Sudanese Command Batons

[TVV]

Thank you for your comments Jim.

For reference, I am attaching a picture of the baton, pictured in Mr. Pradines' paper.

[Martin Lubojacky]

Hi,
Acc. what Mr Manfred Zirngibl told me years ago, this should be a staff of Sudanese priests. I don´t know if it is true - or not.... Maybe there is picture with explanation in Pangana visu book (?) with explanation. Enclosed is piece from my collection (I only have this wrong picture with me)

[Martin Lubojacky]

Quotation from the book Panga na visu + picture

[thinreadline]

and along the same lines , this is what I have in my collection ...

I posted a picture of this some time ago and the conclusion was that it was a Sudanese dancing spear and that the coins were those of Abdulhamid II ( 1842-1918 ) .

[Kubur]

Hi

I agree with you guys
It looks like the Ottoman Turkish dervish maces... at least for the last one posted (with the coins)
So priests and dances are correct to me.
Now i don't know if these dervish priests were also in command in the Maadhist armies...

Kubur

[Jim McDougall]

These are great insights and really help a lot! I truly had no idea about military batons as noted, and this being Sudanese has really set the wheels in motion.

From what I have found, the 'baton' has classical origins in the Roman 'fasces' which was a symbol of authority, power and was held by their key legislative figures etc This practice seems to have had a revival in the neo classicism in Napoleonic France where Napoleons marshals were awarded these symbols of their office. The concept seems to have some use in other armies even into modern times.

I think I would be more inclined to think of these as such items in the baton category with the priests and ceremonial activity which would include dancing and similarly oriented events. I think the geometric shape of the shaft on this one may be supportive of that application.

The coins on the example posted by Thinredline being 1842 of course suggest such items being used in this manner at least during the Mahdist period in Sudan, so being a carry over from the earlier period c.1821. Since this is the specified time of this piece that would be the case.

While I cannot speak to the presence of priests during the Mahdist period nor in the time frame of this piece in battle context, it does seem that they would have at least been present with tribesmen in these crucial times for religious support much as are chaplains in modern times.

In a tenuous thought toward the use of sphero-conical vial on this, I am wondering if perhaps the religious connotation might have been carried further by the use of this recalling the ewers of this shape and material.

[TVV]

Gentlemen,

I really appreciate your responses and the excellent examples you have added to this thread. I should have looked in Panga Na Visu myself, not sure why I forgot to do that before posting here.

Abdul Hamid II ruled from 1876 to 1908, so the spear/scepter bearing coins from the time of his rule is almost certainly from the time of the Mahdist state. These obviously are not useful as weapons, and their use must have been entirely ceremonial - that is for certain. The question remains - what was that ceremonial application in a military context? Were these used as dancing spears prior to battles, in rituals intended to raise religious fever and troop morale? Or were they possibly also used on the battlefield by officers as marks of rank? I personally do not have an answer.

I will just take a moment to briefly examine the provenance of the example in Pradines' paper, as it is dated to the 1820s. Supposedly a couple of those batons can be seen in a photograph from the 1890s hanging in the house of Athansios Lidorikis, a prominent participant in the Greek War of Liberation, alogn with some other trophies from the war. I cannot find the exact dates during which Lidorikis lived, but he is quite old on a portrait painted in 1855, so we can assume that he was not around during the Mahdist wars. Based on this, it seems likely that the dating Pradines provides - 1820s, is correct. This would mean that at least two such batons were carried with the Egyptian troops all the way to Greece, and that these items date at least to the early 19th century, predating their use by Mahdist forces.

Based on all this, the dancing spear attribution seems very plausible, and these may be tied to pre-Islam shamanistic rituals. I am not sure if there is a dancing spear/mace significance in Sufism.

On the other hand, there are other items used by Mahdist forces with more of a symbolic nature, such as thuluth inscribed throwing knives, thuluth inscribed spear shaped battle standards (or are they battle standards?) with short hilts, etc. These items tend to be a piece of sheet steel, with etchings and no real edge and practically useless in battle, but were carried for whatever reason - possibly due to their purported spiritual powers, or as military rank insignia. The two uses are actually not necessarily mutually exclusive. Or they may have been carried by religious figures who were there to boost morale and were not meant to ever find themselves in actual combat situations, though carrying a baton does not preclude one from also carrying a sword.

Again, thank you for the responses, as I am learning a lot from this thread.

Teodor