ar ey MA a 
Cee ot + Ad ate 
is! — N 
R UAK v YO, iste ai ana 
ha el concludes that the two main vethnic strains in 
be country are the negro and the hamitic, the latter 
eing, at least in part, a result of the pressure exerted by 
4 immigrants into North Africa upon the Berber 
bribes, Thus originated the ruling aristocracy of the 
fringing the Sahara to the west of Lake Chad, 
mil the Tibbu are to be regarded as an early Libyo- 
r mixture that has come to form the basis of the 
population of Northern Darfur, the negro element 
redominating in the south. It must, however, be 
remembered that cultural influence, perhaps relatively 
ancient, has come in from the east, as is evidenced not 
y by legends of origin but also by the very striking 
smblance in the vocabularies of such peoples of 
D as the Midob and Birked to those of the 
Barabra of the Nile Valley, and that with this, there 
ras probably introduced a strain of foreign blood. 
_ Turning now to the Arabs with whom the main bulk 
of the work is concerned, Mr. MacMichael begins by 
acing their progress through Egypt in the Middle 
yes. This is no easy matter, for even in the ninth 
tury the historian, el Baladhuri, admits that there 
ere great differences of opinion. Here may be quoted 
dictum of the author of MS. DI: “The tribes of the 
bs who are in the Sudan, other than these [the 
, the Abyssinians, and the Zing], are foreigners, 
id have merely mixed with the tribes mentioned 
ve and multiplied with them. Some of them have 
gained the characteristics of the Arabs, and the 
ent of Nuba and Zing that is interspersed among 
n has adopted the Arab characteristics ; and on 
oe hand there have been some Arabs who have 
e fused with the Nuba and the Zing, and adopted 
characteristics; but in each case they know 
: ir origin. » 
flere, in brief, is the history of much of the Arab 
and even if it be doubted that “in each 
e they know their origin” a great deal of Mr. 
eMichael’s research does but amplify and confirm 
\ srab forerunner. The whole process can be 
d particularly well in the case of the Guhayna 
he in my In the pre-Islamic period they occupied 
jd and the neighbourhood of Medina, where a section 
ell to this day. Many migrated to Egypt, taking 
+ in the conquest with other sections of the Kuda’a, 
, - two hundred years later they formed part of a 
ce e invading the Beja country. Some of them seem 
| have reached Aswan by the ninth century; by the 
rteenth century they had penetrated far into Nubia, 
nd it was the Guhayna who more than any other tribe 
srought about the dissolution of the Christian kingdom 
‘of Dongola. 
_ * At first the kings of the Nuba attempted to repulse 
n, but they failed ; then they won them over by 
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NATURE 
177 
giving them their daughters in marriage. Thus was 
their Kingdom disintegrated, and it passed to certain 
of the sons of the Guhayna on account of their mothers 
according to the custom of the infidels as to the succes- 
sion of the sister or the sister’s son. So their Kingdom 
fell to pieces and the A’rab of Guhayna took possession 
of it. But their rule showed none of the marks of 
statesmanship because of the inherent weakness of a 
system which is opposed to discipline and the sub- 
ordination of one to another. Consequently they are 
still divided up into parties and there is no vestige of 
authority in their land, but they remain nomads 
following the rainfall like the A’rab of Arabia. There 
is no vestige of authority in their land, since the result 
of the commingling and blending that has taken place 
has merely been to exchange the old ways for the ways 
of the Bedouin Arab.” Thus Makrizi in a passage not 
included in de Slane’s translation. 
It was this dual policy of following the rainfall and 
of inter-marriage that led to the rapid spread of the 
stock, so that a sixteenth-century author, or more 
probably copyist, writes of a total of “ fifty-two tribes 
in the land of Soba on the Blue Nile under the rule of 
the Fung,” while there were even more in the west, 
including Bornu. So at the present day all the 
Baggara, including those of Darfur and Wadai, regard 
themselves as united in the common bond of Guhayna 
ancestry. It is in this sense that the Guhayna con- 
stitute one of the great moieties of the Sudan Arabs, 
yet it must be remembered that in the Sudan the 
tribal name Guhayna is used in a narrow as well as 
a broad sense. In the former it is restricted to certain 
nomads inhabiting the Sennar Province; it is only 
in the widest sense and by much manipulation of 
genealogies that it is stretched to include the Baggara 
and the vast group of camel nomads in Kordofan, all 
of whom if pressed will say that they are descended 
from Abdulla el Guhani. 
The other great division of the Sudan Arabs, even 
larger and more loosely knit than the Guhayna, is the 
Ga’aliin, the members of which claim to be descended ~ 
from ’Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet, In the main 
this group is sedentary; the Arab element sensu 
stricto that went to form it seems to have coalesced 
with the older settled inhabitants of Nubia and to a 
considerable extent to have adopted their social habits. 
Indeed, Mr. MacMichael applies the term Ga’aliin- 
Danagla to this, the other great moiety of Sudan Arabs, 
which includes most of the riverain tribes as well as 
a number of sedentary tribes in Kordofan. 
It must be understood that the reviewer has been 
able to touch on some only of the outstanding features 
of this remarkable book, which, while holding so much 
detailed information, abounds in suggestions which 
FI 
