60 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



long religious wars they have had to wage against the fanatical 

 Fulahs and other Muhammadan aggressors 1 . 



Religious indifference is indeed a marked characteristic of this 



people, and the case is mentioned of a nominal 

 Agnostics. Mussulman prince who could even read and write, 



and say his prayers, but whose two sons "knew 

 nothing at all," or, as we should say, were " Agnostics." One of 

 them, however, it is fair to add, is claimed by both sides, the 

 Moslems asserting that he says his prayers in secret, the heathens 

 that he drinks dolo (palm-wine), which of course no true believer 

 is supposed ever to do. 



CENTRAL SUDANESE. 



In Central Sudan, that is, the region stretching from the Niger 



to Wadai, a tolerably clean sweep has been made 



Ethnica? and of the aborigines, except along the southern fringe 



Social Reia- an( ] ' m p ar t s of the Chad basin. For many cen- 



tions. 



turies Islam has here been firmly established, and 

 in Negroland Islam is synonymous with a greater or less degree 

 of miscegenation. The native tribes who resisted the fiery Arab 

 or Tuareg or Tibu proselytisers were for the most part either 

 extirpated, or else driven to the southern uplands about the 

 Congo-Chad water-parting. All who accepted the Koran became 

 merged with the conquerors in a common negroid population, 

 which supplied the new material for the development of large 

 social communities and powerful political states. 



Under these conditions the old tribal organisations were in 

 great measure dissolved, and throughout its historic period of 

 about a millennium Central Sudan is found mainly occupied by 

 peoples gathered together in a small number of political systems, 

 each with its own language and special institutions, but all alike 

 accepting Islam as the State religion. Such are or were the 



1 Early in the fourteenth century they were strong enough to carry the war 

 into the enemy's camp and make more than one successful expedition against 

 Timbuktu. At present the Mossi power is declining, and their territory has 

 already (1898) been parcelled out (on paper) between the British and French 

 Sudanese hinterlands. 



