Nubian and Upper Egyptian

[topdog]

Robert Furnea, Nubians in Egypt, 1973, University of Texas Press, p. 13


"Upper Egypt, home of the Sa'idi peoples, conventionally is defined as the area from Asyut south to Aswan. On the outskirts of Aswan, the Nubian villages began and extended south along the Nile past the Egyptian Sudanese border to Khartoum. If, however, we accept the Nubian view of the location of their people, Nubians are also to be found north of Aswan town, in the rich agricultural areas around Esna, Edfu, Daraw, and Kom Ombo. The inhabitants of many villages in the region look Nubian, being somewhat darker than other Egyptians. Members of an old Upper Egyptian tribal grouping, the Ga'afra, these people are generally considered to be Sa'idis like their neighbors, and it would be difficult to make a clear-cut separation between the various groups in the area. However, many Ga'afra believe they are related to the Nubians, a belief reciprocated by the Nubians themselves."

[topdog]

Question for Baladi, who are the Ga'afra? Are they Upper Egyptians or Nubians?

[Baladi]

Ga'afra claim they are Arabs. Most Ga'afra will claim that they come from al-Jafar an Arab patriarch that settled around modern day Edufu to Aswan. Most Ga'afra I have seen look nothing like Nubians in Aswan.



You also have the Ababda that live in some villages in Aswan that many believe are Arabized Beja people.



Ja'afra and Nubians hate each other. Most Nubians don't really intermingle with Saidi as many people think. Lots of bad blood between the Ja'afra people and Nubians.

[topdog]

baladi said:

Ga'afra claim they are Arabs. Most Ga'afra will claim that they come from al-Jafar an Arab patriarch that settled around modern day Edufu to Aswan. Most Ga'afra I have seen look nothing like Nubians in Aswan.



You also have the Ababda that live in some villages in Aswan that many believe are Arabized Beja people.



Ja'afra and Nubians hate each other. Most Nubians don't really intermingle with Saidi as many people think. Lots of bad blood between the Ja'afra people and Nubians.

So this book was false?

[Baladi]

Not necessarily. There could be a connection between Nubians and the Gi'afra people. I am just going off what local Gi'afra have told me. You might find some Gi'afra that are in reality Kushaf[that is Nubian people with Turkish lineage]. Turkish people use to run parts of Aswan and even today you will find certain Aswani Egyptians that claim they are Jainassary mercenaries.

From Edufu to Aswan there is a kind of ancient overlap between Saidi people and Nubians. Sometimes its difficult in this region to tell who is Saidi or Nubian. I think this is probably because Saidi and Nubians have always existed in this region historically.


If you read Herodotus he talks about how Elephantine[modern day Aswan] is half Egyptian and half Nubian. Plus in ancient Egypt Aswan[Elephantine] was considered the first of the first nome in Egypt. From Edfu down to Aswan was typically Ta-seti[the Nubian nome].


People should not always treat Upper Egypt[Saeed] as an isolated enviroment. True Upper Egypt had less foreigners over the years,but still immigrants from the Late Dyanstic Period into the Islamic era in Egypt poured into Upper Egypt. Arab tribes were settled in parts of Middle and Upper Egypt as well as parts of the Delta. Most of these Arabs were Yemani and Syrian bedouins.



In Medieval Egypt[that is mostly during the Ayyubid into Mameluke period] different groups were rewarded fiefs[that is tracts of land for military service] in various fertile parts of Egypt. Because of this you had bedouin tribes settled all around parts of Egypt that clashed with the indigenous Fellahin.



This is why its always a good idea to study Egyptian history from the pre-dyanstic period into the modern era.




BTW,Charlie, did you know there were gypsies in various parts of Egypt? Most are usually dancers,trash collectors,or metal-smiths. Some gypsies also exist in Sudan known as the Halebi[they are look down upon].

[alexandrian]

The Nubians who extend as far North as Kom Ombo were repatriated there upon the destruciton of their villages at the hands of the creation of Lake Nasser upon completeion of the Aswan High Dam.

[topdog]

It appears you're right Baladi. From the same page of the book I cited earlier:

"The Fedija, Nubians of the South, have described the Ga'afra people as "Arab Egyptianized" Nubians with whom they feel at home and share similar attitudes and lifestyles, even though they no no longer share a common language. The Ga'afra apparently feel somewhat the same way, for during the years of the British Mandate, many young men from these villages reportedly chose to serve not in the regular divisions of the Egyptian army but in the Hagana, the Sudanese border unit, which contained a large percentage of Nubians."

Is that an accurate summing up?

And on page 15:

"The term Fedija raises problems; historically, these people used no term of self-reference other than Nubi. Fedija is in fact a Kenuzi word that means fellah(peasant), a term that has less than complimentary connotations. The historic relations between these two groups have not been particularly warm, and the fact that the Fedija have begun to refer to themselves by this term no doubt reflects the several generations of peaceful contact passed between the two groups."

[mike2]

How did the Nubians go from speaking Meroitic to speaking a Nilo-Saharan language?

[Wadaad]

mike2 said:

How did the Nubians go from speaking Meroitic to speaking a Nilo-Saharan language?

Meriotic could very well be Nilo-Saharan, we'll only know once the alphabet gets deciphered

[topdog]

mike2 said:

How did the Nubians go from speaking Meroitic to speaking a Nilo-Saharan language?

I don't know, Waadad may have hit the answer head on better than I did. Perhaps meriotic is some distant Nilo-Saharan proto-language. That is an interesting question.

[erudite]

"The southern affinities of the series are striking given that commonly held or stated classical 'racial' views of the Egyptians predict a notable distinction from 'Africans'. Thus any scheme that labels Nubians and all Egyptians as a 'Caucasian' monotypic entity is seen to be a hypothesis which is easily falsified. Metric analysis in fact clearly suggest that at least southern
'Egyptian' groups were a part of indigenous holocene
Saharo-tropical African variation."

Shomarka Keita, 'Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 129-30.