Nubian Encounters

Before the residents of Egyptian Nubia were resettled at Kom Ombo in 1963–64, the Kenuz homeland lay in the northern part of this region, extending south along the Nile from the neighborhood of Aswan to the district of al–Madiq. Even before their relocation, however, most of the Kenuz had settled in Egyptian cities, where they retained their ethnic identity and much of their culture. Kenuz culture, a blend of Arab and Nubian features, emerged during the ninth and tenth centuries AD. Kenuz religion, clearly Muslim, still includes some direct links with the pre-Arab past in spite of extensive reforms that were carried out in this century to remove practices regarded as non-Islamic. The Kenuz of Dahmit was organized by two systems: residence, manifesting itself in such units as households and villages; and descent, involving patrilineal lineages and tribes.