| Summary: | "This is an account of a remarkable nomadic people in West Africa, presumably the only hunting and foraging community to withstand its bloody legacy of slave-raiding,colonization, warfare and environmental degradation of the Sahel to our time. The book traces the history of this unique but little known people to the Banu Duku Empire in Chad in the sixth century AD that is to the very origin of the Sudanese States. Based on her own fieldwork and 'excavation' of the scanty sources on Kanem and the Bahr el Ghazal, the author offers a fascinating description of the everyday life, subsistence activities, dwellings, poetry, music and crafts of the Haddad and their interaction with pastoral and agro-pastoral groups. The book takes the reader on hunting expeditions with a group which chases gazelle and antelope into cleverly placed 'traps' of nets and describes how hunters of another group crawl up upon their prey in disguise with bow and arrow as did prehistoric man in the region known to us from Saharan rock paintings. The analysis anchors the Haddad within the complex historical and multi-ethnic setting of the region and outlines the traumatic social and cultural implications for these nomadic people of warfare, the presence of dominant groups, French colonial policies and more recent interventions by the State. The ongoing existence of nomadic peoples in West Africa has so far gone largely unnoticed. It is the intention of the book to stimulate the interest of scholars and a wider readership of African history, culture and social issues by adding this unique material on the indigenous Haddad to the puzzle."--Publisher's description.
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