Male figure. Malawi.

Wood, 103 x 30 x 20 cm.

Felix Collection.

 

 

The Danakil and Somali are, at the present time, for the most part Muslim; they are mostly nomadic, divided into a multitude of little tribes. The Galla, at the same time farmers and shepherds, are in majority pagans, but many of them are Christians; one finds among them communal collectivities[17] administered by a council of notables. They were already constituted at the time of the Pharaohs; very powerful in the 10th century CE, and according to Masudi, they undertook great migrations in the 15th and 16th centuries; after having been for a long time redoubtable adversaries of the negus of Abyssinia, they were engulfed in the empire of the latter in the 18th century.

 

To the south of the Muslim States of central Sudan and of the populations, more or less influenced by Abyssinia, of eastern Sudan, live numerous peoples who are in general very backwards, some cannibals, among whom Islam has not penetrated and who, up to a recent epoch, have served as a reservoir of slaves for the Mohammedan princes of the north. Such are the Gbari, the Munchi, Batta, Fali, Mbum, etc., in the southern Hausa country and the Adamawa; such are equally the Baya of the upper Sangha, the Manjia of the Wahm, the Banda of the upper Ubangui, the Azandeh or Niam-Niam who follow them to the east, all belonging to the same ethnic and linguistic group; such also are the Sara, the Kenga, the Gaberi, etc., at the south of the Bagirmi, the Bulala and the Kuka of the Fitri, the Bongo and the Krej of the upper Bahr-el-Ghazal and still other populations forming with these and with the Bagirmians another group; such also are the Rougna to the south of the Wadai, the Dinka to the south of Darfur, Nuer and Shillook to the south of Kurdufan; such finally, along the upper Nile, are the Bari, the Madi and the Mombuttu who live to the west and north of Lake Albert, and more to the east and to the southeast, the Wandorobo and their cousins the Kuafi, the Rumba, the Taturu and the Masai.

 

All these peoples together constitute the most southern representatives of the groups called “Sudanese” and border on the most northern portion of the Bantu group. The line of demarcation, which is very irregular, starts from the Atlantic in the region of Calabar, to the northwest of Duala, and at first follows approximately the 5° of north latitude as far as the Sangha, then the 3° to about Lake Rudolf, bending then in the direction of the south so that it attains the Indian Ocean towards the 5° of south latitude, between Mombasa and Zanzibar.