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Regions with significant populations | |
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Languages | |
Arabic (Egyptian Arabic and Sudanese Arabic), English formerly Hungarian | |
Religion | |
Sunni Islam | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Hungarians, Nubians, Egyptians |
The Magyarab are a small community living within Nubia, along the Nile in Sudan and Egypt. [1] [2] They have distant Hungarian ancestors who intermarried with locals [3] and probably date back to the late 16th century,[ citation needed ] when portions of both Hungary and Egypt were part of the Ottoman Empire.
The name "Magyarab" is not a portmanteau of the words "Magyar" and "Arab", as is commonly assumed. Rather, it is a concatenation of "Magyar" (Hungarian) and "Ab", which in Nubian means simply "tribe". Magyarab combined thus translates to "Tribe of the Magyars". [4] In fact, to the Magyarab people, their Hungarian identity specifically sets them apart from the surrounding Egyptians.[ citation needed ]
According to legend, Christian Hungarians who had only recently been brought under the control of the Ottoman Empire formed a part of the Ottoman army that was fighting in southern Egypt. Supposedly, a portion or the entirety of the fighting unit remained there and intermarried with the local Nubian women.
According to local Magyarabs, their ancestor was Ibrahim el-Magyar, a general who came from Buda (present-day Budapest) in 1517, he married with a local Nubian woman, they had a son called Ali. Ali had five sons (Selami, Mustafa, Djelal Eddin, Musa and Iksa), and Ali's five sons were the ancestor of all Magyarabs. Magyarabs have been members of the World Federation of Hungarians (Magyarok Világszövetsége) since 1992 and still consider themselves as Hungarians.
They were not documented by Europeans until 1935 when László Almásy, who was himself Hungarian, and his co-worker, the German engineer and explorer Hansjoachim von der Esch, happened upon a tribe in the region of Nubia. Representatives of the tribes later attempted to make contact with Hungarian officials but failed to do so because of the outbreak of World War II.
These people now have a mixed-race appearance because the intermarriage with the local Nubian population, and they do not speak Hungarian. Around 1934, however, Esch, who spent several weeks with the population of the Magyarab island at Wadi Halfa, put together a list of non-Arabic words that were used only on that island and, according to him, were recognized by Almásy as similar to Hungarian words. His notes showed that all Magyarab in Wadi Halfa were convinced that their ancestors came from "Nemsa" (the Arabic word for Austria), which might refer to any region of Austria-Hungary. He was told by the leader of the Magyarab island village that their ancestors had arrived in Egypt/Sudan as a group of "Austrian" soldiers, led by a man called Shenghal Sendjer, which Esch assumed to have been originally General Sendjer or Senger. [3]
Magyarabs live along the Nile, in Sudan around Wadi Halfa, in Egypt around Aswan in the villages of Magyarab-irki, Magyararti, Magyariyya, Magyar-nirki, Hillit el-Magyarab[ citation needed ] and about 400 Magyarabs live in Cairo.
Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan speaking ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. In the southern valley of Egypt, Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from Egyptians, although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups, especially Arabs. They speak Nubian languages as a mother tongue, part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages, and Arabic as a second language.
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Fahal was a Sudanese religious and political leader. In 1881, he claimed to be the Mahdi and led a war against Egyptian rule in Sudan, which culminated in a remarkable victory over them in the Siege of Khartoum. He created a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa and founded a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later.
Lake Nasser is a vast reservoir in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It was created by the construction of the Aswan High Dam and is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before its creation, the project faced opposition from Sudan as it would encroach on land in the northern part of the country, where many Nubian people lived who would have to be resettled. In the end Sudan's land near the area of Lake Nasser was mostly flooded by the lake. The lake has become an important economic resource in Egypt, improving agriculture and touting robust fishing and tourism industries.
László Adolf Ede György Mária Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós was a Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, desert explorer, aviator, Scout-leader, and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient (1992) and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996).
Wādī Ḥalfā is a city in the Northern state of Sudan on the shores of Lake Nubia near the border with Egypt. It is the terminus of a rail line from Khartoum and the point where goods are transferred from rail to ferries going down the lake. As of 2007, the city had a population of 15,725. The city is located amidst numerous ancient Nubian antiquities and was the focus of much archaeological work by teams seeking to save artifacts from the flooding caused by the completion of the Aswan Dam.
Lower Nubia is the northernmost part of Nubia, roughly contiguous with the modern Lake Nasser, which submerged the historical region in the 1960s with the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Many ancient Lower Nubian monuments, and all its modern population, were relocated as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia; Qasr Ibrim is the only major archaeological site which was neither relocated nor submerged. The intensive archaeological work conducted prior to the flooding means that the history of the area is much better known than that of Upper Nubia. According to David Wengrow, the A-Group Nubian polity of the late 4th millenninum BCE is poorly understood since most of the archaeological remains are submerged underneath Lake Nasser.
The Arabian-Nubian Shield (ANS) is an exposure of Precambrian crystalline rocks on the flanks of the Red Sea. The crystalline rocks are mostly Neoproterozoic in age. Geographically – and from north to south – the ANS includes parts of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Somalia. The ANS in the north is exposed as part of the Sahara Desert and Arabian Desert, and in the south in the Ethiopian Highlands, Asir province of Arabia and Yemen Highlands.
The Cataracts of the Nile are shallow lengths of the Nile river, between Khartoum and Aswan, where the surface of the water is broken by many small boulders and stones jutting out of the river bed, as well as many rocky islets. In some places, these stretches are punctuated by whitewater, while at others the water flow is smoother but still shallow.
The New Halfa Project in Sudan is a 164,000 feddan site constructed in 1964 to house 50,000 Nubians displaced from Wadi Halfa, a town situated on the Nile near the border with Egypt, which was flooded when Lake Nasser formed behind the Aswan Dam. The site draws its water from the Atbara River, where the Khashm el Girba Dam provides a reliable source for the irrigation project intended to convert the nomads of the area to farmers of cotton and sugar.
Mohammed Osman Hassan Salih Wardi, also known as Mohammed Wardi, was a Nubian Sudanese singer, poet and songwriter. Looking back at his life and artistic career, Sudanese writer and critic Lemya Shammat called him an "inspirational figure in Sudanese music and culture, whose prolific talent and massive contribution remains unsurpassed in Sudan."
Hansjoachim von der Esch was a German explorer in Egypt and Sudan, as well as German ambassador to Syria and Morocco.
Nubia is a region along the Nile river encompassing the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, and the area between the first cataract of the Nile or more strictly, Al Dabbah. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, the Kerma culture, which lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under Pharaoh Thutmose I around 1500 BC, whose heirs ruled most of Nubia for the next 400 years. Nubia was home to several empires, most prominently the Kingdom of Kush, which conquered Egypt in the eighth century BC during the reign of Piye and ruled the country as its 25th Dynasty.
Kulb is a village on the Nile in northern Sudan. It has been inhabited since the time of the Christian kingdom of Makuria. Until the 15th century, it was in a remote area, serving as a retreat for Christians in Nubia. The domed Kulubnarti church, 21-S-1, is the only known example of a Christian center plan building in Lower Nubia.
Meinarti was an island with a Nubian village in northern Sudan. Situated in the Nile, Meinarti was just north of the 2nd Cataract, a few kilometers upstream of the Sudanese border town of Wadi Halfa. On the island was an artificial mount 175m long and 12.5m high, consisting of stratified archaeological remains. When excavated it proved to contain 18 recognizable levels, the result of six separate and distinct phases of occupation. Each phase was followed by a period of abandonment and then a complete rebuilding. Structural remains at all phases were entirely of mud brick. Meinarti was excavated by William Yewdale Adams from 1962 to 1964, prior to perishing in the 1960s with the rising of Lake Nubia due to the Aswan Dam.
The Sudans is a region in Northeast Africa comprising the sovereign countries of Sudan and South Sudan. Until 2011, the region was united under a state known as the Republic of the Sudan.
Debeira is an archaeological site in Sudan situated on the eastern bank of the Nile some 20 kilometres north of Wadi Halfa.
Suad Ibrahim Ahmed was a leader and central committee member of the Sudanese Communist Party. She was an activist for women's issues. She was a leader in the struggle against displacement of Nubian people of the Wadi Halfa region caused by erection of the Aswan Dam.
The Egypt–Sudan border is 1,276 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Libya in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The eastern section of the border is subject to a territorial dispute between the two states.
Al Balabil were a popular Sudanese vocal group of three sisters, mainly active from 1971 until 1988. Their popular songs and appearance as modern female performers on stage, as well as on Sudanese radio and television, earned them fame all over East Africa and beyond, and they were sometimes referred to as the "Sudanese Supremes". After both retiring from the stage and emigrating to the United States in 1988, they gave a revival concert in 2007 in New York City's Central Park, and later in Detroit and Chicago, as well as in their native Sudan.
The International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia was the effort to relocate 22 monuments in Lower Nubia, in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan, between 1960 and 1980. This was done in order to make way for the building of the Aswan Dam, at the Nile's first cataract, a project launched following the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. This project was undertaken under UNESCO leadership and a coalition of fifty countries. This process led to the creation of the World Heritage Convention in 1972, and thus the system of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Detailed report about a Hungarian expedition:
Other references: