ʿUthmān Abū-Bakr Diqna's quilted robe

Item

Title

Anṣār (الأنصار) underarmour

coat

Creator

Creator Unrecorded

Subject

Atbarah, Sudan; Sudan; djibbah; coat; robe; trophies; ethnography; World Cultures

clothing

ʿUthmān Diqna

Description

Long padded under-armour jerkin (not locally made), quilted in strips with red, blue and grey rectangles. Red edging all the way round with a stand up collar with four small pearl buttons (one of several indicators of an imported product). [FHM 09/2019]

It is constructed with a 'V' shape at the rear. [NSty 23/10/20]

The coat was given to the Royal Engineers Museum by the Royal Artillery Institution in 1984. The accession paper's note that it had been presented to the RAI on April 19th 1898 by Lt Col G. E. Benson RA. The coat was said to have been captured at Atbarah near Kassale and to have belonged to 'Osman Digna'. ʿUthmān Diqna was the Mahdī’s leading amīr or general in the Red Sea Hills region of eastern Sudan. [NSty 23/10/20]