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NUBA 555
demonstrations, myths and speculations on the origins of specific Nuba groups
from north to south (Ghulfan, Dair, Dilling), from west to east (Nyimang, Tira),
from east to west (Kao, Taqali, Kaduru) and even from the south to north
(Fungor)!
There are perhaps up to 100 mutually unintelligible vernaculars in the Nuba
hills and some ten distinct groups of languages representing at least two (Niger-
Congo and Nilo-Saharan) of Africa's five distinct unrelated linguistic stocks
(Malayo-Polynesian, Khoisan, Afro-Asiatic). The great majority of the people
also speak Arabic. People speaking one of the language groups of the Nuba
Mountains, especially the languages of Dair, Dilling, Kaduru, Ghulfan (the socalled
Hill Nubian) once were found farther north in the plains of Kordofan.
The western Nuba Mountains have a few communities of Daju speakers, probably
migrants from the once powerful Daju rulers of Darfur (see Daju). Other major
language groups of the Nuba Mountains are related to west, central and southern
African languages.
The evidence of the great linguistic diversity and complexity of the Nuba
Mountain peoples and the demonstrated similarity to languages elsewhere suggest
the Nuba Mountains, if nothing else, were a refugee area over the past millenium
or more for peoples from all directions finding security in and around and on
the granite inselbergs that rise out of Kordofan. Here they could engage in rainfall
agriculture and attempt to escape both slave raiders and oppressive state forms
found farther north, west and east, partially secure in their isolation and in the
defensive advantage of the rocky mountians themselves.
This security was only partial, for the Nuba Mountains became for many years
a source of slaves by raiders from the north. As a consequence local people
developed a marked distrust of outsiders as practically every contact was exploitive
in some manner. Although some slaves were undoubtedly from the Nuba
Mountains of Kordofan, the common literary and historical reference to all
African slaves in the Middle East and Orient as "Nuba" or "Nubian" is hardly
an accurate specification of origin. By literary license, Nuba or Nubian came to
be synonymous with black or even African, especially from the northeast of
Africa.
As there has been no overall political unity of the non-Arab inhabitants of the
Nuba Mountains, no term, save Nuba, has emerged to refer to the entire population.
In historical literature occasionally a term may be used to refer, mistakenly,
to inhabitants of large portions of the area which stems from but one
specific group of people, one hill community or small group of hill communities.
One such term is anag (anaq), variously translated as "aborigine," "non-Muslim
inhabitant" or "pagan." It is found particularly in reference to northern hill
groups, argued by some to be Nubian migrants from farther north into the Nuba
Mountains. Another term is turuj, referring to a small group of cultivators in
southwest Kordofan, but formerly used to refer to pagans of the entire region,
particularly western Nuba frequently slaved by rulers in Darfur and Sennar.
While some hill communities have specific histories and traditions, some have