Sudanese Command Batons

[Jim McDougall]

These are really interesting Teodor, , and while I cannot add anything I just wanted to note I never had any idea that the Sudanese used command batons.
I think that most of my focus has been on Mahdist and post Omdurman forces and weaponry, and by this time other means of identifying leaders of the varying units were used.

I could understand specified Sudanese association with these captured in Ottoman action against Greece in that early time as Ottoman Egypt had nominally taken Sudan in 1821, and they surely used Sudanese forces in degree. What is confusing is the title of this paper (which I have not been able to access yet) suggests the use of the sphero-conical items in 19th c Sudan but it is unclear how they were used.

Here attached to these mysterious batons is puzzling as it would seem there is some symbolic convention intended (the use of these as grenades etc. in ancient to Mamluk period contexts) much in the way a gorget is intended as a badge of rank or distinction.

I look forward to getting this article as the only article I have accessed by this author pretty much asks similar questions but no answers.

It would seem that Ottomans might have adopted the baton use as noted as they adopted many European military notions, which in turn were in many cases from traditions into antiquity, but these are most curious.

[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.