Berti (people)
The Berti are an African ethnic group in western Sudan whose settlement center is in the Tabago Hills of northern Darfur . Another settlement area is located in the west of Kurdufan after migration in the 19th century . Their total number is several tens of thousands.
location
The area of the Berti is in the district of Mellit north of al-Faschir , the largest place is also called Mellit. To the northeast of the city lies the smaller town of Sayyah on the year-round drivable earth road; further northeast this road leads to the volcanic Tabago hills, which are between 700 and 1000 meters high with relatively fertile soils. Most of the population lives in the surrounding villages; outside of this settlement strip, desert with old sand dunes or dry savannah stretches out on all sides. The annual precipitation averages 300 millimeters and falls in three months from July.
Most of the Berti live scattered in small settlements with sometimes less than 100 inhabitants. The farmsteads are circular or roughly square and surrounded by a fence made of millet straw. There are one to three round houses made of brick, the conical roofs of which are covered with millet straw or grass, and some shelters with flat roofs on posts.
The entire area was fought over several times in the ongoing Darfur conflict . In November 2007, Mellit and Sayyah were government garrisons, with SLA units patrolling the villages . According to the statement of the Berti tribal leader, Sadiq al Mellih Ahmadai, in October 2006, his people got between the front lines without being involved.
Another settlement area lies in the southeast of Darfur around the places Umm Keddadda (east of al-Faschir) and Taweisha (north of Ed Daein ). Many Berti emigrated there at the end of the 18th century as part of a general migration movement from the north to the east of Darfur. Smaller colonies were founded around 1900 at Um Ruwaba in the Nuba Mountains and in Gedaref , some Berti found work in the Jazira project in the middle of the 20th century .
economy
In rain-fed fields are in hoe various types of millet , peanuts , sesame and okra planted for self catering. Verek acacias , the rubber sap of which is marketed, thrive in the wild or in plantations. The Karkadeh planted in between can also be exported. If a family needs additional labor, for example to build a house, relatives or neighbors are mobilized to be fed with millet beer. Rich households employ poor Berti or Meidob to harvest the fields or tend the cattle.
Cattle and goats are kept in the village during the rainy season and pasture around watering points in the dry season. Camels and sheep stay outside the village all year round. The pastures for large cattle have long been a land issue that has to be clarified in court and must be delimited in the dispute with the surrounding ethnic groups such as the Zayyadia, Meidob or Kababisch (the latter are Arab nomads from Northern Kurdufan).
The manufacture and use of pottery is women's work. A specialty of Berti are clay pots, which after firing are painted with graphite paste (kangal) for the market sale .
history
Berti may have settled in Darfur since the middle of the 16th century, if the Saccae, the former self-name of Berti, mentioned in the travel description of Giovanni Lorenze d'Anania near the city of Uri (near Ain Farah ) in what was then the Tunjur empire of northern Darfur Siga corresponds. In the middle of the 18th century, the Berti settlement area was incorporated into the Sultanate of Darfur, which at the same time introduced Islam as the state religion. Judging by the fact that the ban on millet beer (generally Merisa in Sudan ), introduced by Sultan Abd al-Rahman in 1795, received little attention - beer was still brewed even by the women in his palace, Islam was not yet deeply embedded in the people. Sufi saints, who were also traders, came from the Egyptian town of Asyut on a trade route called Darb el arba'in ( Arabic : "40-day route"), which continued to southern Darfur , from the 18th century . Sufi brotherhoods ( Tariqa ) did not exist before the end of the 19th century, unlike further east in Sudan.
The language, also called Berti , which, along with the Zaghawa, belongs to the East Saharan languages , has become extinct as the Berti have adopted the dialect of the Arabic language spoken in Darfur . The old language was at least partially understandable until 1960, and it was probably still widely used until the beginning of the 20th century. Some speech sounds of Berti that do not otherwise appear in Arabic have survived, for example η , also some words such as baghū , as millet beer is called, and dūlaη for the clay pot in which the beer is kept.
Religion and culture
Local tradition of Islam
The Berti are followers of a special popular Islamic belief system containing Sunni Islam from the Maliki school of law customary in Sudan . In contrast to the Zaghawa , with whose Islamic religion local traditions are merged, the Berti linguistically differentiate between āda (plural: awāid ), "habit" and dīn , "religion" called practices. The local law (āda) is understood as a resource for the Shari'a . Traditions that are not completely contrary to Islam are integrated into everyday belief without conflict. In contrast to the general rules of Islam ( Sunna ), the Berti speak of their customary law as Sunna Berti. This differs from the awāid, which are not seen as part of the Koran or the hadith and which nevertheless do not represent a religious conflict for most Berti. As is common with other Sudanese ethnic groups - in general in many Muslim societies in Africa - the Islamic duties are carried out by the men and the traditional rituals by the women. The rituals are divided into these two classes. Berti take part in collective rituals rather than obeying religious commandments to be practiced by individuals. The fasting month of Ramadan is therefore a religious duty observed and intensely experienced by the community. Men stick to it strictly, women a little less.
Every village has a mosque, which in the simplest case consists of a flat, thatched roof supported by wooden posts and separated by a low enclosure made of thorn bushes. The Islamic faith has arrived more on a collective than on an individual level. The two annual Islamic festivals, Id al Fitr and Id ul Adha, are celebrated by the entire adult population, but the daily prayers are rarely performed. Generally only the fūgarā (plural of faki , simple Islamic scholar) pray five times a day. Abdullahi Osman El-Tom estimates that less than five percent of Berti attend Koran schools and that between one and two percent of the population are fūgarā .
Friday prayers are not held in all villages, as 13 believers are required for this, which even in villages with 300 to 400 inhabitants do not normally meet. Islamic commandments are interpreted elastically in order to maintain certain rituals and habits. The mildly alcoholic millet beer is still not just a drink, but also a staple food thanks to its starch content. The long way to Mecca is given as an excuse for not undertaking the pilgrimage ( Hajj ). A visit to a shrine in the area serves as a substitute. There are only a few shrines of a Sufi saint (generally qubba ), since the Islamic worship of saints does not play a major role. The qubbas are mostly attended by childless women or sick women.
The Berti origin myth knows a wise stranger, Muhammad Yanbar ( Yanbar: "with a large turban") as the forefather of the lineage. All rulers can be traced back to him. With his supernatural powers, received directly from the Islamic god , he was the first to succeed in driving out hunger in the country and his opponent, the ancient Berti, the giant Namudu. It is a conversion story: wisdom originated in Mecca . The conversion to Islam had to go hand in hand with the Arabization of the ancestors as a prerequisite for the adoption of the new Arab culture.
Faki
At least one Islamic scholar ( faki ) lives in the village and is responsible for the welfare of the community and the performance of religious rituals. For the village faki ( faki al-hilla ) this includes the management of weddings and funerals and the implementation of rain magic. Drought is seen as God's sign of greed, selfishness, and a lack of respect for the elderly. Fūgarā are also said to keep birds away from the fields, as well as shayātīn and jinn (plural jūnun ) from the villages. They usually make amulets to order , which the Berti always carry with them and which contain handwritten astrological formulas, some of the 99 names of Allah or other religious texts. Koran suras and other religious formulas are written on both sides of a wooden board by the faki , the text is then washed off with water, and the collected medicinal water (mihāi) is drunk against diseases, sterility, for good business and as protection against defamation. Major countermeasures are required in the event of an epidemic, drought, plague of locusts or bush fires. The whole Koran has to be washed off, for which the faki al-hilla invites some fūgarā from the neighboring villages, who copy the Koran in the village mosque. The power of the Koran unfolds when the entire village population has drunk the water.
By means of fortune telling , the faki tries to find missing or stolen cattle or to predict the girl's possible answer to a marriage offer, he gives information about the condition of distant relatives and assesses the economic success of market deals. Most men are familiar with the method called ramul (from ramla, "sand") for simple questions, to interpret certain points pressed into the sand with the finger. Only the faki has the sagit al-kitāb ("deriving from the book") available for difficult tasks , in which he operates with astrological formulas (combination of numbers and letters) that are in his personal religious collection of quotations (umbatri) . Fūgarā are respected and respected for their knowledge of Islam and their magical abilities, valued fūgarā can gain wealth through their work.
Fūgarā do not drink alcohol themselves, but respect the generally tolerant treatment of millet beer; the wife often brews a faki millet beer for herself, her children and for guests of the house. Overall, habitual rituals are a central element of the Berti identity, the social pressure of the majority society ensures the liveliness of the traditions.
Rituals
In their rituals, Berti is primarily interested in the useful result to be achieved, they are less concerned about their functionality or meaning. The most important religious rituals of the Berti Society are sacrifices (karama) on various occasions, which are understood as an expression of the Islamic faith. All unhappiness is interpreted as a sign that God is angry. So every village holds a karama about every two months for a good harvest, for rain soon or to avoid diseases. A young ox is usually sacrificed on the square in front of the mosque, and occasionally a sheep or a goat. The butcher, who does not necessarily have to be a faki , speaks the Islamic opening formula Basmala three times . He kills the animal, which is poured with water from a clay jug and ritually cleaned with it. Then the animal is completely broken down into portions according to a special plan, which are allocated to the individual households. If the meat is not enough to be distributed to everyone, it is eaten together on site.
Everything that has to do with slaughter belongs to men. There are rituals performed by men and those performed by women. The men’s rituals also include the “opening” of a well at the beginning of the dry season. When the shallow pools that were used as watering places for cattle have dried up, a (deep) well is dug in dry river beds. In the sacrificial ritual, classified as local law (āda) , a man sings verses of the Koran from the west side of the fountain facing east. Other men tie pumpkins and melons to wooden posts around the well. On the west side a goat is sacrificed, the blood of which is to flow into the well. Only then may water be taken from the well.
Women's rituals, to which the men have no access, concern sowing, harvesting and threshing in the threshing floor, which is located between the fields. It is symbolically about fertility and gender opposition.
Branches of the desert date (hajlid) are used in numerous rituals . A hopelessly ill person can be brought to two hajlid trees that are close together in an east-west direction. Both trunks are poured with milk, while the patient is guided around the trees seven times with the help of a helper. If necessary, the action is repeated after seven days. The hajlid is considered to be the most powerful of all trees, as a guarantee of the existence of life. Its power can also be used to kill an enemy using witchcraft (sihir) . Again after milk has been poured onto the trunk, the magician walks around the tree seven times counterclockwise and stops facing south, the direction of death (cemeteries are set up south of the villages). It begins with the cry " Allahu Akbar ", followed by the curse. To illustrate these qualities, it is stated that the fruits of the hajlid could turn blood into water. The tree must not be felled. The hajlid cult may have been widespread in Darfur before Islam was introduced.
Role of the sexes
There is, as is usual in Islamized areas, a separate area for women within the homestead ( Sudan Arabic ḥōsh ḥarīm) . Nevertheless, women also take part in social life outside of it. Field work, selling at the market and fetching water are activities that men and women do equally.
Society is organized in a patrilineal manner. A relationship through the paternal line is considered to be closely related. The reaction immediately after the birth of a child varies. If it is a boy, he is celebrated as a gisma kabir (“great gift”), with the exclamation of “Allahu Akbar” the men shoot into the air. When a girl is born, on the other hand, the men keep quiet and the women start a zagharat ("loud wailing"). This means that not only the event of the birth, but also the gender of the child is immediately transmitted to the neighborhood. In the case of a girl's birth, the placenta is buried in the west of the south-facing entrance to the house, in the case of a boy to the east, and marked with a hajlid branch. East is considered the preferred direction as this is where Mecca is located.
Because of male dominance, men usually precede women and eat first. Women accept this model by justifying it, quasi out of convenience, as a male myth that allows them to retain “real” power in other areas. In traditional coexistence there is a dependency of men on women, which is determined by certain taboos: Threshing and milling millet is women's work that must not be done by men. Field work is only possible for men in exceptional cases, they should not be seen by women. Brewing beer and millet porridge is unthinkable for men. As a result, they would not be able to survive in a single household without a wife, since beer can be bought in the market, but cooked food cannot. The female monopoly of food preparation is a source of power for women. The few women who sell beer in the market are despised by the majority of women because they undermine female solidarity with men. Beer sellers mostly live alone and only have this source of income.
In general, the use of fire is a woman's business. The exceptions include the preparation of the sacrificial animal and the burning of the fields after the harvest by men who take glowing charcoal from the woman's house. So the women provide the fire. Blacksmiths have an outsider role in many traditional societies because of the use of iron and fire and live on the edge of the settlement. With the Berti men, on the other hand, it is the property of fire as belonging to the domain of women, which is why this activity is usually not carried out by them but by Zaghawa.
The symbolic expression of adult status is one's own household. In old age the Berti stay in their house, they don't live with the children. As soon as the children marry, the parents give up property and thus influence, with the expectation that they will be relieved of the strenuous work in old age. The daughter receives land and a few animals, most of the animals go to the son. The plantations of the Verek acacias are only transferred to the son, as most of the money can be earned from them. The early transfer of property frees from generational conflicts.
Practically every girl in Berti is circumcised . The need for this is derived from the Koran.
Transitions
Berti's worldview is shaped by the pair of opposites inside and outside. Of great importance are numerous rituals of passage that help to safely overcome this spatially defined barrier and rituals of passage in the biographical development of humans.
The latter includes the transition from girl (binei) to woman (mara) that occurs with marriage , which means social advancement. If the woman is divorced or if her husband dies, she can continue to run a household as a single person and retains the azaba (divorced) status that she acquired through marriage . The man is different: after the separation he loses his status and falls back to the level of a young person if he does not take another woman into his household.
The spatial transitions relate to the relationship between the village (hilla) / inside / culture / relative security and the world outside (khala) / nature / danger. Outside there are direct physical dangers lurking from snakes and hyenas, but also from the rather harmless spirits (jūnun) and the dangerous shayātīn. The belief in shayātīn is particularly strong, they are presented as the greatest danger outside the village. They should be more numerous than humans, live below and above the earth and gather at wells, on rocks, in the shade of small trees and on anthills . They are most active around noon and after sunset. The shayātīn refer to their pre-Islamic origins.
The most dangerous is the border crossing between the two worlds, which is why there are rituals to be followed in both directions. The first individual ritual for a child is carried out no earlier than 40 days after its birth, if it is to be brought to the well, to collect firewood (also exclusively female work) or to the field. Each time, boiled millet, millet beer and water are used in a ritual, the purpose of which is to make the respective place a safe place .
Just as there are rituals in the direction of movement from the inside to the outside, rituals must also take place in the opposite direction in order not to introduce external dangers. When the rafters for a new house (bētu) are set and before the roof is covered, women sprinkle it with water and millet beer. Even more caution should be taken when building a new home for a newly married couple. It should best be built from the demolition of old houses in the village so that no material has to be used that comes directly from the outside (khala) . Elaborate symbolic rituals regulate the entry of the bride, the order of the everyday processes of sleeping, cooking and milling millet is introduced in stages.
Diseases are often viewed with a traditional understanding. Habbōba (or habboaba ) is an invisible mystical figure who brings measles to children. It is a being from the dangerous realm of the khala who can enter the village if the border is open due to disregard of a rule. So the border must be ritually restored so that habbōba goes and the disease then disappears. As long as habbōba is treated with respect. If the disease was adequately treated with a certain diet (the main component of which, in turn, is millet beer), the child is ritually washed with water on the seventh day. This water brought outside by the well must not have been brought in with the donkey, as is usual, but must have been transported on the head or with a camel. After the ablution, habbōba is said goodbye to the house.
literature
- Abdullahi Osman El-Tom: Berti Qur'anic Amulets. In: Journal of Religion in Africa, 17, 1987, pp. 224-244
- Abdullahi Osman El-Tom: Drinking the Koran: The Meaning of Koranic Verses in Berti Erasure. In: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 55, No. 4, Popular Islam . 1985, pp. 414-431
- Abdullahi Osman El-Tom: Islam and cultural identity among the Berti of Sudan. In: GeoJournal 46, 2, 1998, pp. 155-161
- Ladislav Holy: Religion and Custom in a Muslim Society: The Berti of Sudan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991 Introduction (PDF; 750 kB)
- Ladislav Holy: Gender and Ritual in an Islamic Society: The Berti of Darfur. In: Man. New Series, Vol. 23, No. 3, September 1988, pp. 469-487
- Ladislav Holy: Neighbors and Kinsmen. A Study of the Berti People of Darfur. St Martin's Press, New York 1974
- Ladislav Holy: Residence Among the Berti. In: Ian Cunnison, W. James (Ed.): Essays in Sudan Ethnography. C. Hurst, London 1972, pp. 58-70
- Alison S. Pyle, Omer Abdel Gabbar: Household vulnerability to famine: Survival and recovery strategies among Berti and Zaghawa migrants in Northern Darfur, Sudan, 1982–1989. In: GeoJournal, 30, 2, 1993, pp. 141-146
Individual evidence
- ^ Sudan Humanitarian Activities. UNjobs ( Memento of July 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.3 MB) Map of the area. Entry of the aid programs as of July 2005
- ↑ Topographic Field Map, Al Fashir, 1: 250,000 ( Memento from February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 7.4 MB) Detailed map of the University of Bern
- ^ Darfur's Berti tribe distances its self from belligerent parties. Sudan Tribune, October 18, 2006
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, p. 20
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, pp. 10 f, 22
- ^ Abdullahi Osman El-Tom: Drinking the Koran: The Meaning of Koranic Verses in Berti Erasure. In: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 55, No. 4, (Popular Islam) 1985, pp. 414-431, here p. 415
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, pp. 21-33
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, p. 221
- ↑ Ladislav Holy, 1988, p. 473
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, pp. 36-38
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, p. 78 f
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, pp. 50-54, 63
- ↑ Ladislav Holy: Strategies for old age among the Berti of the Sudan. In: Paul Spencer (Ed.): Anthropology and the riddle of the Sphinx. Paradoxes of Changes in the Life Course. Routledge, New York 1990, pp. 173 f
- ^ Abdullahi Osman El-Tom: Female circumcision and ethnic identification in Sudan with special reference to the Berti of Darfur. In: GeoJournal, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Identities in Sub-Saharan Africa) 1998, pp. 163–170, here p. 165
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, pp. 104-116
- ↑ Ladislav Holy 1991, pp. 199-201
- ↑ Abdullahi Osman El-Tom: The Management of Habboaba Illness among the Berti of Darfur. ( Memento of April 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (Ethnotherapies. Therapeutic concepts in a cultural comparison). In: Curare 14, 1998, pp. 1-6.