Hadat
Beja · mortal · Beja traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Hadat is the eponymous progenitor invoked in the folk traditions of the Hadendoa, the most numerous of the Beja confederations. Some accounts make her a daughter of a medieval ruler of Suakin, from whom the tribe took both its name and its chiefly descent. Scholars are divided on the tradition: the philologist E.M. Roper analysed the tribal name Haɖanɖiwa as simply 'lion clan', from haɖa, 'lion', and (n)ɖiwa, 'clan', so that the ancestral Hadat may be a later personification of the name rather than its source. She stands here for the ancestress-legends by which the Beja groups explain their own names and identity.
Domains
- ancestry
Powers
- found the Hadendoa people
Sources
- Hadendoa folk tradition links the confederation's name and descent to a progenitor Hadat, said to be a daughter of a medieval ruler of Suakin; the linguistic derivation instead reads Haɖanɖiwa as 'lion clan' (haɖa 'lion' + (n)ɖiwa 'clan').: E.M. Roper, Tu Beḍawie: An Elementary Handbook (Hertford, 1928). (secondary); Andrew Paul, A History of the Beja Tribes of the Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 1954). (secondary)