Rafalovich, A.A.: Ethnographic Notes About the Inhabitants of Southern Nubia

Title

Etnograficheskie zametki o zhiteliakh Nizhnei Nubii, Sankt-Peterburg 1850

Ethnographic Notes About the Inhabitants of Southern Nubia

Keywords

Summary

The essay was published in “Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo obshchestva” in 1850 (p. 168-223). It bears two subtitles: “From a letter to V. V. Grigor’ev” and “Read at the assembly on March 2, 1849”. After an ethnographic introduction about the different populations living on the Nile shores, the author claims that in these pages he will share his observations about the Barabra people, made during a five-months trip on the Nile in 1847. He begins by noting that their skin has a chocolate, almost reddish hue, which he finds rather pleasant. Men are described as tall, and women as short and strong, with facial features similar to the fellahin. Their clothing customs also resemble those of the Egyptian fellahin. The author then details their hairstyles, shaving habits, tattoo traditions, and jewellery. He mentions that women marry at the age of eleven or twelve and age quickly due to frequent pregnancies and harsh living conditions. Their huts are low and uncomfortable, made of bricks or more often of dry dirt. Agriculture and livestock are not very prosperous due to the climate, while industry and commerce are virtually absent. The Barabras are governed by local sheikhs called samim. The author then recounts saving a girl from a scorpion bite, noting however that such incidents are probably rare, as evidenced by the high degree of panic it caused. He then devotes a few pages to the history and moral qualities of the Barabras, describing them as very honest, religious, and respectful of moral rules. The author concludes with observations about their language, describing it as more melodic and pleasant to the ear than Arabic, and illustrates some basic grammar and morphology rules.

Bio

Artemii Rafalovich was a physician, born in the family of Jewish merchants who settled in Odessa when he was young. He graduated in medicine from the University of Berlin, and later obtained a doctorate from the Imperial university of Dorpat (Tartu). He worked as a professor of forensic medicine in Odessa. In 1846 he was sent on a research mission to the East to study the causes and the cures for the plague: he visited Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Algeria, and Tunisia. Upon his return to Saint Petersburg, he was appointed a member of the Medical Council. His academic contributions appeared in various publications, including “Zhurnal ministerstva obrazovaniia”, “Zapiski Obshchestva sel’skogo khoziaistva Iuzhnoi Rossii”, and “Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva” (featuring Ethnographic Notes on the Nubians, with a dictionary of their language), as well as “Otechestvennye Zapiski” (with the article Ethnographic Notes on Constantinople). His monograph A Journey Through Lower Egypt and the Inner Regions of the Delta was published in Saint Petersburg in 1850. Rafalovich’s book enjoyed widespread circulation in Russia, and the orientalist I. Krachkovskii (1883-1951) praised it as “the most valuable source for understanding numerous facets of Egypt’s socio-economic life, representing an exceptional phenomenon in all our literature of this time”.

Sources

Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, ed. by A. Polovtsova, t. 4, Sankt-Peterburg 1910, p. 505-506;

M. Zabrodskaia, Russkie puteshestvenniki po Afrike, Moskva 1955;

Afrika: entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik, ed. by V. Potekhin, t. 2, Moskva 1963, p. 153.

M.E.