III.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO : I. SUDANESE. 73 



elements, and the two peoples are equally distinct. The Fulahs 

 belong originally to the Hamitic stock, although many have 

 in recent times been largely assimilated to their black Sudanese 

 subjects. The Nubians on the contrary belong originally to the 

 Negro stock, although many have long been assimilated to the 

 Hamitic type through secular interminglings in that part of the 

 Nile Valley which from them takes the relatively modern name of 

 Nubia. 



But rightly to understand the question we have carefully to 

 distinguish between these half-caste Nubians and the full-blood 

 Negro Nubas, who give their name to the Nuba Mountains, 

 Kordofan, true cradle of the race, where most of the aborigines 

 (Kargo, Kulfan, Rolaji, Tumali) still belong to this connection. 

 From Kordofan, which is itself a Nuba word meaning "Land of 

 the Kordo ' ; (fan = Arab, ddr, land, country), they spread in 

 remote times west to Darfur and Waday where they are now 

 represented by the Furs^ Kunjaras, and Tynjurs and in historic 

 times along the Nile north to the Egyptian frontier. Here they 

 are represented by the three groups of Matokki (Kenus] between 

 the first Cataract and Wadi- el-Arab, the Mahai (Marisi) between 

 Korosko and Wadi-Halfa, at the second Cataract, and the Dongo- 

 lawi, of the province of Dongola between Wadi-Halfa and Jebel 

 Deja near Meroe. 



These three groups, all now Muhammadans, but formerly 

 Christians, constitute collectively the so-called Nub j an 

 "Nubians" of European writers, but call themselves Origins and 

 Barabra, plural of Berberi, i.e. people of Berber, 

 although they do not at present extend so far up the Nile as that 

 town 1 . They are unquestionably Strabo's " Noubai, who dwell 



1 This term, however, has by some authorities been identified with the 

 Barabara, one of the 113 tribes recorded in the inscription on a gateway 

 of Thutmes, by whom they were reduced about 1700 B.C. In a later inscription 

 of Rameses II. at Karnak (1400 B.C.) occurs the form Beraberata, name of a 

 southern people conquered by him. Hence Brugsch (Reisebericht aus sEgypten 

 pp. 127 and 155) is inclined to regard the modern Barabra as a true ethnical 

 name confused in classical times with the Greek and Roman Barbarus, but 

 revived in its proper sense since the Moslem conquest. See also the editorial 

 note on the term Berber, in the new English ed. of Leo Africanus, Vol. I. 

 p. 199. 



