Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: the medieval scene
- 2 Egypt: al-Misr
- 3 Ifriqiya and the Regencies
- 4 The Islamic Far West: Morocco
- 5 The western Sudan and upper Guinea
- 6 The central Sudan and lower Guinea
- 7 Nubia, Darfur and Wadai
- 8 The north-eastern triangle
- 9 The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau
- 10 The heart of Africa
- 11 The land of the blacksmith kings
- 12 From the Lualaba to the Zambezi
- 13 The approaches to Zimbabwe
- 14 The peoples of the South
- Epilogue
- Further reading
- Index
9 - The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: the medieval scene
- 2 Egypt: al-Misr
- 3 Ifriqiya and the Regencies
- 4 The Islamic Far West: Morocco
- 5 The western Sudan and upper Guinea
- 6 The central Sudan and lower Guinea
- 7 Nubia, Darfur and Wadai
- 8 The north-eastern triangle
- 9 The upper Nile basin and the East African plateau
- 10 The heart of Africa
- 11 The land of the blacksmith kings
- 12 From the Lualaba to the Zambezi
- 13 The approaches to Zimbabwe
- 14 The peoples of the South
- Epilogue
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
Between northern Central Africa on the west and the Ethiopian highland region to the east lay the great basin of the upper Nile. At its centre, extending for nearly 300 miles on either side of the White Nile, was the Sudd, a vast, swampy region most of which lay under water for half of every year and which set a natural limit to the southward expansion of the great kingdoms of the middle Nile – first Meroe, then the Christian kingdom of ʿAlwa, then the Muslim sultanate of the Funj. The Sudd was inhabited by Western Nilotes (sometimes called Rivers and Lakes Nilotes) speaking the closely related Dinka, Nuer and Lwo languages. Though practising some agriculture, these were primarily pastoralists and fishermen, who congregated during the wet season on the low ridges which rose above the flood waters, and during the dry season spread out with their cattle to take advantage of the floodland grazing. Beyond them to the east and the south, the drier periphery of the upper Nile basin was inhabited by another set of Nilotic-speaking peoples known as Eastern (or Highland and Plains) Nilotes, who were the easternmost of all the Sudanic-speaking peoples.
Until shortly before the start of the second millennium ad, all these Nilotic peoples seem to have lived to the north of the Imotong mountains, within the modern frontiers of the Sudan Republic or in the lowland margins of south-western Ethiopia.
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- Medieval Africa, 1250–1800 , pp. 135 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001