Mahas

The Mahas (Arabic: المحس) 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 finite rainfall lead the Mahas, and other residents of the area, to migrate from the area. As early as the late 1400s to the early 1500s, following the end of the Mamluke Sultanate in Egypt and the Christian kingdom in Nubia, the Mahas ethnic group began to migrate. The Mahas migrants settled in the “Three Towns” area, the present-day cities of Khartoum, Khartoum North, and Omdurman, and along the Blue Nile. Arkell insinuates that the Mahas acquired land in the “Three Towns” area and Tuti Island from the Jummu’iya tribe. When the Mahas had arrived, the area was already inhabited by the Rufa’a, Ja’aliyin, Shayqia, and Jummu’iya peoples. The Mahas in the “Three Towns” are largely from Nubian descent. Lobban argues that they are of the completely Arabized Nubians. The Mahas of this stock do not maintain strong ties with the Nubians in the north and east. They know little of the Nubian language. Inhabiting the north of Sudan and south of Egypt at a time when Islam was expanding south up the Nile, the Mahas of this group were Arabized relatively early. As Mahas families became established in the Three Towns, they were almost exclusively of Mahas descent. The Three Towns area was composed of Nubian, Arab, Sudanic, Nilotic, and European groups. However, within the Mahas communities, there was a strong inclination for preserving the Mahas lineage. Marriage was predominately between the Arab communities in the Nile valley. It was rare to encounter marriages between the Mahas communities and the Sudanese Darfuris and southern regions...