William Y. Adams
NUBIA CORRIDOR TO AFRICA
Allen Lane
Princeton University Press
New Jersey
USA
Nubia Corridor of Africa
By William Adams
Translated by Dr. Mahjoub Al-Tijani Mahmoud
Adams wrote in his paper entitled “The Invention of Nubia,” saying:
“There remains the perspective of Nubian studies - to which I myself contributed to a significant extent, through my book “Nubia, the Corridor of Africa.” I can say with all certainty that this perspective presents a vision of history that is reliable in terms of the terms of anthropology in the 1950s, and whose main topic (at least in America) was to uncover and describe the unique (order, as we say) in each culture. Certainly, an in-depth reading will show that “Nubia, the Corridor of Africa” is not a coherent history. As an ethnographic series in which each successive phase of Nubian history is described in terms of its prevailing values and interests, the same is true of the interpretive technique as used by many mid-century ethnographers, and, I believe, it fits with what Ibn Khaldun advised.
Nubia Corridor of Africa, as some critics have reminded me, is less reliable in terms of the anthropology of the 1960s and 1970s, even though it was written in that period. But anthropology at that time was dominated by competing schools of cultural materialism and structuralism, both of which rejected any significant role for human will. In their different ways, both schools assume that human culture is largely the product of forces outside the control of human consciousness. From such a perspective, it becomes possible to envision comprehensive laws for culture and history, while in the concluding chapter of the book I expressed my reservations about applying such laws to the Nubian question, as I understood it.
Finally, the efforts of Brother Dr. Mahjoub Al-Tijani and his suffering with the publication of his translation of this wonderful and essential book for scholars and those interested in the history of Sudan from the earliest periods until the beginning of the twentieth century AD.
* The book will be available to Arabic readers at the Cairo International Book Fair in January 2005.
*If you wish to purchase the book before that date, you can contact the translator via e-mail:
emehawari@hotmail.com