This small goblet or beaker is woven.// It is funnel-shaped with a small foot. It may have been intended for use together with a hookah, or waterpipe (see RMV 384-51a and subsequent, for comparison). This object may belong together with RMV 2668-1813.//The basketwork is probably Arab. The Dutch antiquary and photographer Insinger, domiciled in Egypt for most of his life, travelled to the border with Sudan, and collected similar Arab basketwork in the same period (see RMV series 310 and 384).//Although the Arabs’ economic and military influence in the Sudan dated from their conquest of Egypt in the seventh century A.D., it was a long time before they were able to establish a wide-ranging and firm footing there. Arab immigration only really began in the middle ages. Nomad tribes, penetrating as far as southern Egypt, also settled in northern Sudan. Together with indigenous Sudanese tribes, they formed an Arabised border society between the ninth and eleventh centuries, establishing their independence from the authorities in Cairo. In the late fourteenth century the famous Arab geographer, Ibn Khaldun, claimed that the Arab tribe of Juhayna ruled over the entire region between Aswan and Abyssinia. This may have been something of an exaggeration, yet it still shows the degree of Arab penetration of the region, and the downfall of the old Nubian kingdoms.//From the fourteenth century on, there was also a marked increase in Islamic influence. The kingdom of Funj converted to Islam, and an indigenous black Islamic sultanate came into existence in Darfur. This process of Arabisation and Islamisation continued, and is still taking place today, particularly in the towns and cities.//The little goblet shown here was collected by the Dutch explorer Juan Maria Schuver, who travelled in the southern Sudan between 1881 and 1883. Since Schuver unfortunately sometimes neglected to make notes on the objects he acquired, we do not know exactly which ethnic Arab group produced this particular object. Schuver may have purchased it in the Khartoum market, but it could just as well have been acquired somewhere else in the region.