This book deals with two puzzles: Who has lived on the mountain Shaybun, which has been a famous gold market in the Nuba Mountains (Sudan) until the 19th century, and why has it been deserted? The answering begins with a present ethnic group, the Shawabna, who are of unclear origin and have a contested position between the lines of being Arab or being Black African. The book does not attempt to solve the historiographical and the ethnographical puzzles, but it presents different narratives surrounding these questions, in order to keep the diversity of perspectives and to relate the historical narratives to its conditions of creation. Simultaneously the text discusses the political and scientific treatment of yet uncertain, therefore imagined resources, which is inseparable from the narrative representation of Shaybun’s history.
