Wadi Halfa
Wadi Halfa ( Arabic وادي حلفا Wādī Ḥalfā ) is a city in northern Sudan in the state of Ash-Shamaliyya on the east bank of Lake Nubia , which forms the Sudanese part of Lake Nasser . Goods to and from Egypt are reloaded in the port . The land border with Egypt runs about 15 kilometers north of the city. There is a weekly boat connection with Aswan .
history
For centuries, Wadi Halfa or Halfa was an important trading place and Nile port on the northern border of the Nubian cultural area. The place was about eight kilometers north of the 2nd cataract . Boats that sailed up the Nile from the 1st cataract near Aswan moored here before starting the difficult journey south through the rapids, which is only possible when the water level is high.
With the spread of the Mahdi uprising in the Egyptian-occupied Sudan, Wadi Halfa had become Egypt's southernmost outpost. In 1885 the British Sirdar (commander in chief) of the Egyptian army Grenfell set up an army base in Aswan and an outpost in Wadi Halfa against the Mahdists. In June 1889, a Mahdist army attacked Wadi Halfa. Grenfell was able to defeat the Madhists at the Battle of Toski and stop their advance towards Egypt. During the entire period of their rule over Sudan (until 1899), Wadi Halfa and Suakin on the Red Sea remained under Anglo-British control.
In the 1870s the construction of a railway line from Wadi Halfa up the Nile began. Initially intended for trade, this railway line was built 54 kilometers in the direction of Dongola for military reasons until the mid-1890s during the time of British rule in Egypt . The end of this route was the garrison in Ambigole. These two places became the starting point for the struggle against the Madhists. In order to be able to advance from Wadi Halfa, a more efficient supply of supplies was a prerequisite, since camels needed 13 days to get to Abu Hamad , the next place on the Nile, on the direct desert route to the south . At the beginning of January 1897 the construction of a railway began, which had reached Abu Hamad in October of that year and enabled Kitchener's army to win the Battle of Atbara in April 1898 . The railway line lost its economic use after the campaign and was abandoned in 1905.
The transport route on the water between the two cataracts remained the usual connection to the north even after 1884, when the Egyptian railway to Shellal south of Aswan on the 1st cataract was completed. The desert, which the Nile flows through here for around 280 kilometers, is criss-crossed by transverse valleys and chains of hills made of granite rocks, which prevented the continuation of the railway line.
Around 1900, Wadi Halfa consisted of the old town and five kilometers north of it the military camp with accommodation, officers' quarters and the train station. Well- tended parks were laid out along the banks of the Nile in the vicinity of the administrative headquarters and the Railroad Hotel . A new civil neighborhood (British cantonment ) was some distance away, and on the opposite western bank of the Nile the ruins of ancient Egyptian Buhen could be seen. In 1907 the city had 3,000 inhabitants. The steamship took two or four days from Aswan at this time, depending on whether it anchored at night and stopped at several places or passed through. The trains were equipped with dining cars and comfortable compartments with electric fans on both Egyptian and Sudanese territory. The travel time to Khartoum was given as 27 hours.
During the Second World War , the British Air Force flew missions from Wadi Halfa. The airfield was used for stopovers on the route from Cairo to Aden or to Nairobi . From 1935 to 1953, Wadi Halfa was administered by six British officials ( district commissioners ). In August 1953 the administration was handed over to a Sudanese for the first time.
In 1959, an agreement between the countries concerned (Nile Water Agreement) allowed Egypt to build the Aswan High Dam . Because of the flooding, which began before the dam was completed, 50,000 people on the Sudanese side had to be resettled in the Wadi Halfa district in 1964. 40,000 of the Nubians living here were resettled in the agricultural project of New Halfa in the Butana steppe, which is irrigated by the Khashm el-Girba dam . The city of Wadi Halfa had around 20,000 inhabitants at that time and had a well-tended Nile promenade, wide avenues and some beautiful multi-storey houses from the colonial era. The other residential buildings were built in the Nubian style from clay, the walls were decorated with paintings. In the area there were date palm forests and irrigated fields.
Resettlement within the region was not initially considered. A minority of the city's former residents refused to move to the New Halfa project and stayed in makeshift shelters nearby. The military government under General Ibrahim Abbud (until 1964) tried to persuade the population to move by suspending all state services and disrupting ship and rail connections. The remaining inhabitants were forced to organize the necessary infrastructure and the supply of food themselves.
Only after the reservoir was filled to its maximum height around 1970, the new settlement could slowly develop a few 100 meters from the shore. A spacious residential area and a small market of simple stalls were created near the train station. Due to the improving economic relations between Egypt and Sudan in the early 1970s, Wadi Halfa regained a certain importance as a port, transshipment point for goods and as the only border crossing to Egypt. With Chinese support, a state ice cream factory and a cold store for fish were built. 35 fishing boats with a loading capacity of 2 tons were purchased. From 1973 fishing was also operated by private companies. Fish got dried and cooled (with relatively high losses) about 1000 kilometers to Khartoum. The last figures from 1979 indicate a catch quota of 500 tons per year, which fell far short of expectations.
The economic situation of Wadi Halfa deteriorated from the mid-1980s in parallel with the political relations with the northern neighboring country. By turning to an Islamic policy, President Numairi brought Sudan into isolation; the participation of the National Islamic Front (NIF) under Hasan at-Turabi in 1989 brought transit trade with Egypt to a complete standstill. Traders moved away, the hotels were closed and the restaurants were only open on the day of the arriving or departing train. The city had no perspective and made a desolate impression on travelers. Since the economic boom in Sudan due to oil exports from 1999 and increasingly since a certain political liberalization in 2005, interest in trade relations with Egypt and the border town of Wadi Halfa has grown.
Cityscape
Wadi Halfa, located in the Nubian Desert , is surrounded by solid sand plains, which are structured by individual hills and chains of sand and rubble. In the town center around the market, the previous flat mud houses will be replaced by two-story buildings in concrete and brick construction. The construction activity is creating a compact business district that is surrounded by asphalted main streets and island mountains. There are some simple hotels and the immigration office here. Two kilometers to the north-west is the port, which, like the train station halfway in between, has no crane loading facilities. Also to the northwest, directly on the lake shore, is a district for black Africans who have immigrated from South Sudan, who are mostly employed as simple workers in the port.
From the business district, the city extends about five kilometers eastwards in the other direction along the road to Abri . Halfway there is a residential area of the Nubian lower class and in the far east, separated by a soccer field, is a well-kept residential area for the middle class. The houses here are located within large courtyards behind high walls. Mango trees and date palms thrive in the oasis gardens. In some cases, islets of trees have been planted in the wide streets, which have to be watered daily. Other simple residential areas of houses with exposed mud bricks stretch across the road between desert mountains to the northeast.
population
For Wadi Halfa there are 10,658 inhabitants (2012 calculation).
| year | Residents |
|---|---|
| 1973 (census) | 5,701 |
| 1983 (census) | 7,973 |
| 2012 (calculation) | 10,658 |
In addition to the original Nubian population, a large number of refugees from South Sudan and neighboring countries have settled. Some Egyptians work as traders in the market.
economy
The state-funded fishing project, financed by China, failed due to the inadequate catch quota, the high energy costs and the lack of willingness to work by the unaccustomed population. Wadi Halfa is located in the driest part of the Nubian Desert . Rain often does not fall for several years, for the only rainy month of August, the multi-year average is given as 0.5 mm. The former intensively cultivated fields on the banks of the Nile were supplied with Nile water through canals. This land has been inundated by the reservoir. Agriculture has so far only been resumed in small house gardens, although the water supply with groundwater near the lake would be secured. The pure sandy soils lack the fertile Nile mud. There are few home-grown vegetables and fruits available at the market, most of them come from the areas around Abu Hamad and Abri.
Wadi Halfa lives from the loading of goods from cargo ships onto the train and from the weekly passenger ferry with a connection to the train to Khartoum, which, like 100 years ago, takes two days for this route. The two roads towards Atbara and Dongola have been paved throughout since 2009. A further economic upswing in the remote city seems certain; Long-standing plans for a road connection to Egypt and the hoped-for trade in goods have so far failed due to the political will of the two countries.
Climate table
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Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Wadi Halfa
Source: wetterkontor.de
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literature
- Hassan Dafalla: Notes on the History of Wadi Halfa Town. In: Sudan Notes and Records. Volume 46, 1965, pp. 8–26 (Dafalla was the last district administrator of the old Wadi Halfa before the flooding by Lake Nubia)
Web links
- Hasan A. Aziz: The Present Plight of Nubians in Wadi Halfa. World History Archives, February 5, 1996
Individual evidence
- ^ Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection. Library of Congress. Aerial photo of the RR Hotel by the same photographer
- ↑ Wadi Halfa . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 28 : Vetch - Zymotic Diseases . London 1911, p. 228 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
- ^ AB Guerville: New Egypt. New York and London 1906, p. 233 f. TIMEA Electronic Version
- ↑ Hassan Dafalla: Notes on the History of Wadi Halfa Town , 1965, p 22
- ^ Louis Werner: The Decorated Houses of Nubia. In: Saudi Aramco World , July / August 2006. The wall paintings shown come from the 1960s from villages that were submerged in the flood of the Nile. Such paintings are no longer produced anywhere else in Nubia.
- ↑ Thomas Schmidinger: Nubia under water? Interview with Suad Ibrahim Ahmed. In: Risse im Context XXI. 7, 2002.
- ↑ A Country Study: Sudan. Chapter Fisheries. The Library of Congress 1991
- ↑ World Gazetteer: Page no longer available , search in web archives:
- ^ Climatological Information for Wadi Halfa, Sudan. Hong Kong Observatory
- ^ Road to Sudan. ( Memento of October 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Al Ahram Weekly , 13. – 19. November 2003
- ^ Egyptian trade delegation in Khartoum for economic integration talks. ( Memento of January 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Arabic News, April 28, 2003
Coordinates: 21 ° 47 ' N , 31 ° 22' E
