The Sanat Sitta Famine in Eastern Sudan and the Red Sea Hills and the Decline of Bija Autonomy, 1889–1904

Abstract

Eastern Sudan and the Red Sea Hills were not spared from the deadly sanat sitta famine that ravaged much of Dar Fur, Kurdufan, Dunqula, Mahas, Sukkut, Nilotic Sudan, and Ethiopia. Rumors of an impending food crisis in the interior reached Sawakin in the summer of 1889.1 Over the next few months, large groups of Bija pastoralists migrated to Sawakin in search of food. For example, 1,200 Hadandawa pastoralists arrived in Sawakin between December 11 and 23, 1889,2 and 560 more on December 25, 1889.3 Whole diwabs migrated under the leadership of their shaykhs. A number of formerly rebellious shaykhs, including ‘Abd al-Qadir and Hamid Mahmud, both of the Hamdab adat of the Hadandawa,4 and ‘Ali Walad Sulaiman, the grandson of the former nāẓir of the Hadandawa, settled near Sawakin under Anglo-Egyptian protection.5 These refugees formed an encampment north of the town’s outer defenses and subsisted, primarily, on the charity of townspeople. Initially, this migration, as Henry Barnham, the British Consul at Sawakin reported, did not “excite attention in Suakin” and Anglo-Egyptian officials did not offer food aid. In January 1890, Barnham reported that “wasted frames of mere skin and bone began to swell the number of ordinary mendicants in the streets.” Nonetheless, officials were still unwilling to offer assistance.