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Fuzzy-Wuzzy
"Fuzzy-Wuzzy" is a poem by the English author and poet Rudyard Kipling, published in 1892 as part of ''Barrack Room Ballads''. It describes the respect of the ordinary British soldier for the bravery of the Hadendoa warriors who fought the British army in the Sudan and Eritrea. Background "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" was the term used by British soldiers for Beja warriors who were supporting the Mahdi of Sudan in the Mahdist War. The term relates to the elaborate ''tiffa'' hair style favoured by the Hadendoa tribe, a subdivision of the Beja people. The Beja people were one of several broad multi-tribal groupings supporting the Mahdi, and were divided into six tribes: Hadendoa, Halanga, Amarar, Beni-Amer, Habab, and Bishariyyin. All of these are semi-nomadic and inhabit the Sudan's Red Sea Hills, Libyan Desert, and southern Egypt. The Beja provided a large number of warriors to the Mahdist forces. They were armed with swords and spears and some of them carried breech-loaded rifles w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels
Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was the name given by Australian Army, Australian soldiers to Papua New Guinean people, Papua New Guinean war carriers who, during World War II, were recruited or forced into service to bring supplies up to the front and carry injured Australian troops down the Kokoda trail during the Kokoda Campaign. "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" was originally used by British Army, British soldiers in the 19th century as a name for Hadendoa warriors on the Red Sea coast of the Sudan, and referred to their elaborate butter-matted hairstyles. History In 1942, during the Pacific invasion, the Japanese people, Japanese had built up a force of 13,500 in the Gona, Papua New Guinea, Gona region of Papua with the intention of invading Port Moresby. The key to the offensive was an overland trail across the Owen Stanley Ranges. The trail ranged from the small village of Buna on the north coast of Papua (Australian territory), Papua and went up the slopes through Gorari and Oivi to Kokoda. The trail wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beja People
The Beja people ( ar, البجا, Beja: Oobja, tig, በጃ) are an ethnic group native to the Eastern Desert, inhabiting a coastal area from southeastern Egypt through eastern Sudan and into northwestern Eritrea. They are descended from peoples who have inhabited the area since 4000 BC or earlier, although they were Arabized by Arabs who settled in the region. They are nomadic, and live primarily in the Eastern Desert. They number around 1,900,000 to 2,200,000 people. Most of the Beja speak Arabic, while some speak the Cushitic language of Beja and the Semitic language of Tigre. In Eritrea and southeastern Sudan, many members of the Beni-Amer grouping speak Tigre. Originally, the Beja did not speak Arabic, however the migration of the numerous Arab tribes of Juhaynah, Mudar, Rabi'a, and many more to the Beja areas contributed to the Arabization and Islamization of them, however the Arabs did not fully settle in the Beja areas as they looked for better climate in oth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broken Square
A broken square refers to an infantry square collapsing or breaking up in battle. Specific incidents that this expression may refer to are all in the Mahdist War in the Sudan: * At the Battle of Abu Klea: the breach was small and soon closed itself, leaving the intruders trapped inside the square, whose inner ranks faced-about and quickly defeated the intruders. See Battle of Abu Klea#Battle for the real events at Abu Klea.In an after-battle report, ''The Times'' newspaper incorrectly had it that a British square broke. * At the Battle of Tamai: *# The Black Watch formed one side of a big square under attack, and was ordered by top command to leave that post (leaving their side of that square open) and attack another enemy force which was hidden down a desert gully. *# The restricted rocky irregular ground in that gully made it difficult to form a solid square to resist attack; that square came under intense attack from Sudanese (here, mostly Hadendoa). The square was flooded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Tamai
The Battle of Tamai (or Tamanieh) took place on 13 March 1884 between a British force under Sir Gerald Graham and a Mahdist Sudanese army led by Osman Digna. Despite his earlier victory at El Teb, Graham realised that Osman Digna's force was far from broken and that he still enjoyed support among the local population. Accordingly, a second expedition departed from Suakin on 10 March in order to defeat the Mahdists definitively. The force was composed of the same units that had fought at El Teb: 4,500 men, with 22 guns and 6 machine guns. The Mahdists had roughly 10,000 men, most of them belonging to Osman Digna's Hadendoa tribe (known to British soldiers as " Fuzzy Wuzzies" for their unique hair). Forces The British forces involved in the battle were: * Squadron from 10th Hussars * Squadron from 19th Hussars * 1st Battalion, The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) * 3rd Battalion, The King's Royal Rifle Corps * 1st Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment * 1st Battalion, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad ( ar, محمد أحمد ابن عبد الله; 12 August 1844 – 22 June 1885) was a Nubian Sufi religious leader of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, as a youth, studied Sunni Islam. In 1881, he claimed to be the Mahdi, and led a successful war against Ottoman-Egyptian military rule in Sudan and achieved a remarkable victory over the British, in the siege of Khartoum. He created a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa, and founded a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later. From his announcement of the Mahdist State in June 1881 until its end in 1898, Holt, P.M.: "The Mahdist State in Sudan, 1881-1898". Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. p. 45. the Mahdi's growing number of supporters, the Ansars, established many of its theological and political doctrines. After Muhammad Ahmad's unexpected death on 22 June 1885, his chief deputy, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad took over the administration of the nascent Mahdist Stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Choice Of Kipling's Verse
''A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling'' is a book first published in December 1941 (by Faber and Faber in UK, and by Charles Scribner's Sons in U.S.A.). It is in two parts. The first part is an essay by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), in which he discusses the nature and stature of British poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The second part consists of Eliot's selection from Kipling's poems. ''A Choice of Kipling's Verse'' was republished in 1963. Critical reception ''A Choice of Kipling's Verse'' rapidly attracted critical attention, both supportive and hostile, on both sides of the Atlantic. W. J. Turner said that "Mr. Eliot's essay is an admirable example of the finest type of criticism. He succeeds in making us look at his subject's work with freshly opened eyes and he is at once sober, illuminating and sound". George Orwell naturally took the opportunity to write an extended political essay, which incident ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barrack Room Ballads
The Barrack-Room Ballads are a series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling, dealing with the late-Victorian British Army and mostly written in a vernacular dialect. The series contains some of Kipling's best-known works, including the poems "Gunga Din", " Tommy", "Mandalay", and "Danny Deever", helping consolidate his early fame as a poet. The first poems were published in the ''Scots Observer'' in the first half of 1890, and collected in ''Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses'' in 1892. Kipling later returned to the theme in a group of poems collected in '' The Seven Seas'' under the same title. A third group of vernacular Army poems from the Boer War, titled "Service Songs" and published in '' The Five Nations'' (1903), can be considered part of the Ballads, as can a number of other uncollected pieces. Defining the canon While two volumes of Kipling's poems are clearly labelled as "Barrack-Room Ballads", identifying which poems should be grouped in this way can be complex. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hadendoa
Hadendoa (or Hadendowa) is the name of a nomadic subdivision of the Beja people, known for their support of the Mahdiyyah rebellion during the 1880s to 1890s. The area historically inhabited by the Hadendoa lies today in parts of Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea. Etymology According to Roper (1930), the name ''Haɖanɖiwa'' is made up of ''haɖa'' 'lion' and ''(n)ɖiwa'' 'clan'. Other variants are ''Haɖai ɖiwa'', ''Hanɖiwa'' and ''Haɖaatʼar'' (children of lioness). Language The language of the Hadendoa is a dialect of Bedawi. History The southern Beja were part of the Christian kingdom of Axum during the sixth to fourteenth centuries. In the fifteenth century, Axum fell to the Islamization of the Sudan region, and although the Beja were never entirely subjugated, they were absorbed into Islam via marriages and trade contracts. In the seventeenth century, some of the Beja expanded southward, conquering better pastures. These became the Hadendoa, who by the eighteenth centur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, Hitchens worked as a journalist with the ''New Statesman'' magazine in London in the 1970s after leaving Oxford. In the early 1980s he emigrated to the United States and wrote for '' The Nation'' and ''Vanity Fair''. Hitchens political views evolved greatly throughout his life. Originally describing himself as a democratic socialist, he was a member of various socialist organisations in his early life, including the International Socialists. Hitchens eventually no longer regarded himself as socialist, but continued to admire aspects of Marxism. He was critical of aspects of American foreign policy, including its involvement in Vietnam, Chile, and East Timor. However, he also supported the United States in the Kosovo War. After Hitchens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Recessional (poem)
"Recessional" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was composed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, in 1897. Description “Recessional” contains five stanzas of six lines each. As a recessional is a hymn or piece of music that is sung or played at the end of a religious service, in some respects the title dictates the form of the poem, which is that of a traditional English hymn. Initially, Kipling had not intended to write a poem for the Jubilee. It was written and published only towards the close of the Jubilee celebrations, and represents a comment on them, an afterword. The poem was first published in ''The Times'' on July 17, 1897. The poem went against the celebratory mood of the time, providing instead a reminder of the transient nature of British Imperial power. The poem expresses both pride in the British Empire, but also an underlying sadness that the Empire might go the way of all previous empires. "The title and its allusion to an end rather than a beginning a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia (a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia). Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby. The country is the world's third largest island country, with an area of . At the national level, after being ruled by three external powers since 1884, including nearly 60 years of Australian administration starting during World War I, Papua New Guinea established its sovereignty in 1975. It became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1975 with Elizabeth II as its queen. It also became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations in its own right. There are 839 known languages of Papua New Guinea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
