APPENDIX II. 463 



Nuba race is not to the east but to the west of the Nile,* in the Kordofan highlands. 

 The linal syllable fun of the very word Kordo-f an is explained to mean in the Nuba 

 language land, country, thus answering to the Arabic dur, as in Dâr-Fur = the land of 

 the Fur people. Both the Fur and the Kordo, if these latter are identical with the 

 Karga of the Jebel-Kargo, are themselves of Nuba stock and speech ; and the term Nuba 

 is still current in Kordofan both in an ethnical and a geographical sense, indicating the 

 Jebel-Nuba uplands inhabited by the Nuba tribe. Here, therefore, is the true home of 

 the race, some of whom appear to have migrated northwards some two thousand years 

 ago, settling partly in the Kargey oasis (Diocletian's Nobatse), partly in the narrow 

 vaUey of the Nile about Meroe (Strabo's Nubœ). 



Since those days there have always been Nubœ, Nobatae, or Nubians in the Nile 

 Valley, mainly in the region of the Cataracts ; and we read that after their removal 

 hither from Kargey, the Nobatse dwelt for some time peacefully with the Blemmyes 

 (Hamitic Bejas). They even made common cause with them against the Romans ; but 

 the confederacy was crushed by Maximinus in 451. Then the Bejas withdrew to their 

 old homes in the Arabian desert, while the Nobatse, embracing Christianity in 545, 

 developed a powerful Christian state in the Nile Valley. Sileo, founder of this kingdom 

 of Dongola, as it was called from its capital, bore the title of " King of the Noubads 

 and of all the Ethiopians," that is, of the present Nubian andBeja nations. His empire 

 lasted for 700 years, and was finally overthrown by the Arabs in the thirteenth century, 

 since which time the Nile Nubians have been Mohammedans. They also gradually 

 withdrew to their present limits between Egypt and Old Dongola, the rest of their 

 territory thence to Khartum being occupied by the Sheygyeh, Eobabat, Jalin, and other 

 powerful Arab tribes. 



There are thus two main divisions of the Nuba race : the Nubas proper of Kordofan, 

 found also disperse dly in Dar-Eur ; and the Nile Nubas, commonly called Nubians in 

 European books of travel, but who now call themselves Barabra.f By the latter the 

 term Nuba has been rejected, and is even regarded as an insult when applied to them 

 by others. The old national name appears to have fallen into discredit in the Nile 

 Valley, where it has become synonymous with " slave," owing to the vast number of 

 slaves supplied for ages by the Nuba populations of Kordofan and Dar-Fur.:]: The 

 Nile Nubas themselves supply no slaves to the market. Constituting settled and semi- 

 civilised Mohammedan communities, they are treated on a footing of perfect equality in 

 Egypt, where large numbers are engaged as free labourers, porters, " costermongers," 



* This is also confirmed by Ptolemy, who (iv. 8) speaks of the Nubae as ''maxime occidentales 

 Avalitarum." 



t Plural of Berberi, that is, people of Berber, although at present they do not reach so far up the 

 Nile as that town. But during the eighteenth century this place acquired considerable influence as 

 capital of a large Nubian state tributary to the Funj kings of Senaar. It is still an important station 

 on the Nile just below the Atbara confluence, at the point where the river approaches nearest to the Red 

 Sea coast at Suakin. It may here be mentioned that the term Barabra is referred by some authorities, 

 not to the town of Berber, but to the J?rt»-«(!i«)-a people, whose name occurs amongst the 113 tribes recorded 

 in the inscription on a gateway of Thutmes, by whom they were reduced about 1700 b.c. This identi- 

 fication seems to some extent confirmed by the generic name Kens applied in the same inscription to many 

 of these " Ethiopian tribes," and slill surviving in the Ibrm of Kenua (plural of Kensi), the name of the 

 northern division of the Nubian (Barabra) people towards the Egyptian frontier. It is further 

 strengthened by a later inscription of Ramses II. in Karnuk (1400 b.c.), where mention again occurs of 

 the Bcraberata, one of the southern races conquered by liim. Hence Brugsch (" Reisebericht aus 

 ^gypten," pp. 127 and 155) is inclined to regard the modern "Barabra" as a true ethnical name 

 confused in classic times with the Greek and Roman Barbarus, but which has resumed its historic value 

 since the Moslem conquest. 



X Thus in Sakakini's tabular returns of the average prices of slaves sold ia Egypt from 1870 to 

 1880, all, oi vfhaXGvev provenance, are grouped under two heads— " Nubians " and " Aby.*sinians," none 

 being true Nubians or Abyssinians, but either Nubas nnd other Negi-oes from Kordofan and the Upper 

 Nile, or else Barea, Basé, iShan-Gallas, and other Negroid peoples from the Abyssinian uphinds. 

 According to these returns ihe latter cominnnd the highest prices in the slave market, £'20 to £50 for 

 adults, the Nubas fetching only from £18 to £40. 



