IDNO

P.50985.RDG

Description

Portrait of two Bisharin young women, both sitting and facing the camera. Both have elaborately braided fringes with the rest of the hair in fine braids and have nose piercings. One woman appears also to have beads in her long braids and her head is covered by a shawl. She wears a tunic of dark cloth with a printed or embroidered panel down the middle and a beaded neck ornament. The other wears light cloth worn in a toga style and many strands of twisted cord around her neck ( which probably have an amulet or pouch on the end) as well as beads around her wrist.

Place

N Africa; NE Africa; Sudan; Egypt; Northern Sudan; Southern Egypt; Nubia

Cultural Affliation

Bisharin [historically Bishareen]

Named Person

Photographer

C. & G. Zangaki Brothers

Collector / Expedition

Ridgeway, William

Date

circa 1880 - 1900

Collection Name

Ridgeway Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

The print was found in an envelope now marked C239/ which was inside the wooden drawer I.

Biographical Information: “ Though many early travellers encountered the Bishareen in Nubia, none wrote a detailed account of them. The Bishareen appear once to have had a fair idea of their own history, and there are reports that before the time of the Mahdi in the 1880s, they possessed some written accounts of their traditions. They lived in an area stretching from Aswan southward to Berber on the Nile River and Kassala on the Atbara River. Perhaps descendants of the earlier nomadic Bedja and Blemmyes, their legendary birthplace was Gebel Elba, near Aidhab; their name is traced to an eponymous ancestor "Bishar." Armed with broad swords, large round hide shields, at times caparisoned in chain mail passed down from the Middle Ages, their camel-mounted warriors were visions of the Prophet's own men. During the Mahdist wars in the Sudan, they were of somewhat divided loyalties: some followed the Mahdist chief Osman Digna, others annihilated Mahdist raiding parties, and some served as native irregulars with the British. Following the defeat of the Khalifa by the British at Omdurman, the Bishareen declined. Although this group portrait bears no signature, the two women reappear as models in at least one other photograph signed "Zangaki."
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/PUB/CATALOG/LE2.5.html

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [JD 2/7/2007]