Banī Halba Classification of poetic genres Teirab AshShareef
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The Banī Halba are an Arabic-speaking ethnic group who live in the Southern part of the Darfur Region in the Sudan. They are one of the Baggāra (cattle-rearing) ethnic groups who inhabit a curve-like belt in the Southern Darfur and Kordofan Regions. According to the 1955-56 population census, the last reliable census, their population was about 50,000. The Banī Halba inhabit an area which lies to the southwest of Nyala, approximately between latitudes 11 degrees and 12 degrees N., and longitudes 23½ degrees and 25 degrees E. They have a subsistence economy, the resources of which are animals (mainly cattle with a few goats), land, and hashāb trees, the producers of gum Arabic. The animals are privately owned by individual households, but land is communally owned and everybody has equal access to it. The ethnic group has two sectors-a nomadic sector and a sedentary one. The sedentary sector lives on farming and the nomads migrate south westwards in the harvesting season in search of water and grass for their cattle. They spend winter and summer there and then migrate back to the homeland at the onset of the rainy season. The two main sections of the ethnic group are Awlād Jābir and Awlād Jubāra, each having six main sub sections. This structure is hereditary and each individual is a member of a household. A group of households forms both a social and an administrative unit headed by a sheikh (pl. mashāyikh). A number of sheikhs forms a larger unit headed by a cumda. All the cumad (pl. of cumda) used to owe allegiance to a paramount head, the Nāẓir. The administration of the ethnic group is thus organically linked to its social structure. In 1971, however, the government cancelled the paramount headship and maintained the mashāyikh and cumad. The Banī Halba are Muslims. The different facets of their life and culture are those of a nomadic Muslim Arab community. Kinship is an important social institution in their community and their group consciousness and sense of solidarity are very strong. Moral values such as courage, hospitality, respect for neighbors, and the like are highly regarded. The different aspects of their life and culture are interdependent, and there is a continuous interplay between them.--Introduction.
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