The Danagla (, "People of

Dongola Dongola (), also known as Urdu or New Dongola, is the capital of Northern State in Sudan, on the banks of the Nile. It should not be confused with Old Dongola, a now deserted medieval city located 80 km upstream on the opposite bank. Et ...

") are a Nubian tribe in northern

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

primarily settling between the third Nile cataract and al Dabbah. Along with Kenzi, Fadicca, Halfawi, Sikot, and

Mahas The Mahas () are a sub-group of the Nubian people located in Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan along the banks of the Nile. For millennia, the Mahas tribe had resided in the region that constitutes present day north Sudan. Little arable land and ...

, they form a significant part of the

Nubians Nubians () ( Nobiin: ''Nobī,'' ) 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 th ...

. They traditionally speak the Nubian

Dongolawi Dongolawi is a Nubian language of northern Sudan. It is spoken by a minority of the Danagla people in the Nile Valley, from roughly south of Kerma upstream to the bend in the Nile near al Dabbah, Sudan. ''Dongolawi'' is an Arabic term based o ...

or Andaandi language, which in the 19th century was still spoken as far south as Korti and probably even further upstream. Today it is threatened by complete replacement by

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

as it is only spoken among parts of the population, especially the elders, although there are a lot of initiatives to revive it among the young generations. Due to this some modern scholars count the Danagla to the Nubians instead of the

Sudanese Arabs Sudanese Arabs () are the inhabitants of Sudan who identify as Arabs and speak Sudanese Arabic, Arabic as their mother tongue. Sudanese Arabs make up 70% of the population of Sudan, however prior to the independence of South Sudan in 2011, Suda ...

, although many Danagla consider themselves to be a branch of the

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

Ja'alin tribe The Ja'alin, Ja'aliya, Ja'aliyin or Ja'al () are an Arab or Arabised Nubian tribe in Sudan. They claim Arab descent. The Ja'alin formerly occupied the country on both banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Abu Hamad; Citation: ''The Anglo-Egyptian ...

, who claim to descend from

Abbas Abbas may refer to: People * Abbas (name), list of people with the name, including: **Abbas ibn Ali (645–680), popularly known as ''Hazrat-e-Abbas'', the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib (the first imam in Shia Islam) **Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (567 ...

Etymology

The term ''Danagla'' comes from the city of

Old Dongola Old Dongola ( Old Nubian: ⲧⲩⲛⲅⲩⲗ, ''Tungul''; , ''Dunqulā al-ʿAjūz'') is a deserted Nubian town in what is now Northern State, Sudan, located on the east bank of the Nile opposite the Wadi Howar. An important city in medieval Nub ...

, which was the capital of the Makurian Kingdom during Christianity in

Nubia Nubia (, Nobiin language, Nobiin: , ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue Nile, Blue and White Nile, White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), and the Cataracts of the Nile, first cataract ...

, as well as the Muslim Kingdom of Dongola that came after it, which was also in control of the traditional lands of the tribe. Although the term Danagla probably wasn't used among the locals until the spread of Islam, the natives prefer to designate themselves as "Andaandi", which is a word in Nubian that means ("That of our home"), or Dongolaandi ("That of Dongola").

Genetics

According to Y-DNA analysis by Hassan et al (2008), around 44% of Nubians and Danaglas generally in Sudan carry the haplogroup J in individually varied but rather small percentages. The remainder mainly belong to the

E1b1b E-M215 or E1b1b, formerly known as E3b, is a major human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. E-M215 has two basal branches, E-M35 and E-M281. E-M35 is primarily distributed in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and occurs at moderate frequencies in ...

clade (23%). Both paternal lineages are also common among local Afroasiatic-speaking populations.

Notes

Literature

* * * * {{Sudan-ethno-group-stub Sudanese Arabs Tribes of Sudan