Merisa

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Merisa ( Sudanese-Arabic ; also Marisa, Marissa, Merissa , English spelling Mareesa; Nubian Dakai, formerly also Bilbil ) are types of beer in South Sudan and Sudan that are traditionally made by fermenting sorghum and other types of millet or, more rarely, sesame . The slightly alcoholic drink also serves as food and has cultural significance in many ways.

History and dissemination

Vessels with millet beer were found in a grave from Meroitic times on the second cataract of the Nile. Reliefs on ancient Egyptian graves reveal the techniques for alcoholic fermentation of millet. Types of millet such as sorghum and finger millet are indigenous crops from subtropical Africa and an African staple food that has existed since at least 3000 BC. BC can also be grown on the Nile. Black millet (Dhurra) is still the most important type of sorghum.

In the early Christian cathedral of Qasr Ibrim, a little north of the second cataract, the millet found was on the 5th – 6th centuries. Dated century. Millet beer (mizr) was an important part of the diet for the Christian Nubian empires . Since it was not cooked, it retained a high proportion of protein and vitamins B and C. As the Arab governor of Suakin el-Umari wrote in the early 14th century, the inhabitants of the Makurian capital Old Dongola are said to have often been drunk on millet beer . Testimonies from visitors have also come down to us for the capital Soba of the Christian empire Alwa further south . The Arab geographer Ibn Selim al-Aswani wrote 975–996 reports on the city. He noticed the strange thing that when sowing, the residents only sprinkled some grain into the four corners of the fields and left the rest of the grain behind together with a vessel with mizr in the middle. The next morning the sowing of surely supernatural beings was done and the mizr vessel was empty. At harvest time only a small part would have been harvested, millet beer would have been left behind and the work would have been found completed the next day. The Armenian traveler Salih al-Armani had exactly the same experience at the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century .

The production methods are different and can be very complex depending on the region; The result is a cloudy drink as a liquid reserve and, if it is made in a thick, mushy form, a starchy foodstuff which, in the fermented state, has a longer shelf life than simply boiled porridge and can be stored in clay pots. In Ghana and Nigeria, millet beer with around 3 percent alcohol is called Pito , in Nigeria there is Sorghumbier Burukutu , in East Africa Pombe , in Burkina Faso Dolo and Kasikisi in the Congo. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, tella is mainly made from the millet types teff and sorghum.

In travelogues of the 19th century, millet beer was mostly mentioned with praise under the name Bilbil . Pierer's Universal Lexikon describes Bilbil as a clarified form of Merisa. Prince von Pückler-Muskau found this drink from Dongola up the Nile around 1840 , but only liked it when it was fresh, slightly sour and not yet fermented. (He preferred the Moselle wine he had brought with him to the alcoholic beer.) Around 1880, the animal researcher Alfred Brehm observed baboons drinking Merisa and a feast at which merisa flowed in abundance and at which the meat of crocodiles that were still in the Nile at that time was eaten has been.

At least until recently, Merisa, along with Aragi , a high-proof millet or date schnapps, was widespread throughout Sudan and was drunk by Christians and Muslims. In 1980, traditional alcohol was officially banned and imported alcohol was subject to high taxes. Since the introduction of the Sharia in 1985, alcohol has been strictly prohibited and violations are punished. Centers for millet beer production were and are Darfur in the west and the Masalit area in the adjacent eastern part of Chad with the best cultivation conditions for millet around Jebel Marra . There is the settlement center of the Fur , which, due to its location on the old caravan route between Chad and the Nile, traded goods for money in markets and where services were paid in the villages with Merisa.

In the Fur Sultanate with the capital al-Faschir , which existed from the end of the 18th century , Sultan Abd al Rahman (1785–1799) tried just as unsuccessfully as his predecessors to enforce his strict Islam with a ban on alcohol. The first Islamic ruler of the Fur Empire was Suleiman (1596–1637), who assumed the title Solong (denoting Arabic origin) because of his Arabic mother . He and his successors wanted to ignore the black African cultural element. So sons who drank Merisa were excluded from the line of succession. The Arabization efforts had little influence on the culture of the population base. Merisa was not considered alcohol. Not even when under Ahmed Bakr (1682–1722) Islam became the state religion in the Fur Sultanate. Rudolf Slatin , who was governor of the Anglo-Egyptian Darfur province from 1881 , describes several times how the population drank Merisa vigorously from large clay bowls and how he had to reprimand his Egyptian soldiers for going to bars. But he had a sheikh of the Masalit explain to him that millet beer made you brave to fight; so women and children went to battle to carry it. Slatin's adversary Muhammad Ahmad , known as the Mahdi, banned Merisa and had violations severely punished.

In the Islamic population of Berti in North Darfur , the millet drink is Baghu and the clay pot in which it is stored, Dulan . The Merisa, produced in the villages of Darfur, is sometimes drunk by nomadic population groups. Another settlement area with a traditionally millet beer drinking Islamic population are the Nuba Mountains in the south of the city of El Obeid . Far away and undisturbed by Islamist legislation, Merisa can be drunk by the Christian and animist populations of South Sudan.

Millet beer is made exclusively by women, consumers are mostly men. Women who have lost their loved ones during the civil war and have fled the south to Khartoum or other northern cities often have no other means of earning a living than illegally selling Merisa. The same applies to women from the embattled Darfur region . Under a 1991 criminal law, they face jail sentences. Raids are carried out and the women's prisons are overcrowded.

The economic situation of these women is similar to that of released slaves, as reported from earlier times. A description of the social conditions in the port city of Suakin at the beginning of the 19th century shows that slaves were often rented out by their masters for prostitution and that freed slaves had the option of brewing and selling alcohol as an alternative, although here too their earlier ones Gentlemen also cashed in.

In South Sudan, prostitution is part of the indaya (plural Anadi ) called bars, in which not only merissa but also distilled alcohol ( siko ) is offered. As early as the middle of the 19th century, the Indaya had established itself as a place where older women made merissa, while younger women served merissa and looked after male customers in back rooms. The owners of the facilities belonged to the middle class.

Manufacturing

Eduard Rüppell gives a description of the production of Bilbil from the beginning of the 19th century: Damp Dhurra was allowed to germinate and dry in the sun. The grains were then ground into flour, from which thin bread cakes were baked. These were crushed in a vessel and poured with water. After two days of fermentation a thick pulp was formed, which was poured with water and filtered through a funnel-shaped straw sieve. Depending on the amount of water added or the duration of fermentation, the drink became more or less plump or sour. Similarly, Bilbil is still made today by the Mundang in Chad.

The production process in Darfur is very complex: Mashed millet grains are soaked in water in a clay pot for two days and then baked into thin, white, soft flat cakes (kisra) . About the same amount of millet is sprouted in water. These are spread out on the ground and dried in the sun. Such germinated and dried millet is durable. It is now pounded and ground into flour (zura) . Flatbreads and flour are mixed together and kneaded into a dough with the addition of water. This is boiled with water to a pulp, which is then spread out on a mat and allowed to cool. Finally the dried pulp is kneaded together with a little Zura flour, poured with water in a clay pot and left to ferment for a while. The result has to be boiled, then the liquid is skimmed off and sifted through a cloth into another vessel and, after the fermentation begins, it results in Dugga beer. Another infusion of the porridge with water creates the weaker Selkoto .

The alcohol content of Merisa can be up to 6 percent. A non-alcoholic millet juice in the south of the country is called Abray or Madida . The old name Bilbil or Um-Bilbil is also used to differentiate between a better Merisa quality, the weaker or non-alcoholic drink is then called Baqaniya . In addition to a high proportion of starch, it contains around 13 percent protein, 4.5 percent fat, 2.5 percent minerals, plant fibers and vitamin B.

In Ethiopia, the fermentation of Talla millet beer is influenced by the addition of Gesho leaves. This is reminiscent of an unusual production method, which is described in Petermann's Mitheilungen in 1862 : In northern Sudan, leaves of the small Oscher tree (Sudanese: Onna oskur ) growing on the banks of the Nile were added to the soaked millet that germinated overnight and removed again in the morning. The plant has also been used medicinally in the region since ancient times; the milky sap served as an emetic, laxative and against worms.

Economical meaning

The most important agricultural product for self-sufficiency is millet (Arabic Dura; Nubian Mareg ). In addition to making flatbreads, porridge and beer, it is also used in the countryside as fodder, for building houses and as fuel. Digging , sowing, harvesting and threshing are subject to ritualized regulations. To this end, the neighborhood forms working groups, for which millet in the form of Merisa must be available. If no technical equipment is available, men standing in a row thrash the floor with wooden mallets. How often a family can put together such work teams, whose activities usually end as a village festival, depends on their financial situation. Building a house is a social event. The men of the village bring wood posts and grass to cover the roof. The builder compares her help with the construction with the Merisa bar, which the woman distributes in pumpkin calves. Every rural weekly market has stalls where women sell Merisa. On market days in the Nuba Mountains, Muslims with turbans and long white jalabias also come to drink Maresa in the morning .

If you collect the fuel yourself, your own millet can be sold at a significantly higher profit by processing it into Merisa. In the villages of the south, apart from agriculture, the only other source of income for women is the manufacture of charcoal and weaving and basket weaving. For the women of the Dinka , who were displaced after the civil war and who live in refugee camps in South Sudan, collecting grass to build houses and making and selling charcoal and Merisa are among the only sources of income.

The main task of the women of the Islamic fur living in polygamy is the production of thick millet porridge and beer. Nothing else is the livelihood of the predominantly animistic peoples on the border with Ethiopia. The men work the millet field and the women the millstone with which they grind the millet so that porridge and beer can be made from it. Excess millet is exchanged for cattle.

Cultural meaning

In the Islamic north of the country, according to the popular belief, the evil spirit tsar often takes possession of women from the lower and, in recent years, increasingly also from the middle classes. The attending tsar priestess (sheikha) decides which atonement the spirit demands of the patient. Usually this also includes alcohol in the form of Merisa, which, for the sake of the tsar, must be drunk by the women present while there is dancing.

Friendships are strengthened in South Sudan by drinking Merisa, and enmities are settled. Nocturnal drinking bouts are organized even without a reason. If a festival is held, each participant brings Merisa in small vessels (for the Nuba Abas ), the contents of which are poured into a larger pot around which the community takes a seat. A ladle made from half a pumpkin with Merisa is passed around in a circle. On these social occasions, Merisa often remains unfiltered and cloudy while the beverage being sold in the market is clarified.

With the Lotuko in the extreme southeast of the country, the economic and cultural importance of millet beer, which is called Ahuhu here , is exemplarily clear. As everywhere, it is made by women, but only initiated men are allowed to enjoy it . Millet beer is offset against other goods in barter trade, it serves as compensation for services received such as community field work. Also, it must be made available at family celebrations, village festivals, and religious ceremonies, and it is part of the bride price.

Sibir festival among the Nuba

Field with sorghum in the Nuba Mountains

Every year in the Nuba Mountains , after the millet harvest in November, the Nuba peoples (it is an Arabic collective name for different ethnic groups) hold the Fire Siberia, which lasts for several days, as a kind of harvest festival. It is the most important of a series of Siberian festivals held at other times of the year. All of them have an animist background, but are celebrated by Muslims and Christians alike. Beginning in the north, Nuba were partially proselytized by followers of the Qadiriyya Brotherhood. Some Muslims have replaced Merisa with the non-alcoholic karkadeh ( hibiscus flower tea). There are dances, men and women move in a circle opposite each other, both in brightly colored costumes, the women with wide hats. The various ethnic groups have displayed some of their harvest.

The spiritual leader of the Nuba is the Kujur, a saint who corresponds to the Islamic Faki . He can be a shaman or a magician and establish a relationship with the sacred. As rainmaker, he gives instructions regarding sowing or harvesting dates. If his instructions are not followed, penalties in the form of merisa or goats must be paid. In consultation with the assembly of elders, he determines the place and start of the Siberian, which he communicates to a delegation gathered at his house. The Kujur provides these people with food and merisa, after a certain ceremony he lights a grass fire and gives his blessing.

Wrestling competitions round off the festival. Wrestlers smeared with white ashes (a sign of purity) arrive with the flag of their village. With this procession go the women who carry the ceremonial dress of the fighters, the drums and, as the most important burden, the heavy pots with Merisa. The social task of these festivals is to strengthen the unity of the village community and to establish contacts that also serve the purpose of marriage.

Identity conflict

The Nuba Mountains lie in the political and cultural border area between the Arab north and the black African South Sudan . Younger Nuba, who want to be accepted in the Islamic community of the north, obey Islamic stereotypes outwardly by observing gender segregation and abstinence from alcohol. Instead of the Siberian festivals, the annual Id al-Fitr has gained in importance in recent years . There in the morning the Sheikh of the Qadiriyya order gathers the men for prayer, afterwards the obligatory mutual house calls are made during the four-day festival. The socially connecting element here is the joint eating of a sacrificial animal. The older Nuba stay at home for the first two days, then go on their house calls and share beer instead of meat.

Arab peoples who have been Islamized for centuries do not have to struggle with such identity problems and can allow themselves to drink alcohol in public (where it is not punished). The rebels in the civil war area of ​​Darfur are particularly addressed here.

Habboaba disease among the Berti

The Berti are one of the many Arabized ethnic groups in the dry savannah of North Darfur. For several generations they have adopted Islam and the Arabic language. Their diet consists on average of millet gruel or bread with a sauce made from dried vegetables. The serving of Merisa in most of the villages is under pressure from the government. A harmful spirit of Berti is called Habboaba , translatable as “grandmother”, just like the illness with which she announces her presence, which is not understood as taking possession of the patient directly. Otherwise Habboaba remains invisible as a spirit being, the doctor recognizes measles as an illness . Habboaba comes in most cases during harvest time. After the diagnosis, the traditional medical treatment with active herbal ingredients takes place. The permitted diet consists of millet beer, which is called Baghū by the Berti , mixed with onion juice, mashed raw millet and a white wild plant (local name Marar Dakari ), which is considered an inferior starvation plant and is avoided at normal times. Camel meat may be eaten if available, water may not be drunk. Diarrhea may be interpreted as the loss of excess water. The only liquid that remains is Merisa, as it belongs to the category white, which stands for good or luck. After a week, a ritual bath must be taken for full recovery. Habboaba is therefore considered to have disappeared.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giovanni Vantini: Oriental Sources concerning Nubia. Heidelberg and Warsaw 1975, p. 511. Mentioned in: Derek A. Welsby: The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia. The British Museum Press, London 2002, p. 186
  2. ↑ Mohi El-Din Abdalla Zarroung: The Kingdom of Alwa. African Occasional Papers No. 5, The University of Calgary Press 1991, pp. 21, 23
  3. ↑ Marissa . In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 10 . Altenburg 1860, p. 895 ( zeno.org ).
  4. ^ Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: From Mehmed Ali's realm. Egypt and Sudan around 1840. 1844. New edition: Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1985, p. 498
  5. ^ Alfred Brehm: Brehms Thierleben. Second edition, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1883-1887, article: Tschakma (Cynocephalus porcarius). Zeno.org
  6. ↑ Alfred Brehm: Article Siamkrokodil (Crocodilus siamensis). Zeno.org
  7. ↑ Booze blues for Sudan women under sharia. Sudan Tribune, August 4, 2008 The production of aragi (date brandy) and the consequences for women if they are arrested
  8. ^ Rudolf Slatin, Francis Reginald Wingate : Fire and Sword in the Sudan. A Personal narrativa of Fighting and Serving the Dervishes. London 1896. Reprint 2003, pp. 42, 210-212. In the German edition: Fire and Sword in Sudan. Horst Erdmann Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, these chapters are missing.
  9. ^ Rudolf Slatin, p. 111
  10. ^ Reports: Women in Sudan. Sudan update
  11. ↑ Albrecht Hofheinz: The Sheikh in the Superego or Do Muslims Have a Conscience? In: Sigrid Faath and Hanspeter Mattes: Wuquf 7–8. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa. Hamburg 1993, pp. 467, 477
  12. ↑ Cathy Groenendijk, Jolien Veldwijk: Behind the Papyrus and Mabaati 'Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Juba, South Sudan. Confident Children out of Conflict, August 2011
  13. ↑ Jay Spaulding, Stephanie Beswick: Sex, Bondage, and the Market: The Emergence of Prostitution in Northern Sudan, 1750-1950. In: Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 5, No. 4, April 1995, pp. 512-534, here p. 522
  14. ^ Eduard Rüppell: Travels in Nubia, Kordofan and Petrean Arabia, excellent in geographical and statistical terms. Frankfurt am Main 1829, p. 136
  15. ^ Bernhard Streck : Sudan. Stone graves and living cultures on the Nile. DuMont, Cologne 1982, p. 183f
  16. ↑ Sudan. Country Profile. WHO Status Report on Alcohol 2004 (PDF; 85 kB)
  17. ↑ Ahmad Al Safi: Traditional Sudanese Medicine. A primer for health care providers, researchers, and students . 2006, p. 340
  18. ↑ A. Petermann and B. Hassenstein: Inner Africa according to the state of geographic knowledge in 1861. Edited from the sources. First division. Justus Perthes, Gotha 1862, p. 10
  19. ↑ G. Wolf (Ed.): Masakin (East Africa, Kordofan) Hirsedrusch. Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, Göttingen 1976 ( accompanying documentary from 1963 )
  20. ↑ Andrea Tapper: The forgotten people. Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin 5/2005
  21. ^ People Profile. The Fur of Sudan and Chad. strategyleader.org
  22. ↑ Ellen Ismail, Maureen Makki: Women in Sudan. Afro-arab women today. Wuppertal 1999, pp. 95-99
  23. ^ Festival in the Nuba. The Big Story: Sudan. ( April 13, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ) The Times, February 10, 2008
  24. ↑ Sayed Bau: Sibir. ( Memento from October 4, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ^ Karen E. Lange: The Nuba: Still Standing. In: National Geographic Magazine , February 2003 (Politics, Wrestling, and Millet Beer)
  26. ^ Leif Ole Manger: From the Mountains to the Plains. The Integration of the Lafofa Nuba into Sudanese Society. The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala 1994. Especially the chapter: Changes in the Lafofa use of beer. Pp. 141-144.
  27. ↑ Thilo Thielke: War in the land of the Mahdi. Darfur and the disintegration of Sudan. Magnus Verlag, Essen 2006, for example pp. 306, 324, 333. Where there is no millet beer in the villages, stocks of date schnapps ( Aragi ) are available.
  28. ↑ 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 comparison of cultures) In: Curare , 1998, 14. pp. 1–6
  29. ↑ Ladislav Holy: Religion and Custom in a Muslim Society: The Berti of Sudan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, pp. 199-201

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