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Nubians, Black Africans and the Development of Afro-Egyptian Culture in Cairo

at the End of the Nineteenth Century


Terence Walz
Independent Scholar, Washington, DC

Afro-Egyptian culture, i.e. a behavioral, social and intellectual approach to living that
was inspired and instigated by uprooted and transplanted sub-Saharan Africans in Egypt,
can be followed along behavioral, ritual, and musical lines in a variety of historical and
contemporary texts. It flourished ca 1860-1940 as a consequence of the forced migration
of thousands of black Africans into the lower Nile Valley in the nineteenth century. We
begin the investigation in the venues in which it may first have appeared, and then move
on to its ceremonial and musical ramifications.

Beer Houses
We start with an institution rarely discussed in Egypt the beer house or, in Arabic the
mahall buza. It may be contrasted with the coffeehouse whose cultural milieu has long
been recognized as a mainstay of popular culture.1 In Sudan, the drinking house, where
marisa, the locally brewed beer was made and sold by women, is now recognized as
having been a center of cultural expression.2 I suggest that a similar claim can be made
for the Egyptian mahall buza.
The 1848 census3 provides a sound starting point. It identifies at least ten beer
houses or mahall buza in six of Cairos ten districts. Thirty years later Ali Mubarak
found forty-six, mostly concentrated in the Azbakiya and Bulaq districts, but also at least
one in all other districts with the exception of Darb al-Ahmar, then considered the most

conservative in the city.4 Unlike the more numerous wine establishments (khammarat),
which numbered 486 also heavily concentrated in Azbakiya Europeans did not
frequent beer houses. That is one reason why we know so little about them. The census
indicates the beer houses were run and staffed by Nubians (called Barabira, sing.,
Barbari), with almost no exceptions,5 and we believe they were primarily frequented by
Nubians and trans-Saharan Africans, ex-slave as well as slave. In Upper Egypt and
probably elsewhere in the countryside even the peasants liked to drop in on them.6 A
postcard depicting two Nubian young men dates from ca 1860 is found in Illustration No.
1.
Beer houses existed for centuries in Cairo. One appearance is in a late sixteenthcentury Sharia court dispute in which a name-calling brawl broke out between a client
and the female manager.7 In the early decades of the eighteenth century they were
periodically closed down by Ottoman governors as pious acts or in order to cater to
military factions.8 Edward Lane was aware of buza houses, but he doesnt discuss them in
Manners and Customs though admitting they were frequented by Nile boatmen and
others of the lower orders.9 In his Description of Egypt, he says the Nubians often
indulge themselves with boozeh, of which they are very fond.10 Paton, who visited in
the late 1850s or early 60s, went so far as to say that since Nubians were working in so
many Egyptian and European houses as servants and grooms, buza had become a
household menace.11 There can be no doubt that buza was widely consumed by lowerclass people.
The beer sold in buza houses was probably made of ordinary grain, either millet
or wheat although doura was preferred in the Sudan. It was brewed in vats and allowed to

ferment before being served up with ladles. There is a debate on the alcoholic content of
buza. Dr. Carl Klunzinger, who lived in Quseir, Upper Egypt, in the 1860s, believed it
would have been considered among the lighter beers, what the Germans termed white
beer, noting it was even drunk by women during zar ceremonies.12 But in the Sudan,
John Lewis Burckhardt found it had a high alcoholic content, and perhaps the methods of
brewing and storage significantly differed.13
The houses themselves were occupied by groups of men, called buzanji in Arabic,
ranging from two to fifteen people who came from towns south of Aswan, but largely
from Ibrim, Dongola, and Mahas. We assume it was men who brewed the beer in Egypt,
although that point remains unclear.14 The houses tended to be located in poorer sections
of the city, for example, in the Abdin district shantytown next to Bab al-Luq, or in
Azbakiya near the Bab al-Hadid shantytown, or in run-down courtyards called hawsh in
more aristocratic quarters, such as one in Suq al-Asr in Qaisun district, where fifteen
Barabira lived. These were also areas that were home to Nubians, ex-slaves and slaves.
The influx of Nubians and trans-Saharan Africans into Egypt during the course of
the nineteenth century reached a peak in the two decades between 1850 and 1870, when
the combination of the growth of the bureaucracy and of cotton exports and their
accompanying newly-created wealth allowed more Egyptians to purchase slaves. In bilad
al-Barabira, as Nubia was known, Nubians were forced out of traditional agricultural
pursuits because of high land taxes, and they emigrated to new towns along the Nile and
to Egyptian cities seeking jobs.15 The 1848 census suggests some 3,000 Nubians in Cairo
and perhaps 11,000 trans-Saharan slaves; in the country as a whole, perhaps 30,000
individuals. By 1882, the numbers peaked at 130,000, although the exact distribution

between Nubians and trans-Saharans is unknown because they were counted as a single
people.16
The Egyptian custom of freeing slaves after a certain number of years of service
meant that in 1848 there were some 1,000 to 1,200 freed slavesperhaps a tenth of the
total slave populationliving in Cairo, either with their former masters or independently
in private residences. That number certainly increased over the years, and especially after
1877 when the Anglo-Egyptian Convention was signed ordering the emancipation of
slaves within seven years. However, Africans who had been uprooted and deracinated
were not without networks, as was recently argued by Liat Kozma,17 and color and ethnic
background allowed them to establish connections that are not well known but will
become clearer by the end of this paper.18 For starters, they gathered together in
shantytown areas in the late 1840s that grew up around Abdin, Azbakiya, Bulaq, Old
Cairo, Khalifa, and other districts.19 Later they favored the cheaper areas of the Cairo
suburbs, such as al-Wayly, near where the old barracks once stood, and Imbaba.20 They
and other ex-slaves, freed from the confines of the master-slave bond, could seek out
local buza houses, invariably run by dark-skinned Nubians, where they could feel at
home. There is a telling comment made by the aristocratic poet Aisha al-Taymuriyya
(1840-1902) about her familys freed slaves who, once freed, opted not to stay at their
masters home but sought living space in the city where they were free to resort to low
life in buza houses.21 Making the same point, Ali Mubarak, writing about a large buza
house in Asyut in the 1870s, says it was a meeting place for slaves (abid) and riffraff
(awbash), characteristically on market days, feast days and festivals.22

Sufi Brotherhoods
Another meeting ground were Sufi brotherhoods, although the extent of African
membership in Egyptian lodges is not fully unknown. The influence of lodges in Sudan
and throughout western Sudan is well known. It is tantalizing to note that in the Cairo
1848 census, one of the clusters of Africans lived in a hawsh/courtyard outside the
mosque of Ali al-Qadiri, one of the early figures in the Qadiriyya, and the site of a yearly
moulid and weekly hadras.23 The Qadiriyya was one of the most extensive brotherhoods
in the Sudan.24 Whether they participated in them is not known, but during that time,
other lodges had trans-Saharan appeal. One was the Tijaniyya, whose headquarters was
in a mosque in Darb al-Ahmar in the neighborhood of Mugharbalin, attracted a
significant number of West Africans in the nineteenth century and was endowed by a
freed eunuch named Surur Agha, of possible west Sudanic origin.25 Another lodge with
African adherents was the Handushiya, which originated in Morocco, and was affiliated
with the Shadhiliyya lodge.26 They were one of numerous Sufi groups that attended the
Layla al-Miraj ceremony outside Abdin palace in 1886.27 In Upper Egypt, ties between
Sufi brotherhoods and Sudan are becoming increasingly clearer.28
One powerful attraction of the brotherhoods was undoubtedly the annual moulids
that drew festive crowds. Some Sufi offshoots, such as the Abul Ghayt zar group,
now performing at the El Tanbura concert space in Cairo, incorporated strands of
Sudanese music into their recitations. Among them is one that references a nineteenthcentury personage named Muhammad Murjan who was the leader of a group of Sudanese
and Abyssinian ex slaves who lived on an island in Qaliubiyya, where the Sufi zar
group was established and where their saint, Abul Ghayt, is venerated.29 Their music,

with its long narrative line and numerous references to Muslim saints and the Prophet, to
my ear takes the form of typical dhikr music. Today they distance themselves from the
zar ties, although clearly they were once close.

Feast Days and Festivals


Taking a clue from Mubaraks comment about slaves, Nubians and other low-life
gathering at beer houses during feast days, presumably when they were given time off,
we find ex-slaves embracing these celebrations with music, merry-making, dancing and
beer. In Egypt they seem to have restricted themselves to religious holidays unlike ex
slaves in other cities in the Mediterranean such as Izmir or on Crete30 where the
festivities came annually at specific months of the year. Slaves and freed slaves
frequented local buza houses, and Nubians took to setting up separate booths at moulids
where beer could be consumed and dancing could be enjoyed. In the early twentieth
century, the buza booths and dancing gained in popularity. Not limited to the saints
days festivities of the Nubians or Africans, they extended to the larger feasts of Fatima alNabawiyya, the Moulid al-Nebi in Cairo and the moulid of Ahmad Badawi in Tanta.
A photograph of Sudanese dancing in Sawakin in 1884 was published in the
Graphic (Illus. No. 2), but the dance scenes in Cairo were seen and described at a later
date by the British expatriate Bimbashi Joseph McPherson during visits he made to
moulids from the first decade of the twentieth century to the mid thirties.31 He wrote
about his wonderment after visiting a buza booth where he watched the unusual music
and dance performed by the Sudanese clientele. The tread-mill-like step of the dance,
and the weird instruments, which included a bit of railway line, he wrote, are not like

anything else, and the rather sour and cloudy Sudanese beer (booza) served in bowls or
gourds by ebony hands is equally strange.32 Later he went on to describe in greater detail
the instruments that were played, the ringa, runga or rongo (now called rango), the kuria
and the shakhshakha, which he likened to the sistrums that the ancient Egyptians rattled
and the form to American jazz.
The rongo is particularly arresting. It is a xylophone made of large gourds yoked
together and struck with mallets. The instrument may have originated among the Ndogo,
a people of the Fertit who reside in South Sudan near the present town of Wau.33 The
kuria was fashioned from old railway rails, and also struck; and finally, the rattles called
shakhshakha. The rongo music of the beer halls has not been lost but was performed as
late as the 1970s in small villages in Upper Egypt where descendants of former slaves
lived. The musicologist and dancer Magda Saleh captured a performance of rongo on
film in 1975 while visiting the village of Naga` al-Sudaniyya near Qina.34 A
photographer from Musawwir magazine had photographed one these unusual instrument
a few years earlier (Illustration no. 3).35
The instruments were important parts of African identity and very much an
extension of Africans claim to identity in the world in which they lived. As Aisha
Bilkhair al-Khalifa says regarding the descendants of Africans in Abu Dhabi, they were
willing to shed their names and languages when they came to the Gulf but they couldnt
shed their color and wouldnt give up their music.36 In Morocco, the Afro-Moroccan
ghnawa music is gaining worldwide recognition and popularity; in Tunis, stambeli ritual
music with its roots in Africa has been internationally appreciated. As Richard
Jankowsky makes clear, the stambeli instruments themselves are endowed with character

and soul and speak to people in the ceremonies in which they are played, and the same
is also said of the rongo.37

Music and Identity


Beer houses and Sufi gatherings were social meeting grounds. Given the Sudanese and
Nubian clientele in the buza houses, they became stages for music making, as indeed
occurred at Cairene coffeehouses. I have not seen photographs of beer houses and their
clientele, but tell tale clues might be provided by the musical instruments that are
depicted in some coffeehouse photographs. We start with a photograph of a Cairo
coffeehouse that includes a number of Sudanese musicians (3) and follow with others of
Sudanese musicians (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). In all of them we can recognize the instruments that
are being played the tumbura, or lyre, which is closely associated with zar or tumbura
ceremonies; and around the waist of the gentleman with the outstretched torso, we see a
manjur al-hawafir, which is a belt on to which is sewn goat or sheep hooves, that are
shaken at the hips to make a percussionist, rattling sound: it too is associated with zar
music. Both are Sudanese. Almost all of the nineteenth-century photographs classified as
Sudanese musicians include a manjur and a tumbura. You might say that Sudanese
musicians were defined not only by their hairstyle and color but also by the instruments
they played.
These instruments are also known to have been used in performances of African
musicians in Arabia, as seen in illustration 10, taken from a Hurgronje publication of an
African orchestra in Mecca in 1889.38

Weddings were another cause for celebration, music making, dancing and beer
drinking. An evocation of the melding of the many African groups in the city is found in
an entry from an Italian priests diary for the year 1888. Father Casimiro Giacomelli,
who was then attached to the Verona Fathers institution in Zamalek, wrote in his Diario
about the wedding celebrations of six African Christianized couples, an event that
attracted a large group of Africans from Cairo, friends of the brides and grooms, and
other blacks, Christian and non Christian. They came from a number of different ethnic
groupsthe Verona Fathers were among the few in Egypt who appreciated and noted the
different nationalities in their Sudanese converts. Although he seems in this case to have
blurred a few to add special color to his narrative, Giacomelli writes:

The evening was for dancing, Sudanese of course. The Shilluk, Dinka, Gianghe
[another group of Dinka] and Nuer dance the same warrior dance and run around
a pole with a stick which represents a spear, singing to the sound of a drum, and
pretending to fall and be hurt by the parties while the women answer them in
songs. The Fertit and Niam Niam instead are upright, moving only the upper body
as if to make deep bows, singing and beating time with a tin full of pebbles. The
Nuba and Furians, raise their feet to the finger tips and at the same time their arms
with a stick, then drop on their heels, beating out the time with their feet. The
most difficult and tiring was the dance of the Barabra, which consisted of small
and measured steps that would have exhausted a giant.39
The missionaries unhesitatingly served beer to the celebrantsit was made on their
Zamalek farm by their Sudanese adepts.

Zar and tumbura


It is well known that trans-Saharans responded to enslavement by evolving the ritual
called zar, or spirit possession, with special ceremonies to placate the spirits that
inhabited bodies and caused mental and physical affliction. Its descent from cult

practices in Ethiopia was established by Richard Natvig who has also traced it in Egypt
through historical sources from the 1860s onward. Recently Ehud Toledano included a
discussion on zar and its psychosocial ramifications in his new work on Middle East
slavery, but for the purposes of this paper, I draw on the new work by Richard Jankowsky
called Stambeli, the spirit possession cult in Tunisia, and G. Makriss Changing Masters
on the tumbura cult in Sudan, which was published in 2000.40 Both examine the inherent
connections in cult practice between slavery, slave history, soldiering, and African
origins.
In the Cairo quarters of Jamaliyya and Abdin, which had high concentrations of
slave and freed women, we find earlier references to zar.41 Women were using the zawiya
of Shaykh Musa off Darb Qasr al-Shawq for weekly meetings in which they beat drums,
danced and sang. On this, Mubarak sternly interjects in his Khitat, This is a shameful
deed and not right. Now this calamity has become common in our time in Egypt. Not far
away, he remarks that a zawiya had been rented by a Nubian in 1858-59 who had turned
it into a beer house, but that, subsequently, it was closed by the endower and rebuilt.42
But it is not surprising to find zar practitioners and beer houses in close proximity. As the
cult spread in popularity from slaves to masters (or rather mistresses), it took on Egyptian
cultural layers popular saints were intermingled with the African spirits, some of whom
were Christian, in the synchronistic manner that the cult developed in Tunis at a slightly
earlier time.43 Today zar is practiced by baladi women, without any reference to
Sudanese cult leaders (shaykha)
The association of the cult with zawiyas and saint veneration no doubt led to the
appearance of buza booths and rongo dancing at the moulids, not only in Cairo but

10

probably all over the countryat least wherever Nubians and Sudanese were living in
sufficient numbers. The zar ceremonies were not appreciated by the male religious
establishment, to say the leasteven if their wives were holding private ceremonies in
their homes44and in 1905 the leader of the Sufi movements in Cairo issued new
regulations banning the holding of zar in mosques and zawiyas associated with any of the
tariqas.45 This may well have ended zar ceremonies in the buildings themselves, if not at
the popular moulids, which continued to allow buza booths and dancing to take place into
the 1930s, after which time we lose track of them. McPhersons digressions on rongo
music and buza booths at moulids shocked some of his Muslim readers, and the reviewer
of his book in Sudan Notes and Records was evidently shocked by what he read and
compared the moulids of Egypt, with their buza booths, singers, dancers, fortune tellers,
horse racers and acrobats and their like to the debauched performances of the famous
transvestite performer Husayn Fuad, who dances in the ornaments and apparel of a
woman.46
The music accompanying zar ceremonies draws from several musical traditions
that reflect its pathway into Egypt from Abyssinia and Sudan into Upper Egypt and from
there to Cairo and the Delta. The ceremonies themselves, as Natvig points out in a recent
article, draw on saints and gods of Upper Egypt, Delta, and Sudanic origin.47 They
include Muslim, Christian, and spirits from the African past. The Mazaher group
performing today in Cairo, with its combined Sudanese, Abul-Ghayt and Upper
Egyptian influences, exemplifies the fusion.48 A new album called Rango: Bride of the
Zar made by the Rango ensemble49 is a fusion of Sudanese, Egyptian and Nubian music
with special reference to zar ceremonies. They use old Sudanese instruments in their

11

performances, including the rongo (Illustrations 13 and 14), the manjur and the tumbura.
There are songs for wedding celebrations, which double for songs that invite zar spirits to
attend an afflicted person (called arusa, or bride, in the ceremonies). Not all of the lyrics
are understandable, but what is clear is that this music, resurrected after a long dormant
period, enshrines the historical memory of Sudanese Egyptians during the period they
were enslaved or serving in the Egyptian army as slave soldiers. It very much resembles
the tumbura song narratives that Makris discusses at length and interprets as
representations of pastness that have the quality of historical texts.50
One example suffices. In a song called Bergamon 14, which the anonymous
jacket author says is a word for a Dinka dance, a verse reads,
Run Khalifa, run very fast.
Im telling you, Khalifa, run very fast. Fourteen!51
As I read it, the song invites ex-slaves of Sudanese and Abyssinian origin
(birgamo birgamo baladiyya birgamo sudaniyya habashiyya!) to join in a dance
(birgamo) celebrating the exploits of the Sudanese 14th Battalion that fought in the Battle
of Omdurman in 1898 in which the Mahdist force of the Khalifa Abdallahi was defeated.
Later the 14th Battalion was involved in a mutiny against the British in Omdurman in
1900 and was disbanded by the British when it realized its officer corps had been
infiltrated by Egyptian nationalist sentiment.52 Sudanese soldiers played a long and
heroic life in the history of the armies of the Nile valley whether Turco-Egyptian,
Mahdist or British officered.53

Postscript

12

In the 1920s, zar musicians in Egypt seem to have functioned underground but
nonetheless they were invited to participate in the 1932 Congrs du Caire de la Musique
Arabe. One of the goals of the Congrs was to identify true indigenous music and musical
forms that were then being overwhelmed by westernizing forces; another was to enhance
the international standing of Arab music after a century of being relegated to inferior
status by Europeans. The meeting was sponsored by the king. Zar music certified as
indigenously rooted but its reputation among the Egyptian musical establishment was
highly controversial. Two zar groups were invited: an Egyptian group headed by
Shaykha al-Sitt Umm Ibrahim and another group from the Sudan headed by Fatima alShamiyya.54 The zar groups were not on the original list of groups to perform but were
later added, it is clear, by the honorary foreign commission members who included Bla
Bartk and Robert Lachmann. As Bartk later wrote about his experience at the
Congress, the organizing committee omitted the zar groups in the beginning saying they
were demonizing cults practiced by the lowest classes of the Cairene population. To
these protests, Bartok insisted they be heard since they represented village or street
music and therefore came within the purview of the Congrs. When the group finally
performed, the howling and loud beating of the drums produced such a frightening
cacophony in the small room in which they were playing that some members of the
audience had to cover their ears, much to Bartks amazement and amusement.55
Nonetheless the incident provides a profound comment on the place of Afro-Egyptian
culture within the wider Egyptian culture and how deeply it was frowned uponand
possibly why the music disappeared for several decades. Its resurrection today is related

13

to a resurgence of interest in folklore, traditional musical forms, and international pop


and rap.

I wish to thank Jason Thompson for his sensible suggestions and careful reading of this paper.
1
Ralph S. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses in the Middle East (Seattle, University of Washington Press,
1985); Jean-Charles Depaule, Conteurs et cafs du Caire: textes choisi par in Jean-Claude Garcin
Lectures du roman de Baybars (Paris: Edition Parentheses, 2003), 201-208; Nelly Hanna, Culture in
Ottoman Egypt, in Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 2: 108-10; see also the coffeehouse in Upper Egypt
ca 1865: C. B. Klunzinger, Upper Egypt: Its People and Its Products (London: Blackie & Son, 1878), 2427.
2
Regular part of womens work: Ahmad Sikainga, Slaves in Workers, Austin: University of Texas Press,
1996), 159; see also John Lewis Burchhardt, Travels in Nubia, 2nd ed.( London. John Murray, 1822), 198.
On culture of the houses in general, Sikainga, Slaves into Workers, 159-62
3
On the 1848 census, Kenneth M. Cuno and Michael Reimer, The Census Registers of NineteenthCentury Egypt: A New Source for Social Historians, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24:2
(1997), 193-216; Terence Walz, Sudanese, Habasha, Takarna and Barabira: Trans-Saharan Africans in
Cairo as Shown in the 1848 Census, in Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno, Race and Slavery in the
Middle East (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010), 43-49.
4
Al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-Jadida li-Misr al-Qahira, 2nd ed., 20 vols. (Cairo: Matbaa Dar al-Kutub walWathaiq al-Misriyya, 1969-2005), 1: 238. There were 1,036 coffeehouses at the time (1882).
5
One beer house in Old Cairo was run by two black slaves.
6
Klunzinger, Upper Egypt, 28-30
7
Mubarak vs Khadama, Cairo, Dar al-Wathaiq al-Misriyya, Mahakim Misr, Mahkama Tulun 186, 379, no
1244, dated 23 Shaban 1006/23 March 1598.
8
See the Daniel Crecelius and Abd al-Wahhab Bakr, trans. and annotators, Al-Damurdashis Chronicle of
Egypt 1688-1755: Al-Durra al-Musana fi Akhbar al-Kinana (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 106ff, esp. 121-22ff
9
Edward W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians: Definitive 1860 edition, ed. by Jason
Thompson (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2003), 94, repeated at 335.
10
Edward W. Lane, Description of Egypt, ed by Jason Thompson (Cairo: American University in Cairo
Press, 2000), 459; this is repeated in the 1878 edition of Karl Baedeker, Egypt: Handbook for Travellers,
Part First: Lower Egypt (Leipzig, Baedeker, 1878), 17-18, and 225, footnote 59.
11
A. A. Paton, History of the Egyptian Revolution, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, Trubner and Co., 1863), 2:
318-19
12
Klunzinger, Upper Egypt, 29.
13
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 201.
14
There were no women in the 1848 census of the buza houses.
15
Anders Bjorkelo Prelude to the Mahdiyya: Peasants and Traders in the Shendi Region, 1821-1885
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989).
16
Based on a review of four censuses: Egypt. 1882: Egypt, Direction du recensement. Recensement general
de lEgypte, 2 v. in 3 (Cairo, Impr. nationale de Boulaq, 1884-85); 1897: Egypt, Direction du recensement.
Recensement general de lEgypte, 3 vols. (Cairo: Impr. nationale, 1898- ); 1907: Egypt, Census
Department, The Census of Egypt taken in 1907 (Cairo, National printing department, 1909); 1917: Egypt,
Maslahat Umum al-Ihsa, The census of Egypt taken in 1917 ... 2 vols. (Cairo: Government Press, 1920-21).
17
Black, Kinless, and Hungry: Manumitted Female Slaves in Khedival Egypt, in Walz and Cuno, Race
and Slavery, 197-215. See also her Policing Egyptian Women: Sex, Law, and Medicine in Khedival Egypt
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011).
18
I am borrowing this argument first advanced by G. P. Makris in Changing Masters: Spirit Possession
and Identity: Construction among Slave Descendants and Other Subordinates in the Sudan (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 2000), 117.
19
Walz, Sudanese, Habasha, Takarna and Barabira, 65-67.
20
Anita Fabos, Brothers or Others? Propriety and Gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt (New
York and Oxford: Bergahn Books, 2008), 29.

14

Aisha Taymur, Marat al-taammul fi al-umur, introd. by Mervat Hatem (Cairo: Multaqa al-mara
wal-dhakira, 2002), 37. I am grateful to Dr. Hatem for this reference. Emad Helal, Al-Raqiq fi Masr filqarn al-tasi ashr (Cairo: Dar al-Arabi, 1999), 135, mentions a newspaper column written by Abdallah
Nadim about emancipated slaves frequenting buza houses in 1881.
22
Mubarak 12: 273.
23
In al-Khalifa quarter, a group of 50 black male and female slaves or ex-slaves was living in this
courtyard: DWQ, Ta`dad al-Nufus 1848, Qism al-Khalifa, vol. 171, p. 830; on the mosque, Mubarak,
Khitat 5: 160.
24
See Knut Vikor, Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa, in Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, eds., The
History of Islam in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000), 441-76.
25
Surur Agha: Terence Walz, Trans-Saharan Migration and the Colonial Gaze: The Nigerians in Egypt,
Alif 26 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006), 106-07; he also endowed the Bornu and Wadai
students college at al-Azhar: Walz, ibid., 101-02
26
On them, F. de Jong, Turuq and Turuq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth Century Egypt (Leiden: Brill,
1978) 75-76; and Vincent Crapazano, The Hamadsha: A Study of Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), 2.
27
Murrays Handbook, p. 213 (Festivals in Rageb).
28
Especially the Idrisiya: Ali Salih Karrar, The Sufi Brotherhoods in the Sudan (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1992), 57; R. S. OFahey, Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990), 52-58; Mark Sedgwick, Upper Egypts Regional
Identity: The Role and Impact of Sufi Links, in Nicholas Hopkins and Reem Saad, eds., Upper Egypt:
Identity and Change (Cairo, American Unievrsity in Cairo Press, 2004), 97-118/
29
http://elmastaba.weebly.com/abou-el-gheit-dervishes.html
30
Michael Ferguson, Enslaved and Emancipated Africans on Crete, in Walz and Cuno, Race and
Slavery, 171-196; Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise, 1800-190 0 (London:
Macmillan Press, 1996); Suraiya Faroqhi, Black Slaves and Freedmen Celebrating (Aydin, 1576),
Turcica 21 (1991), 205-11
31
Joseph W. McPherson, The Moulids of Egypt (London, N. M. Press, 1941).
32
McPherson, Moulids of Egypt, 87.
33
F. L. Wheaton, Letter from Kassala, dated 25.9.45, in response to a review of the Moulids of Egypt,
Sudan Notes and Records 26, pt 2 (1945), 352.
34
Magda Salih, Rongo, in Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus and Dwight Reynolds, eds., The Garland
Encyclopedia of World Music Dance in Egypt, in Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 6: The
Middle East (Routledge, 2001).
35
Ahmad Abu Kaff, Tumbura, Nag` al-abid wal-Rifa`iyya. Musawwir, 19 February 1971.
36
Aisha Bukhair Khalifa, African Influence on Culture and Music in Dubai, International Social Science
Journal (UNESCO), 58.2 (June 2006), 227-35.
37
Richard C. Jankowsky, Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010), 98; the same is said on the album called Rango discussed further on.
38
C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka. Mit Bilder-atlas; Hrsg. von "Het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indi te 's-Gravenhage". (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1888-89).
39
La piu difficile e faticosa e la danza dei Barabra che consiste in contorcimenti e piccoli passi misurati da
stancare un colosso: Casimiro Giacomelli, Il mio giornale, mss in the Archivio Comboniano, Rome,
A145/8, 2 vols., 1:230.
40
Ehud Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2007); G. P. Makris, Changing Masters: Spirit Possession and Identity:
Construction among Slave Descendants and Other Subordinates in the Sudan (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 2000).
41
Mubarak, Khitat 2:223-24; Artin Pasha, Zul-Kadr et Bab Zoueyleh, Bull. Institut egyptien 6 (1885),
184.
42
Mubarak, Khitat 2: 212.
43
Jankowsky, ; the brochure of the CD Zar also makes this clear.
44
See the painting by Fatheya Dhuni in the Egyptian Geographical Society Ethnographic Museum.
45
Frederik de Jong, Turuq and Turuq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth Century Egypt (Leiden: Brill,
1978), 205
21

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46

Sudan Notes and Records 26. 1 (1945), 190-92; A. J. Arkell, the editor, who greatly admired McPherson,
provided a reviewers rejoinder in the same issue, pointing out that the Egyptian moulids had both
devotional and secular sides of the festivals are intricately associated (Sudan Notes and Records 26.1
(1945), 192. With regard to the performer Husayn Fuad,. I have been unable to trace him further.
47
Richard Johan Natvig, Zar in Upper Egypt: Hans Alexander Winklers Field Notes from 1932,
IslamicAfrica 1.1 (2010), 11-30
48
Currently (2011) they perform at MaKan in downtown Cairo.
49
Rango: Bride of the Zar, 30 IPS HOR21948, El Mastaba Centre [Cairo] and 30 IPS, London, 2010.
50
Makris, Changing Masters, 259
51
Rango, Song No. 5, Bergamon 14.
52
M. W. Daly, The Egyptian Army Mutiny at Omdurman January-February 1900, Bulletin of the British
Society for Middle Eastern Studies 8:1 (1981), 3-12.
53
Ahmad A. Sikainga, Comrades in Arms or Captives in Bondage: Sudanese Slaves in the TurcoEgyptian Army, 1821-1865, in Miura Toru and John Edward Philips, eds., Slaves Elites in the Middle East
and Africa (London and New York, Kegan Paul, 2001), 197-214; Alice Moore-Harell, The TurcoEgyptian Army in Sudan on the Eve of the Mahdiyya, 1877-80, International Journal of Middle East
Studies 31 (1999), 19-37; Douglas Johnson, Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the
Twentieth Century, in Leonie Archer, ed., Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour (London:
Routledge, 1988), 142-156; see also articles by (a different) Doug Johnson in
http://www.savageandsoldier.com/sudan/Egyptian_Army.html.
54
Musique arabe: Le Congress du Caire (Cairo, CEDEJ, 1992), 159
55
Op cit., 159-60; Bla Bartk, At the Congress for Arab Music Cairo, 1932, in Bla Bartk Essays,
sel. and ed. by Benjamin Suchoff, (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 39

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