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al-Nur Muhammad Anqara (b. 1836) was of the Bidayriyyya Dahmashiyya and raised in the household of the Shayqi kings of Arqo. As a youth, he joined the Shayqi irregular cavalry in service to the Turco-Egyptian government. Later, he defected to join the ivory hunters (bahhara) in the Bahr al-Ghazal. Meeting among them al-Zubayr Rahma (q.v.), a-Nur and the former soon left to make their own company in the south. Subsequently, al-Nur was al-Zubayr's chief of staff, serving valiantly in his conflicts with al-Bulalawi (1869), the Rizayqat (1873), and the Sultan of Darfur (1874). However, after al-Zubayr was detained on a trip to Cairo and several disagreements with al-Zubayr's son, al-Nur rejoined government forces in Darfur. Eventually being appointed general-governor (mudir umum) of western Darfur, he helped to put down the rebellion of Fur claimant Harun al-Rashid in 1880. Subsequently in 1881 or 1882, al-Nur was removed from government service and settled in al-Ubayyid. With the Mahdist rebellion, however, he soon resumed service as commander of Bara. With the Mahdist siege of the latter town, he held out until he surrendered on 6 Jan., 1883. The Mahdi received him kindly, enrolling him in the army of Hamdan Abu Anja, who accompanied to the Nuba Mountains and eastern Sudan. He continued to serve in the east for the rest of his career, being present for the death of King Yohannes IV at al-Qallabat and wounded in the Battle of Agordat. In 1898, he was to ill to travel to Omdurman for the battle of Karari, instead remaining in al-Qadarif. He subsequently surrendered to Anglo-Egyptian forces and lived the rest of his life in Omdurman, dying in 1920.
References:
Richard Hill, Biographical Dictionary of the Sudan, 2nd edn (1967), 297, 405 s.v. "al-Nur Bey Muhammad Anqara."
P.M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 2nd edn (1970), 60, 64.
R.S. O'Fahey, comp. Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 1: The Writings of Eastern Sudanic Africa to c. 1900 (1994), 339.
R.S. O'Fahey, "The Conquest of Darfur, 1873-1882," SNR, new series, 1 (1997), 47-67.
R.S. O'Fahey, "al-Zubayr's Early Career," Sudanic Africa 16 (2005), 53-68.
R.S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate (2008), 267-280.
al-Nur Muhammad Anqara, Tarikh hayat al-Nur Bik Muhammad Anqara, bi-qalamih - 1924. Hatim al-Siddiq Muhammad Ahmad, Qasim al-Sayyid Hamza Ahmad, eds. (2023).
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