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TRADITIONAL URBANISM IN THE NORTH CENTRAL SUDAN

1977; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 67; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-8306.1977.tb01158.x

1467-8306

Christopher Winters,

Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

ABSTRACT The traditional Muslim cities of the north central Sudan (from c. 1520 until 1898) can be connected with the familiar model or “archetype'’of the Muslim city. They functioned as trading centers and had in common with the Muslim cities of the Middle East certain morphological features such as irregular streets. Islam in north central Sudanese cities was to some extent popular, not orthodox, in nature. Teaching institutions were sometimes more important than mosques, and urban morphology was dominated by tombs of holy men. Islam in Sudanese cities was in some respects only a veneer over a Black African base. Sudanese cities often were centered on a palace, they had low urban intensity, they were divided into village-like residential districts where agriculture dominated, and they were associated with an African, not Middle Eastern, technological system. Notes 1On the “Yoruba city,” see A. L. Mabogunje, Yoruba Towns: Based on a lecture entitled “Problems of preindustrial urbanization in West Africa” given before the Philosophical Society on 12 April 1961 (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1962); and idem., Urbanization in Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1968), especially pp. 74–106, 186–237; on the “Muslim city,” see Xavier de Planhol, Le monde islamique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), translated as The World of Islam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959), pp. 1–41; G. E. von Grunebaum, “Structure of the Muslim Town,” in Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961), pp. 141–58; idem., “The Sacred Character of Islamic Cities,” in ‘Abd al-Rahmän Badawí, ed., Mélanges Taha Husain, Offerts par ses Amis et ses disciples à l'occasion de son 70iéme anniversairel Melanges ilä tähä husain fi ‘íd míäd al-sab‘ín, diräsã muhdä min asdiqä’i-hi wa talamídhi-hi (Cairo: DÅ al-Ma‘Åif, 1961), pp. 25–37; and Ira M. Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). The “Muslim city” is very much like the “Middle Eastern city” the latter concept emphasizes the regional distinctness of this archetype. On the “Middle Eastern City,” see Ira M. Lapidus, ed., Middle Eastern Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Middle Eastern Urbanism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969); and L. Carl Brown, ed., From Madina to Metropolis: Heritage and Change in the Near Eastern City (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1973); on the “medieval city,” see Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1925): and Fritz Rörig, Die europäische Stadt im Mittelalter (Göttingen: Vanderhoek & Ruprecht, 1955), translated as The Medieval Town (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967); on the “colonial city,” see T. G. McGee, The Southeast Asian City: A Social Geography of the Primate Cities of Southeast Asia (New York: Praeger, 1967), pp. 42–45, and 52–73. On the “preindustrial city,” see Gideon Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City: Past and Present (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1960); and, on the “ceremonial center,” see Paul Wheatley, Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1971), especially pp. 316–30. Wheatley seems to use the phrase “ideal type” in the same sense as I use “urban archetype.” The lists above are, of course, far from exhaustive. 2David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 196–284; and Henri Lafebvre, La rèvolution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), especially pp. 7–8. 3Urban archetypes logically involve a classification system, and an identification of a city with a particular archetype involves classifying that city. As would be true of any classification system, there are inevitably some rough edges left when urban archetypes are set up. These rough edges have inspired a considerable literature. For example, many people have questioned some aspects of the standard conception of Middle Eastern Muslim urbanism, among them Ira M. Lapidus, “Traditional Muslim Cities: Structure and Change,” in Brown, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 51–59; and Paul Ward English, City and Village in Iran: Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), pp. 112–33. 4Wheatley, op. cit., footnote 1; Horace Miner, The Primitive City of Timbuctoo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953); and Paul Ward English, “The Preindustrial City of Herat, Afghanistan,” paper presented at the meetings of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, D.C., 1968. 5Examples of such a situation are described in: Ann E. Larimore, “The Africanization of Colonial Cities in East Africa,” paper presented at the meetings of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, D.C., 1968; and Ernst C. Griffin and Larry R. Ford, “Tijuana: Landscape of a Culture Hybrid,”Geographical Review, Vol. 66 (1976), pp. 435 47. 6The academic literature on these cities includes the following: El-Sayed el-Bushra, “Towns in the Sudan in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,”Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 52 (1971), pp. 63 70; Jean-Paul Lebeuf, Archéologie tchadienne: Les Sao du Cameroun et du Tchad (Paris: Hermann, 1962), especially pp. 75–87; Mabogunje, op. cit., footnote 1 (Urbanization), especially pp. 44–73; Miner, op. cit., footnote 4; and Christopher Winters, Cities of the Pondo: The Geography of Urbanism in the Interior Niger Delta of Mali, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1973. With the exception of the latter, these works do not really deal with the classification of the cities of the Südän. Two works on Umm Durmän that do suggest a broad affiliation for the city are: Karol Krótki, “The Socio-Economic Evolution of the Inhabitants of a Desert City: the City of Omdurman,” in Brown, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 150–63; and M. W. Kuhn, Markets and Trade in Omdurman Sudan, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1970. The first piece implies a Middle Eastern affiliation for Umm Durmän; in the second the author identifies the market in Umm Durmän as an “African market.” 7In this paper, the tag “medieval” is used rather loosely to refer to the period running from the beginning of Islamicization to the coming of formal colonialism. The term “north central Sudan” (sometimes shortened simply to “Sudan”) refers to the flat area stretching for a considerable distance on either side of the Nile approximately between al-Rusayris in the South and Wädi Halfä in the North. The area's western and eastern boundaries are, more or less, the contemporary Kordofän-DÅ für and Sudan-Ethiopia borders, respectively. The ethnically complicated regions of DÅ für, the Nüba Mountains, the southern Funj, and the Red Sea coast are not considered part of the “north central Sudan.” 8The standard text on Meroë is P. L. Shinnie, Meroe, A Civilization of the Sudan (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967). The layout of Meroitic cities is discussed throughout but especially on pp. 62–98. A recent work that considers the place of Meroë in the context of Africa is B. G. Haycock, “The place of Napatan-Meroitic culture in the history of Africa,” in Yüsuf Fadl Hasan, ed., Sudan in Africa: Studies presented to the First International Conference Sponsored by the Sudan Research Unit, 7–12 February 1968 (Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1968), pp. 26–41. 9Wheatley, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 229–30; and Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 88. 10The classical work on Christian Nubia is Ugo Monneret de Villard, Storia della Nubia Cristiana (Rome: Pont, institutum orientalum studiorum, 1938). There is a good section on the Nubians in O. G. S. Crawford, The Fung Kingdom of Sennar with a Geographical Account of the Middle Nile Region (Gloucester: John Bellows, Ltd., 1951), and there are recent updates on the subject in P. L. Shinnie, “The Culture of Medieval Nubia and its Impact on Africa,” in Hasan, op. cit., footnote 8, pp. 42–50; and in R. S. O'Fahey and J. L. Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan (London: Methuen, 1974), pp. 15–24. 11Crawford, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 28–29. 12Major works on the Funj state include Crawford, op. cit., footnote 10, and O'Fahey and Spaulding, op. cit., footnote 10. Recent analyses of the complicated and controversial subject of Funj origins can be found in Yüsuf Fadl Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967; reprinted Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1973), pp. 174–76 and elsewhere; and J. C. Spaulding, “The Funj: A Reconsideration,”Journal of African History, Vol. XVIII/1 (1972), pp. 39 53. 13Among the travellers to the Funj sultanate who left some written record of what they saw were (with date of travels): Reubeni (1522–1523) [in S. Hillelson, “David Reubeni, an early visitor to Sennar,”Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 16 (1933), pp. 55 66], Poncet and Brevedent (1699) [Charles Poncet, A voyage to Ethiopia made in the years 1698, 1699 and 1700, …, reproduced in John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in all Parts of the World… (London: Longman, 1814); the sections on SinnÅ also appear in a slightly abbreviated but more felicitously translated version in Crawford, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 319–21]; Krump (1701) [Theodoro Krump, Hoher und Fruchtbarer Palm-Baum (etc.) (Augsburg: 1710) is the original version; I have used the translation given in Crawford, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 321–23 under the title “Krump's description of Sennar (1701)”]; Bruce (1772) [James Bruce, Travels to discover the source of the Nile in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 (Dublin: William Sleater, 1790)], and Burckhardt (1818) [John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London: J. Murray, 1819)]. Of great value also are the works of two travellers who arrived with the Turks: Cailliaud (1819–1822) [Frédéric Cailliaud, Voyage à Méroé, au fleuve Blanc dans le midi de royaume de Sennâr… (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1826–1827)] and also English (1821) [G. B. English, A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar, under the Command of his excellence Ismael Pasha… (Boston: Well and Lilly, 1823)]. There do exist some Sudanese records of the period which are useful in giving an idea of Funj life but which provide little if any direct information on the geography of Funj cities. The most important of these is Wad Dayf Alläh (or: Muhammad al-Nür ibn Dayf Alläh), Kitäb al-Tabaqã fí Khusüs al-Awliyä' wa-l-Salihín wa-l-‘Ulamä’ wa-l-Shu’arä’ fí-l-Südän. There is a recent edition, edited with an introduction by Yüsuf Fadl Hasan (Khartoum: DÅ al-Tibä a Jäm‘at al-Khartüm [University of Khartoum Press], 1971; second edition 1974). There is a partial translation in H. A. MacMichael, A History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), Vol. II, pp. 217–323. 14Poncet, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 321 (in Crawford). 15Krump, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 321 (in Crawford). 16Poncet, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 319 (in Crawford). 17Burckhardt, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 277; and el-Sayed el-Bushra, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 68. 18The period of the Turkiyya is much less documented than that of either the Funj state or the Mahdiyya. There are some relatively brief descriptions of this period in P. M. Holt, A Modern History of the Sudan From the Funj Sultanate to the Present Day (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1961), pp. 35–74; and in Crawford, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 262–86. There is a great deal of useful material also in Richard Hill, translator and editor, On the Frontiers of Islam: Two Manuscripts Concerning the Sudan under Turco-Egyptian Rule 1822–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). Another valuable source is Muhammad Ibrahím Abü Salím, TÅíkh al-Khartüm (Khartoum: DÅ al-Irshäd l-il-Tibä‘a wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzí‘, 1971). 19The fact that the Turco-Egyptian invaders were so destructive was unfortunate not just for the inhabitants of the Sudan at the time but also for future students of Sudanese culture. One of the things about Sudanese traditional urbanism that makes it hard to study is that few traces of earlier architecture remain. The major factor in the disappearance of traditional Sudanese urbanism is the disastrous history of the modern Sudan, starting with the long period of Funj decay and continuing with the enormous urban destruction wrought first by the Turks, later by the ansÅ (the followers of the Mahdi), and finally by the British, whose destructiveness was not the less for its stemming not from war exactly but from demands that certain older cities (among them SinnÅ, Barbar, and al-Dämir) be relocated on new sites and that certain quarters in various other cities (especially in Umm Durmän) be rebuilt so as to conform with Western sanitary standards. In all cases where the older city was completely abandoned, a few decades of normal rainfall have come close to dissolving it. Thus, Old SinnÅ (in early 1974) consisted of some bricks scattered among trees on a lovely slope along the Blue Nile. There was only one thing resembling a building, conceivably the ruins of something from old SinnÅ but more likely a later structure (Fig. 3). Probably more could be made of the ruins at Barbar where the rainfall is much less. The ruins of the old city are gradually being converted into a date grove and residential area. 20The Sudanese literature on the Mahdiyya includes the highly readable Babakr Badrí, TÅíkh Hayãi (Cairo?: Matba‘a Misr, 1959–61), the first (and most interesting) quarter of which has been translated by Yousef Bedri [Yüsuf Badrí] and George Scott as The Memoirs of Babikr Bedri (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). A good general Western source is P. M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898, A study of its origins, development, and overthrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). 21See Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) for a witty and brilliant exposition on certain aspects of popular Islam in Morocco and in Indonesia. 22J. S. Trimingham, Islam in the Sudan (London: Oxford University Press, 1949); and Yusuf Badri, A Survey of Islamic Learning in the Funj State 910–1236 A.H. [1505–1820 A.D.], unpublished thesis, University of Oxford, 1970. 23It is not an accident that the major Sudanese work of the Funj period is the hagiographic Tabaqã [Wad Dayf Alläh, op. cit., footnote 13]. 24Singular forms of these words are, respectively, ‘áim, feki (this is a Sudanese colloquial word), and shaykh. 25von Grunebaum, op. cit. (“Structure”), footnote 1, pp. 145–46. 26Hasan, op. cit., footnote 12, pp. 178–79 and Passim; and Trimingham, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 82–83. 27Badri, op. cit., footnote 22, p. 52. 28Badri, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 36, 74. 29Badrí says that Hamad was responsible for urbanizing the nomads; Badri, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 86–99, especially p. 88. 30Bruce, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. V., p. 380. The Ja‘aliyyín are the major nomadic group living along this part of the Nile. 31Burckhardt, op. cit., footnote 13, pp. 265–71. 32These land charters constitute some of the major documents of the Funj period. Many have been collected in Muhammad Ibrahím Abü Salím, ed., Al Funj wa-l-Ard: wathä'iq tamlík (Khartoum: Matba‘a al-Tamaddun, 1967). 33Badri, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 110–17. 34Badri, op. cit. footnote 22, p. 42. 35Badri, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 130–31. Dates come from Trimingham, op. cit., footnote 22. The dates of Shaykh Idrís's improbable lifespan were taken by Trimingham from the SinnÅ Chronicle, an important text. 36Abü Salím, op. cit., footnote 18, pp. 12–15; and Richard Lobban, “The Historical Role of the Mahas in the Urbanization of Sudan's ‘Three Towns’ with Special Reference to Two Communities: Tuti Island and Burri al Mahas,” in Gerry A. Hale and Sondra Hale, guest editors, Sudan Urban Studies, in African Urban Notes, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1971), pp. 24–28. The latter describes in some detail the role of Tũí Island as a religious hearth. Shaykh Khöjalí and Shaykh Hamad also came from there. The island's importance in this respect may have been related to its location at the junction of the Blue and White Niles but can also be attributed to the migratory and religious traditions of its primarily Mahas population. As Trimingham (op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 7–8) put it, the Mahas “have built up a great reputation as fekis, the economy of a whole village often being based on feki-mongering.” 37Something like half the settlements which Bruce (op. cit., footnote 13) passed through in 1780 were said by him to have “belonged to” or to have been associated in some other way with fugara, and something like half of these are not easy to identify with any present-day settlements. The matter is greatly complicated by the tendency for Sudanese settlements to be discontinuous in time and space. 38Burckhardt, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 269. 39de Planhol, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 2–5 (of the English translation). 40O'Fahey and Spaulding, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 55, 79–80, 84–88. 41Täj al-Anbiyä' ‘Alí al-Dawí, “Madínat al-Ubayyid, Mädi-ha wa Hädir-ha,”Majallat al-Diräsã al-Südäniyya, No. 1 (1973), pp. 44–62; and idem., “Al-Taríqat al-Ismä‘íiyya fi Madínat al-Ubayyid,”al-Majtama' (1969), pp. 1–15. The author uses the Arabic word ramz (“symbol, sign, emblem, etc.”) to describe the role of al-Ubayyid and of Hayy al-Qubba, the quarter of the tomb. The plural of taríqa (“sect”) is turuq. 42On Kasala and on Khatmiyya, see D. C. Cumming, “The History of Kassala and the Province of Taka,”Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 20, Part 1 (1937), pp. 1 45; continued in Vol. 23, Part 1 (1940), pp. 1–54. On the Mirghaniyya taríqa, see Trimingham, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 231–35; and Holt, op. cit., footnote 18, pp. 146–48. The latter work documents the important role of the Mirghaniyya in Sudanese politics since the late colonial period, when the sect's long-known opposition to Mahdism thrust it (and Khatmiyya) into special prominence. 43There is a good treatment of the theological back-ground of the Mahdiyya in Holt, op. cit., footnote 20, pp. 21–23. 44Abü Salím, op. cit., footnote 18, pp. 83–105. 45The followers of the Mahdi came from various parts of the Sudan. One major group of followers were the BaqqÅa, nomads from the West (the Mahdi's successor, the Khalífa, belonged to the BaqqÅa). Another major group consisted of members of the various riverine “tribes” of the North. In any case, virtually all the Mahdi's followers, at first at least, were country people. 46Some Western literature has even suggested that a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Mahdi was accounted more meritorious than a pilgrimage to Mecca, but this is considered by Abü Salím at least an extravagant claim (op. cit., footnote 18, p. 96). It is worth mentioning that the symbolic role of Umm Durmän was manifested also in that many of the materials out of which the city was built were actually taken from colonial Khartoum. The idea of a “centripetalizing function” comes from Wheatley, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 257–68. 47The singular of qubab is qubba. 48There is a very good description, written from an anthropological point-of-view, of the functions of the qubba of Sharíf Yüsuf al-Hindí (and of qubab in general) in Harold B. Barclay, Buurri al Lamaab, A Suburban Village in the Sudan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), pp. 182–84. It is worth noting that the role of qubab as objects of pilgrimage has helped support cities even when their original teaching function has been lost. Burri al-Lämäb is one example. Others include ‘Aylafün. 49Dhikr (“remembrance”) in the Sudan involves communal chanting, singing, and dancing. The texts stress repetition of the name of God. Participants often achieve an ecstatic state. Dhikr is particularly associated with tasawwuf [Süfism]: it is often considered the Süfi equivalent of prayer. The daräwísh [singular: darwísh] are, in theory, pious and ascetic men. Trimingham has somewhat arch descriptions of dhikr and of the daräwísh (op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 212–14). 50The múid festivities in the square in front of the qubba of the Mahdi in Umm Durmän constitute even today one of the great annual events in the Three Towns area (Fig. 2). 51Paul Wheatley, City as Symbol: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at University College, London (London: H. K. Lewis & Co. Ltd., 1969). 52Täj al-Anbiyä', op. cit. (“Al-Taríqa”), footnote 41. 53Geertz, op. cit., footnote 21, pp. 49–51; Roger le Tourneau, Fès avant le protectorat (Casablanca: S. M. L. E., 1949); idem., Fez in the Age of the Marinides, translated by Besse Alberta Clement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961); and idem., La vie quotidienne à Fès en 1900 (Paris: Hachette, 1961). Geertz argues that saint-worship in Morocco is primarily rural, but this is not really supported by Le Tourneau's more detailed works, which provide much information on the cult of saints at Fez, notably the practices associated with the cult of Moulay Idrís; see especially La vie quotidienne, pp. 281–87. 54von Grunebaum, op. cit., footnote 1 and de Planhol, op. cit., footnote 1. 55Herta Haselberger, Bautraditionen der westafricanische Negerkulturen: Eine völkerkundliche Kunststudie, Wissenschaftliche Schriftenreihe des Afro-Asiatischen Institutes in Wien, Band II (1964), p. 107 and elsewhere; W. B. Morgan and J. C. Pugh, West Africa (London: Methuen & Co., 1969), pp. 46–58; and Basil Davidson, The Lost Cities of Africa (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959), pp. 287–92. 56Among other sources, see de Planhol, op. cit., footnote 1, p. 9. 57O'Fahey and Spaulding, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 146–49; Karl Polanyi [in collaboration with Abraham Rotstein], Dahomey and the Slave Trade: An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966), pp. 52–53; G. F. Afolabi Ojo, Yoruba Palaces: A Study of the Afins of Yorubaland (London: University of London Press, 1966); Peter C. W. Gutkind, The Royal Capital of Buganda: A Study of Internal Conflict and External Ambiguity (The Hague: A. I. Richards, 1963), pp. 9–18; and Georges Balandier, La vie quotidienne au royaume de Kongo du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1965), pp. 143, 145–46. 58O'Fahey and Spaulding, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 54–56. 59O'Fahey and Spaulding, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 78–82. 60Holt, op. cit., footnote 20, pp. 173–78. Officially, the Khalífa's house was not a palace. It was called b[etilde] al-Khalífa; b[etilde] is a colloquial word for “house.” But it functioned as a palace. The self-consciously humble terminology, derived from Süfism, is typically Mahdist. 61It should be said that urban intensity is not, in terms of religious precept, in any way basic to Muslim cities. In fact, according to de Planhol [op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 23–25], the truth is quite the contrary: “lofty” buildings are frowned on as ostentatious. In some Islamic cities there have even been laws against high buildings. I have heard the lowness of Sudanese cities attributed by educated Sudanese to a discouragement of tall buildings inherent in Islam. The fact is that tall buildings built closely together, and a consequent high population density, are a basic feature of cities in all the Islamic countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen) from which the Sudan borrowed its religion and its language. It is remarkable that it did not borrow the idea of tall buildings. 62In 1927 the population densities of the four divisions [aqsäm] which corresponded (rather approximately) in extent to the medieval city ranged from 17,827 up to 70,259 persons per km2—“despite the large quantity of ruins which one finds” in this part of the city. Population density in this area was, at least according to ‘Clerget, about the same in 1927 as it had been in the sixteenth century. See Marcel Clerget, Étude de géographie urbaine et d'histoire économique (Cairo: Imprimerie E. & H. Schindler, 1934), Tome I, pp. 240, 245. 63Emrys Jones, Towns and Cities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 106. 64I assume that the cities are circular. Data are from Mabogunje, op. cit. (Urbanization), footnote 1, pp. 91, 100. 65The evidence is discussed at length in Crawford, op. cit., footnote 23, pp. 189–91, 324. The 1821 sources are Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. II, p. 258 and English, op. cit., footnote 13, pp. 125–28. 66Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. III, pp. 104–05; and Bayard Taylor, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile being a Journey to Central Africa (London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co., 1854), p. 258. 67Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. II, pp. 257–58. 68That is, if we consider that SinnÅ really did have the shape of a semi-circle with a radius of 780 meters. A = πr2 gives an area of 1.91 km2 if r = 780 meters. 69Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. II, p. 258. 70Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. III, p. 104, and Vol. II, p. 194. Shandí was “nearly square,” 3500 meters around, and had “about 8 or 900 houses and 6 or 7000 inhabitants.” Halfäya was a league and a half [i.e., about six km] in circumference and had a population of three to four thousand. If it had a very peculiar shape, its population density might have been higher. 71Winters, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 400–15 and 551–54. 72The various population estimates available for Mahdist Umm Durmän and their respective degrees of reliability are discussed at length in F. Rehfisch, “A Sketch of the Early History of Omdurman,”Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 45 (1964), pp. 35 47 (especially pp. 42–43). The high estimates of Umm Durmän's population were made by several of the Mahdi's prisoners, among them Rosignoli. The estimate of area comes from Slatin, who wrote that Umm Durmän was six English miles long and nowhere over three miles broad. Rehfisch (p. 43) says Umm Durmän was twenty square miles. 73El-Sayed el-Bushra Muhamed, The Urban Geography of North and Central Sudan, unpublished masters thesis, University of London, 1965, p. 166. These figures are based on official town boundaries. 74On the subject of urban agriculture in Yoruba cities and its significance see William Bascom, “Urbanization among the Yoruba,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 60, No. 5 (1955), pp. 446 54; and Morgan and Pugh, op. cit., footnote 55, pp. 313–14, and 453–55. 75See, for example, Balandier, op. cit., footnote 57, pp. 80–97; and Morgan and Pugh, op. cit., footnote 55, pp. 56, and 457–58. 76P. C. Leblond, Le Père Auguste Achte (Algiers, 1912), quoted in Gutkind, op. cit., footnote 57, p. 12; Guilliaume Lejean, Voyage en Abyssinie exécuté de 1862 a 1864 (Paris: Hachette, 1870), p. 206; and L. G. Binger, Voyage du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi… (Paris: Hachette, 1888). Many urban maps in the latter work indicate that African cities were made up of villages. Some of these maps have been reproduced in Morgan and Pugh, op. cit., footnote 55, pp. 47, 48, 50, 51. 77Morgan and Pugh, op. cit., footnote 55, p. 51. 78A. Akindélé and C. Aguessey, Contribution à l'étude de l'histoire de l'ancien royaume de Porto-Novo, Mémoires de l'Institut Français de l'Afrique Noire, No. 25 (Dakar: 1953); and Mabogunje, op. cit., footnote 1 (Urbanization). 79Burckhardt, op. cit., footnote 13, pp. 270–71. 80Burckhardt, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 212. 81Guilliaume Lejean, Voyage aux deux Nils (Nubie, Kordofan, Soudan Oriental) exécuté de 1860 à 1864 par ordre de l'Empereur (Paris: Hachette, 1865?), p. 41. 82Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13, Vol. II, pp. 194, 258. Some of the open space both in Halfäya and in SinnÅ may have been caused by the urban abandonment that occurred in the wake of the Turkish invasion. 83There are a number of words that have been used in the Sudan to refer to sections of cities. Among them are hilla, hayy, nizla, and dém. As noted above, hilla is colloquial for “village” it would appear to be a more common word for “village” in much of the Sudan today than classical qarya. It is also used for parts of cities (as in Hillat Khöjalí, Hillat Fellãa, a slum settlement of West Africans in the Khartoum area, and elsewhere); it perhaps implies a certain autonomy, and possibly a rural connection. Hayy is the classical word for “(city) quarter” and is used in the Sudan in the same sense (as in Hayy al-Qubba). Nizla is given by Burckhardt as the name for “quarter” in Barbar and is sometimes used in this sense today. Dém (plural: dayüm) is evidently a colloquial word only and is used especially in formerly colonial cities to refer to low-prestige quarters (as in al-Dayüm al-Sharqiyya, a group of modest settlements on the southeastern outskirts of Khartoum), but is also has wider application. For example, trading posts of the slave traders in nineteenth-century Bahr al-Ghazā were called dayüm (Holt, op. cit., footnote 20, p. 13). 84von Grunebaum, op. cit. (“Structure”), footnote 1, pp. 141, 155 (footnote 4). 85There is a summary of some aspects of the African technological system in Jacques Maquet, Africanity: The Cultural Unity of Black Africa, translated by Joan R. Rayfield (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 16–28, and there are similar summaries elsewhere, but, in so far as I know, there has never appeared a really detailed statement on the subject. 86Miner, op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 32–37; Winters, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 340–67; Mabogunje, op. cit., footnote 1 (Urbanization) pp. 82–85, 100–01; Balandier, op. cit., footnote 57, pp. 97–107, 140–46; and Richard Pankhurst, “Notes for the History of Gondar,”Ethiopia Observer, Vol. 12 (1969), pp. 177 227, particularly p. 181. Of the works cited above, those by Miner and Mabogunje do not directly deal with technology as such, but the pages listed include descriptions of architecture, crafts, and so on, from which an idea of the technological systems found in the cities in question can be garnered. 87Hill, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 28. 88Lejean, op. cit., footnote 81, p. 115. 89It is worth noting that, partly because of the absence of control over water, and partly because Sudanese buildings were so impermanent, the overwhelming impression which nineteenth-century travelers had of Sudanese cities was often of disorder and of squalor. Lejean's comment about Wad Madaní is typical: it was “a true Sudanese city” in that it was “as imposing from a distance as it was miserable [misérable] inside” (op. cit., footnote 81, p. 116). Similarly, Linant de Bellefonds, who travelled up the Nile in the early 1820s, wrote of the market at Barbar that he had “never seen anything more miserable” (Linant de Bellefonds, Journal d'un voyage à Méroé dans les années 1821 et 1822, edited by Margaret Shinnie, Occasional Papers, Sudan Antiquities Service, No. 4 (1958), p. 71). In like vein, the author of one of Hill's anonymous manuscripts wrote of Wad Madaní (probably in the 1830s) that “the town as a whole is dirty, horrid and unhealthy” (Hill, op. cit., footnote-18, p. 26). Taylor described the houses of Shandí as “rough and filthy” (op. cit., footnote 66, p. 258). 90There are some vivid descriptions of such buildings in Burckhardt, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 212; Cesare Cesari, ed., Viaggi Africani di Pellegrino Matteucci, Viaggi e scoperti di navigatori ed esploratori italiani, No. 18 (Milan: Edizioni Alpes, 1932), pp. 66–67; and Lejean, op. cit., footnote 81, p. 116. There is pictorial evidence in Cailliaud, op. cit., footnote 13 (Fig. 8); and in Linant de Bellefonds, op. cit., footnote 89. 91R. C. Stevenson, “Old Khartoum, 1821–1885,”Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 47 (1966), pp. 1 38, in particular p. 16. 92Abü Salím, op. cit., footnote 18, pp. 30–31, 33–37. 93Stevenson, op. cit., footnote 91, p. 16. 94Abü Salím, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 29. It does not seem unlikely that the idea of a planned street drew its inspiration indirectly from contemporary currents in European city planning. The linking agent in the diffusion process would have been Ottoman Egypt, where Ismä‘í Pasha, following more or less explicitly the example set by Haussmann in Paris, devoted a considerable effort to adding grandiose streets and buildings in Cairo. See Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Cairo, 1001 Years of the City Victorious (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 103–113, 158. 95Abü Salím, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 131, and elsewhere.