Hadendoa
Hadendoa is the name of an
East African nomadic tribe. They, like the
Bisharin and
Ababda, belong to the
Beja people. The area inhabited by the Hadendoa is today parts of
Sudan,
Egypt, and
Eritrea.
The language of the Hadendoa is a dialect of
Bedawi, a
Cushitic Afro-Asiatic language.
Arabic is also spoken among the Hadendoa.
Sunni Islam is the religion of the Hadendoa.
According to Roper (1930), the name
Haɖanɖiwa is made up of
haɖa 'lion' and
(n)ɖiwa 'clan'. Other variants are
Haɖai ɖiwa,
Hanɖiwa and
Haɖaatʼar (children of lioness).
The Hadendoa are traditionally a pastoral people, ruled by a hereditary chief who, in colonial times, was directly responsible to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan government.
Osman Digna, one of the best-known chiefs during the
Madhia, was a Hadendoa, and the tribe contributed some of the fiercest of the dervish warriors in the wars of 1883-1898. So determined were they in their opposition to the Anglo-Egyptian forces that the name Hadendoa grew to be nearly synonymous with rebel. This, however, was the result of Egyptian misgovernment rather than religious enthusiasm, as the Hadendoa of the time were true Beja, and Muslims only in name. Their elaborate hairdressing gained them the name of
Fuzzy-wuzzies among the British troops (this was likely the inspiration for
Rudyard Kipling's poem, "Fuzzy Wuzzy".) They earned an unenviable reputation during the wars by their hideous mutilations of the dead on the battlefields. After the reconquest of the
Egyptian Sudan (1896-1898) the Hadendoa accepted the new order without demur.
From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica*Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905)
*Sir F. R. Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan (London, 1891)
*G. Sergi, Africa: Anthropology of the Hamilic Race (1897)
*A. H. Keane, Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884)
Roper, E.M.: Tu Bedawie : an elementary handbook for the use of Sudan government officials. (Hertford, 1930)
