User:Jalfawi56/sandbox

= Halfawi = The Halfawi are one of three Nile Nubian tribes in Northern Sudan, the other two being the Danagla and the Mahas. Members of the tribe are called "Halfawi" and "Halfawiyeen" for plural. They speak Nobiin a Nubian language of the Eastern Sudanic family of the Nilo-Saharan language phylum. The halfawis predominantly reside in Wadi Halfa locally known as "Old Halfa" following the New Halfa Scheme where displaced Nubians following the construction of the Aswan Dam were relocated to a site approximately 90km west of Kassala in Eastern Sudan. Other significant populations of the Halfawi are present in Khartoum and New Halfa.

Origins and History
The Halfawi like other Nubians descend from a combination of Ancient ancestries introduced into the Nile valley. The bulk of their Nile Valley descent is attributed to Ancient Middle Nile Valley inhabitants during the Kingdom of Kush, most likely Lower Nubian groups who came to be absorbed by Nubian speakers that migrated into the Nile Valley along the western borders of the Kushite kingdom, referred to in texts as "Noba". The deeper and earlier Mesolithic ancestry that formed the root of origin for both of these two distinct groups, is associated with the Mesolithic sites found across Wadi Halfa with intact human remains. Mesolithic skulls in Wadi Halfa are theorized to have belonged to groups both ancestral to the current Halfawi and other Modern Nubian tribes, as well as other Non-Nubian and possibly non-Sudanese ethnic groups situated well beyond the frontiers of Nubia with the skulls being attributed to a connection with a deep and local East African ancestry found across numerous Ethnic groups of diverse linguistic classifications.

In the Medieval ancestors of the Halfawi accepted Christianity, abandoning an Animist past in traditional African religions. Following intrusions of Arabs via the Rashidun Caliphate in Egypt, Nubian groups ancestral to the Halfawi came to absorb small groups of Bedouins that migrated via Egypt introducing a new foreign ancestry into the Nile Valley from the Arabian peninsula. The state decline in Makuria eventually led to the rise in influence of Sunni Islam and the Nubians were eventually converted in mass. Unlike sister groups to the Halfawi who had also assimilated migrating Bedouins, the Halfawi retained their language and cultural identity remaining independent of any classification of Arab Identity in the context of Modern Sudan. Shifts in control over Nubia between the Mamluks and the Ottomans introduced settlers of Eastern European origin into Lower Nubia who came to mix with locals. Some of these same European origins are attested by some modern Halfawi families and known sub-groups like the Magyarab.

The Halfawi, like the Neighbouring Mahas, speak a Nubian language, Nobiin proposed to be directly descended from Old Nubian spoken in the Medieval Sudanese kingdom of Makuria. Old Nubian's evolution into Nobiin now widely spoken by the Mahas, Halfawi, and Faddicca started at the earliest after the 15th century, when the most recent and possibly final attestations of Old Nubian in writing are found. Following linguistic evidence the Halfawi, Mahas, and Faddicca of Egypt share a recent common ancestry, splitting off from each other deep into the post-Christian period of Sudan. Identity formation of the Nubian tribes along the Nile came to be centralized around geography and the natural distributions of different groups and their distinct languages and dialects across cataracts and villages. This identity formation is seen with the Danagla also known as "Dongolawi" in association with the town of Dongola and the Halfawi with Wadi Halfa.