Hadendoa
Encyclopedia
Hadendoa is the name of a nomad
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...

ic subdivision of the Beja people
Beja people
The Beja people are an ethnic group dwelling in parts of North Africa and the Horn of Africa.-Geography:The Beja are found mostly in Sudan, but also in parts of Eritrea, and Egypt...

. Other Beja tribes include the Bisharin and Ababda. The area inhabited by the Hadendoa is today parts of Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...

, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 and Eritrea
Eritrea
Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

.

Overview

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).

The Hadendoa are traditionally a pastoral
Pastoralism
Pastoralism or pastoral farming is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It may have a mobile aspect, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and...

 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
Osman Digna
Osman Digna was a follower of the Mahdi in Sudan, and hailed from the Hadendoa tribe of the Beja people. His birthplace is unknown; Suakin was said to be the town where he was born. When he was called Osman Ali, Osman Digna lived in Alexandria, Egypt, where he dealt in the selling of slaves...

, one of the best-known chiefs during the Mahdiyyah rebellion under Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah was a religious leader of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, on June 29, 1881, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi or messianic redeemer of the Islamic faith...

, was a Hadendoa, and the tribe contributed some of the fiercest of the Dervish
Dervish
A Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus.-Etymology:The Persian word darvīsh is of ancient origin and descends from a Proto-Iranian...

 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
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

's poem, Fuzzy-Wuzzy
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
Fuzzy-Wuzzy is a poem by the English author and poet Rudyard Kipling, published in 1892 as part of Barrack Room Ballads. It describes the respect of the ordinary British soldier for the bravery of the Hadendoa warriors who fought the British army in the Sudan.-Background:"Fuzzy-Wuzzy" was the term...

.) 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.

Language

The language of the Hadendoa is a dialect of Bedawi
Beja language
Beja or North Cushitic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the southern coast of the Red Sea, spoken by about two million nomads, the Beja, in parts of Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea.-Classification:...

, which is a member of the Cushitic
Cushitic languages
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in the Horn of Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt. They are named after the Biblical character Cush, who was identified as an ancestor of the speakers of these specific languages as early as AD 947...

 branch of the Afro-Asiatic
Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...

 language family. Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 is also spoken among the Hadendoa.

Religion

Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....

 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.

See also

  • Osman Digna
    Osman Digna
    Osman Digna was a follower of the Mahdi in Sudan, and hailed from the Hadendoa tribe of the Beja people. His birthplace is unknown; Suakin was said to be the town where he was born. When he was called Osman Ali, Osman Digna lived in Alexandria, Egypt, where he dealt in the selling of slaves...

     was a former Mahdi
    Mahdi
    In Islamic eschatology, the Mahdi is the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will stay on Earth for seven, nine or nineteen years- before the Day of Judgment and, alongside Jesus, will rid the world of wrongdoing, injustice and tyranny.In Shia Islam, the belief in the Mahdi is a "central religious...

     general who led the Hadendoa to break a British infantry square
    Infantry square
    An infantry square is a combat formation an infantry unit forms in close order when threatened with cavalry attack.-Very early history:The formation was described by Plutarch and used by the Romans, and was developed from an earlier circular formation...

     in the Battle of Tamai
    Battle of Tamai
    The Battle of Tamai took place on March 13, 1884 between a British force under Sir Gerald Graham and a Mahdist Sudanese army led by Osman Digna....

    , although he ultimately lost the battle itself.
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