jo8 ARAB ELEMENT. 



Tanala country and the south-eastern coast, does not confirm 

 what Mr. Cowan here states. I could see no difference be- 

 tween the clans he names and the mass of the people. But 

 as Mr. Cowan has had fuller and more frequent oppor- 

 tunities of observation than I have had, his opinion is 

 entitled to considerable weight. At Ambdhipeho, near the 

 mouth of the Matitanana, some of the people, who call them- 

 selves Zdfy Ibrahim (" descendants of Abraham "), said to me 

 in conversation, " We are altogether Jews ; " but I could not 

 detect any difference in colour, features, or dialect between 

 them and the other people of the eastern coast. At the same 

 time the Arab influence in this region is undoubted. At 

 this very place M. Grandidier obtained in 1870 copies of 

 Arabic books on various subjects. And here also a son of 

 one of the former dmbidsy, or diviners, gave me a paper with 

 a number of Arabic words, equivalents for as many Malagasy 

 ones ; showing that, in some families at least, a knowledge of 

 the language of their ancestors had not yet died out. 



Farther north also, at the Isle of St. Marie's, and the 

 adjacent mainland, the people call themselves Zafy Ibrahim. 

 If the traditions and written documents referred to above are 

 correct in the main, this Arab element must have come into 

 Madagascar about 1200 years ago (the Hegira or Moham- 

 medan era was A.D. 662), and as the immigrants seem chiefly 

 to have been men, for some are expressly mentioned as taking 

 native women as wives, it is not remarkable that the foreign 

 influence is so little prominent in the features and colour of 

 the people. During all these hundreds of years the mixture 

 with native blood has been assimilating it more and more 

 every succeeding generation with that of the majority of the 

 population, and climatic and other influences have also been 

 working in the same direction.* 



Besides this Arab influence exerted many hundred years ago 



* It is perhaps not unworthy of remark, that the names of the Arab 

 ancestors of the noble clans in the south-east of Madagascar seem derived from 

 purely Malagasy roots, for Ramanla, Isambo, Imabizo, Imaniily, and Irambo 

 are all good Malagasy words. Possibly, however, they have been somewhat 

 altered from their original form to those more exactly resembling native words, 

 a change of which there are numerous examples in the names of things of foreign 

 introduction. 



