III.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO: I. SUDANESE. 71 



proper south to Lake Albert Nyanza, both slopes of the Nile- 

 Congo divide (the western tributaries of the White Nile and the 

 Welle-Makua affluent of the Congo), lastly the Sobat Valley with 

 some Negro enclaves east of the White Nile, and even south of 

 the equator (Kavirondo, Semliki Valley). 



Throughout the whole of this region the fusion of the aborigines 

 with the Arab. Tuareg, or Tibu Moslem intruders, 



. The Mabas. 



wherever they have penetrated, has been far less 

 complete than in Central and Western Sudan. Thus in Waday 

 the dominant Maba people, whence the country is often called 

 Dar-Maba (" Mabaland"), are rather Negro than 



Ethnical 



Negroid, with but a slight strain of Caucasic blood. Relations in 

 In the northern districts the Zoghdwa, Gurdan, Waday> 

 Baele and Bulala Tibus keep quite aloof from the blacks, as do 

 elsewhere the Aramkas, as the Arabs are collectively called in 

 Waday. Yet the Mahamids and some other Bedouin tribes have 

 here been settled for over 500 years, and it was through their 

 assistance that the Mabas acquired the political supremacy they 

 have enjoyed since the seventeenth century, when they reduced or 

 expelled the Tynjurs 1 , the former ruling race, said to be Nubians 

 originally from Dongola. It was Abd-el-Kerim, founder of the 

 new Moslem Maba state, who gave the country its present name 

 in honour of his grandfather, Wada'i. His successor Khariib I. 

 removed the seat of government to Wara, where Vogel was mur- 

 dered in 1856. Abeshr, the present capital, dates only from the 

 year 1850. 



Waday has hitherto been visited by no other Europeans except 

 Nachtigal, who just crossed the frontier in 1873, and Massari and 

 Matteucei, who passed rapidly through under escort in 1879. 

 Hence we still await details of the ethnical conditions, most of our 

 information being in fact derived from the reports of El Tunsi 



These are the same people as the Tunjurs (Tunzers) of Darfur, regarding 

 whose ethnical position so much doubt still prevails. Strange to say, they 

 themselves claim to be Arabs, and the claim is allowed by their neighbours, 

 although they are not Muhammadans. Lejean thinks they are Tibbus from the 

 north-west, while Nachtigal, who met some as far west as Kanem, concluded 

 from their appearance and speech that they were really Arabs settled for 

 hundreds of years in the country (op. cit. II. p. 256). 



