The Origin of the Sudanese 'Africans'

[JackieBurkhart]

I've been curious about how many Sudanese define themselves as Arabs when many look no different to other Africans and fairly dark as well. (Not unexpected).
I know obviously it's possible they've been Arabized, similarly to the North Africans, but they also have many indigenous languages? Someone please explain!!!
@Nilo-Saharan, your a Sudanese. Can you explain this phenomenon?

I've seen this:
https://www.fsigeneticssup.com/article/S1875-1768(08)00161-3/fulltext#:~:text=The haplogroup distribution in Sudan,worldwide mtDNA diversity outside Africa.
https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article/30/R1/R37/6204791
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep09996

Edit: Not well versed in genetics and such. Please put this in layman's terms.

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

Discussion about Sudanese people eh? Let me slide right into this. Before I start I want to say I will not be disclosing my specific Sudanese Ethnicity for my own personal reasons and beliefs one of them being how in Sudanese society one's tribe is often asked upon in casual conversation and it leads people to form prejudices and negative opinions on someone simply based on that piece of information. I've honestly in the past also had my opinions and viewpoints on certain Sudanese discussions entirely discredited simply due to me making the mistake of mentioning my ethnicity. It's something that has fueled tribalism greatly in Sudan and I am all against this degeneracy of obsessing so much over one's ethnic origin so as a result, I make it a strict rule for myself to not discuss my tribal lineage/ethnic background regardless of if I'm online or in-person to avoid blatant tribalism from Sudanese people I speak to and because I just don't believe it's important. So if you are looking for a more personal answer I can try but I won't be able to really do that without exposing too much about myself but I will give you the basic facts, what I've observed and how it all breaks down into the whole Arab Identity crisis in Sudan today.

"Sudanese people look like other Africans how can they be Arab?"
While the first half of this statement is undeniably true (with the exclusion of some Sudanese people), being Arab has nothing to do with ones appearance. It is very clear from my Sudanese experience, appearance does however play a role in how easily you are accepted as "Arab" by other Arabs. I myself have found despite me speaking better Arabic (but not reading very well lol) than some Arabs they still have always seen me as some sort of "Fake-Arab" or "Outsider". I've even had Arabs directly tell me that Sudanese people aren't "Real Arabs" whereas others have been more cut-throat and straightforwardly racist. Appearance definitely does play a role in acceptance otherwise countless Sudanese people would not be called numerous racial slurs (specifically targeted towards black people) by Arabs. But appearance is only really limited to how Arabs really perceive you and how easily they welcome you and accept you. In some instances, a Sudanese person could possibly have more Arab blood than a Tunisian but in the eyes of a racist Saudi man, he is most likely going to be much more respectful and welcoming creating a spirit of Arab Brotherhood towards the Tunisian man for the obvious reasons that the Sudanese man is very different in appearance to the former two and is, therefore associated to Black Africans due to his appearance and his Arab card is pretty much revoked by some individuals for this very reason. But who's to say a Sudanese person isn't Arab just because some Saudi dude doesn't like his skin color or hair texture? As various there are interpretations and understandings of what makes someone Arab, none of them seem to initiate an explicit focus on physical appearance or anything merely along the lines of phenotype. And in this regard, Sudanese people looking like Black Africans is totally irrelevant when pondering "Why do Sudanese people claim Arabs?". Personally, I am against Sudan trying to tie itself with Arabs and I am in favour of a culturally and politically autonomous future separate from Arabs only maintaining ties with our Age-old allies, the Egyptians but I'm just being honest here, this isn't good counter to Sudanese people regarding themselves as Arab and I don't even want Sudanese people to be calling themselves that.

"Sudanese people have been Arabized so why do so many Indigenous languages still exist?"
The process of Arabization has been especially significant in Africa and the state of North Africa is living evidence of that. The extent to which Berber languages for example have been reduced shows how rapidly the expansion of the Arabic language and cultural identity occurred and it also shows the utter expanse to which it reached. However, I think this is more common sense than it is deeper knowledge. Arab culture sure was influential but North Africa, Sudan included are very vast areas of land in comparison to smaller regions like the Levant which Arabs were capable of completely assimilating and influencing to the point of most indigenous languages being wiped out and a couple of isolated languages in neighboring regions being the only remnants of the prior age. To cut to the chase, Sudan is large and very diverse given its history and geography, it has allowed for various cultures and languages to be created along with numerous civilizations being created that contributed to further diversifying the land on both linguistic and cultural grounds. It is no surprise that the process of Arabization in Sudan didn't go very far but then again 70% of the country identifying as Arab is still a considerably large fraction of the country depending on how you want to look at it. This is also paired with how Sudan (to my current knowledge) was one of the only nations in the Arab world that brandished the Arab identity without having to suffer any sort of external military conquest. It all happened with slow gradual migration, trade, and internal influences, with no external military conquest involved at all. Arabs attempted military conquest into Sudan seeing as it was the gateway into Sub-Saharan Africa and possibly provided an opportunity for conquering the prosperous lands of Ethiopia but they failed on both attempts in Nubia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Dongola#:~:text=The%20First%20Battle%20of%20Dongola,Kingdom%20of%20Makuria%20in%20642.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Dongola

All the factors above show why Sudan unlike other Arab nations still retains so much of its indigenous Pre-Arab heritage and why the myth that Sudanese Arabs are purely "invaders/settlers" also holds not much truth to it.
It's also important to mention that while many Sudanese ethnic groups still have an indigenous language that they speak, culturally many of these tribes are still very Arab-oriented. Nubians and Beja being a perfect examples of this, they both speak indigenous languages but their culture is massively influenced by Arab culture and shares many similarities. Unfortunately, indigenous languages are on the decline and some have gone extinct as recently as the 70s. I pray for when we as Sudanese people can realize the importance of our true and original heritage and uplift and teach the original languages of our land, Inshallah.

As for Genetics, I will tackle that separately.

 

[Burqad]

Why do you think Arab and African are binary? Are you American?

 

[Nilo-Saharan]

You seem to have linked some studies but I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point or want to me to break them down, but I'll just try explain them and then we can move on to some discourse.
Link 1:
This is a study that is researching mtDNA diversity in Sudan. mtDNA or Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA found in the Mitochondria of your cells. Unlike DNA found in the Nucleus, mitochondrial DNA forms its own distinct structure in the form of a circular chromosome in several copies within a single mitochondrion, and its infamously known for its role in the regulation of Cell Metabolism. There's numerous other structural and functional differences between mtDNA and Nuclear DNA but these aren't relevant to what you probably want to know. What makes mtDNA so significant in studies like this is that mtDNA is inherited solely from your mother and that links into cellular metabolism, that's why people always like to blame their mothers for their shitty metabolisms lol. But in Genetic studies like this mtDNA gives us a look inside into the Maternal Ancestry of a single person or various people. As you probably already know, you have many ancestors all probably (going back far enough from different places). I won't get into specifics but let's just say that that mtDNA can be sequenced to look for specific characteristics that help us identify "markers" or things that tell us more about the background of how this mtDNA came to be inherited. And through this we are able to map out a pie chart (as shown in the study) of your matrilineal lineage and the many geographic populations we can associate with that specific lineage. Only thing is this study does a pie chart on numerous individuals and instead of mapping out their individual mtDNA components, they map out something called a Haplogroup. A haplogroup in simple terms is defined as something in your chromosomes that specifically indicates you share a common ancestor with the same group of people who also bear that haplogroup. What specifically makes one Haplogroup different from the next I can briefly summarise as small minute differences between Chromosomes and their "Haplotypes" which has got to do with the positioning and differences between Genes on a Chromosome. Relating this to mtDNA, because of that now we know, a haplogroup based on these small differences between genes can technically be assigned to anywhere there is DNA in your cell. However, there are two haplogroup sources because it is essential to differentiate between Paternal and Maternal ancestry in this sort of thing. You can either get Haplogroups from Y-DNA (solely inherited from the Father however only males have Y-DNA so that's the downside) which tells you about Paternal Ancestry or you can get Haplogroups from mtDNA (which both males and females have) telling you about maternal ancestry. In this study, Maternal Haplogroups are the focus and the statistics are as stated. You have any questions ask away.

Link 2:
This is more medical oriented and tries to hypothesize medical patterns in the genes of Sudanese populations and the origins for why some heritable diseases are so frequent among specific demographics. But what do you want to talk about?
Link 3:
This basically shows genetic variation among Sudanese populations. It mainly shows geography playing some indirect role in the Quantity of Eurasian admixture in Sudanese people and the extent to which Sudanese Arabs are admixed. This study doesn't cover much that isn't already surface-level knowledge. I could go more in-depth into methods if you're interested.

 

[Garaad diinle]

I gather from what you wrote that you consider yourself a sudanese arab, interesting.

 

[JackieBurkhart]

I gather from what you wrote that you consider yourself a sudanese arab, interesting.

Who? @Nilo-Saharan? I'm not Sudanese.

 

[Garaad diinle]

Who? @Nilo-Saharan? I'm not Sudanese.

Kkkkk don't jump the gun calm down i know you're not an ana 3arab. I meant the other guy. He said that his been perceived as a "fake arab" which means he must of seen himself as an arab. I use to think that he was a nilo-saharan i mean it's right in his username name but i guess he has some arab blood in him.

 

[JackieBurkhart]

Kkkkk don't jump the gun calm down i know you're not an ana 3arab. I meant the other guy. He said that his been perceived as a "fake arab" which means he must of seen himself as an arab. I use to think that he was a nilo-saharan i mean it's right in his username name but i guess he has some arab blood in him.

Sorry, my tone sounded rude. I meant it in a questioning way like "Who? Me? I'm not Sudanese".

I was confused. Apologies.

 

[Nilotic]

@Nilo-Saharan

Thanks heaps for your very informative posts. I really do appreciate it, brother.

 

[JackieBurkhart]

Why do you think Arab and African are binary? Are you American?

That's a nonsensical argument, nationality has nothing to do with this. Please refute my points.

*To your other point, because they're often completely different groups of people (excluding North Africans) that in general, don't share common DNA or other markers. You could talk about trade, but still even Somalis are still Africans despite trading heavily with them and exchanging culture. Arabs are often closer to other groups of Asians, such as Turks of Persians. Naturally considering they live closer to each other.

Edit: I think of them in terms like African/Arab considering they have both.

 

[JackieBurkhart]

@Nilo-Saharan. I found this article.
What do you think?
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/12/04/are-sudanese-arabs/

 

[Garaad diinle]

Sorry, my tone sounded rude. I meant it in a questioning way like "Who? Me? I'm not Sudanese".

I was confused. Apologies.

Nah don't worry about it i never took offence to it. I simply remembered how you strongly rebuked these who said all somalis were arabs and thought to tease you a little bit that's all. You weren't rude or anything don't sweated.

 

[JackieBurkhart]

Nah don't worry about it i never took offence to it. I simply remembered how you strongly rebuked these who said all somalis were arabs and thought to tease you a little bit that's all. You weren't rude or anything don't sweated.

Can you tell me the thread?

 

[Khaemwaset]

I've met morrocans in my school who get called fake Arabs by some Saudis.
As far as I know, North africans (except Egypt) arabized themselves due to native rulers in places like Algeria who though that they were Arabs and arabized their country.
I personally know a few Tunisians and Algerians who prefer to just call themselves Amazigh and talked about how they were arabized in a negative light.

The point of this was that if North africans who look Arab can't even come to a proper consensus whether they are Arab or not, then I don't think Sudan could.
I feel like North Africa,including Sudan, should try revive their native culture whilst sticking to Islam because spending decades fighting over being Arab or not when that is not your ethnicity is not the best look imo.

Also just to add on, if I become a somali politician, I will bring the death sentence for any coon who claims somalis are Arabs. As a self declared somali F@cist, I will not allow negro behaviour In my noble nation

 

[Garaad diinle]

Can you tell me the thread?

Huh? Errr emmm that caught me by surprise. I don't remember what i eat for dinner yesterday how am i supposed remember that old post. Way to put me on the spot.

Just kidding but i surprisingly found the post, odd that you've forgot about it. You were so passionate in your response. I have not one not two but three such post here you go in 4k that'll jog your memory.

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[Nilotic]

@Nilo-Saharan

If you're from one of the Arab tribes in Sudan, what made you choose "Nilo-Saharan" as your pseudonym?

 

[HiraanBorn]

North Sudanese are just confusing to me because they clearly don't look Arab but speak Arabic as a mother tongue and their culture is basically Arab. They are essentially Sub-Saharans that are larping as Arabs but why though? They are not an Arab colony anymore, they are free!

 

[reer]

North Sudanese are just confusing to me because they clearly don't look Arab but speak Arabic as a mother tongue and their culture is basically Arab. They are essentially Sub-Saharans that are larping as Arabs but why though? They are not an Arab colony anymore, they are free!

sudan has j1 haplogroup in them.

 

[Nilotic]

North Sudanese are just confusing to me because they clearly don't look Arab but speak Arabic as a mother tongue and their culture is basically Arab. They are essentially Sub-Saharans that are larping as Arabs but why though? They are not an Arab colony anymore, they are free!

They're not larping at all; they legitimately have significant Arab DNA on their paternal side.

 

[HiraanBorn]

sudan has j1 haplogroup in them. possibly more than the Maghrebi countries.

That Sub-Saharan phenotype is some strong stuff