirm one theory of Fung
origins. It speaks of the Fung as a tribe of nomads who are bracketed with the Balau, and not
as the rulers of an empire; and for this reason it probably reflects events that took place before
that empire was founded. The date of those events, as estimated by dead reckoning, is in
close agreement with a contemporary reference to Aschadi, and cannot be much (if at all)
later than 1500.
The word Asgedi is not Geéz or'Amharic. A certain Asgade was one of the captains of Ras
Sela Chrestos in the Galla war of 1618,(10) and the name is regarded by Dillmann (11) as a
personal name derived from the Greek word exedra, a court. (1 assume that Asgedi and
Asgadr are the same.)
Interesting confirmation of the Habab tradition comes from the Ethiopian province of Shire in
Tigré. Shire is a tract of rolling uplands between the Mareb on the north and the Takkaze on
the south; it is bounded on the east by the famous Aksum and on the west by Adiabo on the
Eritrean frontier.
In the north-western part of Shire, next to Adiabo, is the district mentioned above which is
still called Asghede. Local tradition, recorded (12) by the late Giovanni Ellero, whose death
as a prisoner of war was a great loss to Ethiopic studies, still remembers the origin of the
name.
Asghede was the grandson of a certain Ras Degena, a Christian, who left his home in Agame
in the first decade of the sixteenth century,(13) accompanied by a Muslim called 'Abdalla.
Some of Ras Degena's followers settled in Mai Ducuma (Enticcio) and Mai Hasebo near
Aksum; Ras Degena and the rest went on further westwards towards Adiabo.
His son Zerabruch had seven sons: Asghede Zegai, who took the district called by his name;
Redaa Tsembella, whose descendants now live in Addi Neccas Adghi; Asbe, stationed in
Adiabo; Zahaman, in Medebai Tabor; Atiscium, whose descendants are to be found in
Dembe Arcai and many villages in the Selaclaca district; Tedai, in Addi Ghidad; Tsada, round
Mai Guscela. The leading families of Shire trace their descent to-day from these seven sons,
through twelve or fourteen generations.
It is to be observed, first, that in the accompanying genealogy, derived from wholly
independent sources and other regions, twelve generations exactly separate Asghede from
Mahmud (1920).
Then the home of Asghede's grandfather in Agame borders on Akkele Guzai whence
according to the other tradition Asghede himself came. There are certain verbal similarities,
too; Giabiburuc the uncle of Asghede in my genealogy must surely be the same as Zerabruch
his father according to the Shire tradition. Addi Ghidad (the village of Ghidad) recalls
Asghede's brother Gheedad or Qa'adat.
Habab genealogy.
1200 Zoudi I
Hotai Fasel I
Takal Hayamanout I
Howai I
Nafas I
Hadembes//Hadimbas I
Tanaai I
Gamganaie I
Mayai I
------------------------------------------------
I I
Babint Jabibrok
Semir Babinet
Giabiburuc
Bummet Beit Jock I
Begiuc I
I I I
c. 1500 Askadi Bigilai Atkilmi Qa'adat 5 others
Asghede (in the west: at his Adcheme Gheeded
Asgade death the tribe conquered.
By the Beni Amer Bahailai)
Daflah I
Kabirkitous I
Kantabai Gargies I
K. Ibitar I
K. Maflas I
c. 1680 K. Habtes (Hibteis) Takles
Abib Hebtes (Temaryam)
K. Bahr Nakasi Fikak Tekles Gherenat
K. Nawdad Izad Teodros Gabres
K. Fikak Nawit Galauchios Abu Emnat
K. Hidad Derar Sukur
K. Hassan Nasseh Faqaq
K. Hamid
Azaz (1850) Sukar (1840)
I
c. 1920 K. Mahmud
The date suggested by Ellero is a little too late. The Itinerary of Suriano proves that Asghede
was already in existence in 1482, even if (as is possible) the name there had a general and not
a personal connotation.
The migration of Ras Degena must therefore have taken place at least a generation before
1482. In my Fung Kingdom (p. 150) I put Asghede's northward trek and the foundation of the
Habab at about 1500, referring in advance to this article for the evidence on which it was
based.
It will now be seen that that is partly dead reckoning backwards, partly Suriano's mention. It
is, of course, merely an approximation, but if Asghede was alive in 1482 it cannot be fir out;
these petty barbarian chieftains did not have long lives, nor would such a migration be led by
an old man.
The importance of this episode for us in the Sudan lies in the possibility that Asghede?s
northward trek may have started the Fungs on the move, as indeed one tradition says in so
many words that it did.
One final point requires clearing up. One of Asghede's brothers, according to the Shire
tradition, was called Atescium. The word looks very like Addi or Adi Shum, two words
meaning "village" and "chief."
Now on the route that Suriano must have followed the I: 1,000,000 map (Asmara Sheet)
marks a village called Adi Scium Ascale, just north of the Mareb (Mr.Derek Matthews
verified the name recently). Is Ascale a form of, or a mistake for, Ascade ? Is there any
tradition locally about the origin of the name? The village is not Shire but in Serae, just across
the Eritrean frontier.
FOOTNOTES.
1. Etiopia Francescana, Vol. 1, part I (Florence, 1928), p. lxxxiv.
2. The l /m. map (Asmara Sheet) marks a place called Adi Scium Ascale in Serae, Eritrea,
between Adi Quala on the N. and the Mareb, 29 miles N. by W. of Aduwa. 'I'he confusion of
?l? and " d " is quite normal ; c.. are the forms Lalibeda and Lalibela. 'I'his place cannot be
identical with that of Parkyns, if its location is correct, but may contain the same personal
name. It is on the main north and south thoroughfare.
3. Voyage aux deux Nils, 142. (Abil is spelt Abib in his genealogical tree, and made the
ancestor of the 'I'emaryam.)
4. Bemerkungen uber den Islam in Nordabesinien, Der Islam i, 1910, 68.
5. Note sul Sahel Eritreo; R.S.O. vi, 365-92.
6. Newbold?s file ii, 318~20.
7. Heuglin's Enzelal, a ruined village it the foot of Asgede Bakla: Pet. Erg. No 13 (1864) map
1.
8. Sapeto (Viaggio e missioni, 1857, 347) states that in ? live the E’den and the Hallenga. This
seems to locate the Baira, if they are to be equal to the Bairo, are between Kassala and the
Baraka at Dunguaz.
9. Antiche rovine sull Rore Eritréé, Rendiconti della Reale Academia dei Lincei, Vol. xxxi,
ser. 5a, fasc. 7-10 (Sept., 1922), pp. 241-78.
10. Pereira, Susenyos, 147.
11. Lexikon linguae Aethiopicae, c. 1405.
12. Bollettino della R. Societa Geografica Italiana, Vol. I,XXVII, 1941, 95-6.
13. The date is not one I should wish to find fault with, hut one would like to know how "the
ancients" from which Ellero heard the story reckoned it-certainly not in terms of the Christian
era.
SUDAN NOTES AND RECORDS
VOL. XI. 1959
THE HADAREB
A Study in Arab-Beja Relationships
by A. PAUL, Pages 75-78
It is, I believe, one of the most firmly held tenets of anthropologists that
where Hamite and Semite have intermingled it is the latter strain which
predominates in language, custom, and racial characteristics in general.
There are, however, exceptions to this as to nearly every rule, and one of
them is to be found among the medieval Beja of the Sudan. Although for
hundreds of years the descendants of Arab immigrants from the Hadramaut and
Egypt were the dominant force in the Atbai, yet in nearly every respect they
are indistinguishable from the indigenous Beja among whom they settled.
At a date never precisely determined, but certainly in the Days of Ignorance
prior to the Moslem era, and most probably about the end of the sixth
century A.D. sections of a Himyarite tribe from Shihr in Southern Arabia
found its way across the Red Sea and settled in the Atbai and possibly also
further south in the vicinity of Sinkat and Erkowit.
It is probable that their arrival found the nomadic Beja tribes of that area in a more than
ordinary state of flux and confusion because, not so many years before, their domination of
the southern Thebaid between Ibrim and Assuan had terminated with their decisive defeat by
Silko, King of the Nuba, who had ejected them from their riverain settlements and thrown
them back into the inhospitable deserts from which they had come.
Crippled temporarily as a fighting power the Beja relapsed into an anarchic period of petty
inter-tribal wars and disputes in which they had ability to harm none but themselves. The
newcomers were not, therefore, annihilated or driven into the sea as they might have been, but
were able to survive and further to improve their position by marriage with the daughters of
local chiefs.
Then by reason of the matrilinear system of succession still practised among the Beja their
sons succeeded to tribal leadership, and by virtue of this and a superior culture were able to
establish themselves as a dominant aristocracy, partly Arab in blood, ruling over a very much
larger number of indigenous Beja. serfs.
The newcomers were described as Hadareb, a local corruption of Hadarma (inhabitants of the
Hadramaut) and it is quite probable that they were also one and the same people as the Bellou
(derived from the Tu-Bedawie belawiet=to speak a foreign tongue).
They are so referred to by the anonymous historian of the Amarar and by Idrisi, though
the name does not appear to have come into general use until about the end of the fourteenth
century, when the Bellou are found struggling unsuccessfully for survival against the newly
emerged and aggressive tribe of Hadendowa.
Further study of admittedly obscure and conflicting evidence leads me firmly to the
conclusion, and in this I am supported strongly by local tradition, that the Bellou were in fact
the Hadareb at a later stage in their history.
But while they established a political and social autocracy in the Atbai the Hadareb at the
same time lost almost completely their racial individually in adoption of Beja language, habits
and religion, which at that time was a very nominal sort of Christianity.
Late in the sixth century they had been converted by the mission sent to Nubia by the Empress
Theodora, but it is to be believed that their observance of the new religion was neither very
thorough nor very strict, and they did in fact at this time worship a great variety of gods: Isis,
whose statue they had once been allowed to remove from Philae for adoration in their desert
fastnesses; Mandulis, for whom the Romans had built a temple at Talmis; and Min, possibly
Apollo, the god of thunder.
A very considerable number also were still pagans, worshipping devils, and
very much under the awe-inspiring demoniac influence of their shamans.
Writing very much later, at the end of the ninth century, the Arab historian
and geographer, Ya'qubi, gives a description of a Beja kingdom which he
calls Tankish, lying between Assuan and Khor Baraka, containing gold and
emerald mines, and inhabited by Hadareb and their very much larger serf
community, the Zenafig.
The capital of the kingdom was Hadjr or Dherbe, lying in the gold country between Kus and
Aidhab on the coast, and it does not seem too fanciful to identify this with Derheib in the
Wadi Allagi where the remains of medieval strongholds may still be seen.
About A.D. 850 after an interval of nearly three hundred years, the Beja went raiding again
into Egypt with the result that the Tulinid sultans sent against them a series of expeditions in
which they were defeated and compelled to acknowledge the Sultan's suzerainty. A further
result of thus calling down upon themselves the attentions of the rulers of Egypt was the
renewed exploitation of the ancient gold workings in their hills.
The Wadi Allagi mines were re-opened in 878, and there followed for some years a
steady influx of freebooting Arab tribes, mainly of the Rabi'a, the Beni Tamim, and the Mudr,
who fought ferociously among themselves for the mastery of the mines. Final victory went to
the Rabi'a who had allied themselves to the Beja by marriage with Hadareb wives, and were
successful in persuading them to abandon Christianity for Islam, but who were otherwise
racially assimilated as easily and as completely as their Himyarite predecessors had
been before them.|
From the various accounts of Arab travellers and historians such as lbn
Selim, Masoudi, lbn Jubayr, Ibn Batuta, and others, it is possible to piece
together a very general picture of conditions in the Atbai in this the
heyday of Hadareb rule.
It is a picture not very different from that of the present day. There were a great number of
petty tribal sections each under its own chief, leading a pastoral nomad existence each within
the limited orbit of its own well-fields and grazing grounds, and only vaguely admitting
the paramountcy of the Hidirbi, the chief of the Hadareb.
They were expert camel masters, but seem also to have owned considerable numbers of
cattle, much admired for their colour and yield of milk, and in time of war the Hidirbi could
assemble a small force of Hadareb cavalry, and a much larger one of camel-mounted
spearmen recruited from the Zenafig.
From twentieth century survivals among the Beni Amer it is possible also to have some idea
of the relationships of the Hadareb and their serfs. The latter were camel or cattle herdsmen,
paying tribute and otherwise ministering to the needs and comforts of their masters, supplying
whatever animals or produce they might from time to time require, and enabling them
to live a life of indolent case.
Serfs might be transferred like chattels from master to master, but they might not be bought
and sold, and in the rare event of a serf killing a Hadarbi compensation took the form of the
transfer of the offender and five of his kinsfolk to the family of the deceased. Serfs might own
property, but their social inferiority was emphasised by certain outward signs-they might not
ride a horse, use riding saddles on their camels, or carry swords, though it does not appear that
inter-marriage of Hadareb with serf women was so strictly forbidden as later on among the
Nabtab aristocracy of the Beni Amer.
Serf obligations to their masters were thus considerable, but in return they benefited by
patronage and protection, which in those days of constant tribal warfare and ferocious
blood feuds were benefits of no little value.
Judging by the great wealth which the Sultans of Egypt were able to extract from the gold and
emerald mines of the eastern deserts a very considerable amount of treasure must also have
found its way into Hadareb hands, yet despite it all they seem never at any time to have risen
much above the level of desert nomads, and have left behind them no discernible traces of
their existence, a most remarkable fact when it is remembered that for nearly eight hundred
years they were masters of the Atbai with its wealth of gold and emeralds, and that for much
of that time also they had control of one of the richest ports of medieval times.
This was Aidhab, whose ruins are still to be seen on the coast not far north of Halaib, an
unlovely spot, where water was scarce, and food and fuel not much more plentiful, yet
nevertheless in its day one of the most important ports of the known world, being the terminus
of the Far East trade with Egypt and the west, as well as being the main pilgrim port for north
Africa, much as Suakin is today.
Its trade was sufficiently lucrative for the Sultan to maintain an agent there for the collection
of port dues of which, however, he was able to secure only a third, the remainder being
collected by the Hidirbi. Ibn Jubayr, who spent several months there in the hottest part of
1283, describes it as lacking in all forms of amenity, such water as was available being less
agreeable than thirst, and the inhabitants an unpleasant breed of no regard.
Even so he is much less critical of them than Maqrizi who states tersely that they were brute
beasts rather than men, and that no human characteristics were therefore to be expected of
them.
What between its climate and the unscrupulous greed of its inhabitants, who fleeced the
pilgrims by every known device, Aidhab must have been as near an approach to hell on earth
as makes no difference, and it is no wonder perhaps that the graveyards on the landward side
of the dunes are as extensive as they are, and that legend marks it as the spot where Solomon
was wont to imprison refractory demons.
About the middle of the fourteenth century the fortunes of the Hadareb in the Atbai began to
decline as the mines became exhausted, and trade and the pilgrim traffic began to move to
other more convenient ports.
They no longer had ability to exercise such strict control over their subject peoples, and the
end of the century saw the emergence of the Beja tribes which we know today, the Beshariin,
the Hadendowa, and the Amarar whose first struggles were for freedom from Hadareb
authority.
The end came finally carly in the fifteenth century. The Beshariin claim to have driven
them from the northern Atbai about this time, and in 1426 Aidhab was destroyed by Bars Bey,
the Mamluke Sultan of Egypt, as punishment for the plunder of a caravan on its way to
Mecca.
The Hadareb fled south and, if Leo Africanus is to be believed, suffered final annihilation at
the hands of their trade rivals, the Arteiga of Suakin. This may be so, but it seems
nevertheless that a section of them managed to maintain themselves in the glens and hills
round Sinkat and Erkowit until once more driven south beyond Khor Baraka by the
Hadendowa, who refer always to their opponents in these early tribal wars as the Bellou.
Beyond Khor Baraka they were able to survive and retain their feudal system intact until late
in the sixteenth century when they suffered a crushing defeat at Asaramaderheib at the hands
of a Fung, or more probably an Abdullab, army.
The broken remnants fled to the Samhar (the coastal plain behind Massawa) where their
descendants still remain; and their position as overlords of a large serf population was
usurped by a contingent of Sha'adinab/Ja'aliin who had fought in the Abdullab army, and who
remained on as masters of the country, and gave to themselves and their newly conquered
dependants the generic name of Beni Amer.
The name Hadareb still survives, firstly as applied to the Tu-Bedawie-speaking sections of the
Beni Amer, possibly because they were remnants of former Hederib serfs, and secondly, in
slight amended form, Hadarba, to all traders of Arabian origin, the Sheikh of the Arteiga in
Suakin for long being known as the Emir el Hadarba.
There seems little doubt that the three great tribal confederations mentioned above have for
their ancestors the one-time serf peoples of the Atbai who were under Hadareb rule. So
anxious have they been, however, to claim Arab ancestry, the Beshariin and Amarar from the
Aulad Kahil, and the Hadendowa from the Ashraf, that their true tribal antecedents have been
forgotten, and their knowledge of their pre-Islamic history is more than usually vague and
incorrect.
And yet despite the infusion from Arabia of not a little of the blood both of Joktan and of
Ishmael they remain in nearly everything essentially and unmistakably a Hamitic people.
Source: Carolina Rediviva University Library
Uppsala - Sweden[b]