256 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. XXIX. 
tions as the oldest author of a written history, the 
fakih Masfarma 'Omar ben 'Othman, who wrote the 
history of the king in question. 
The annals, therefore, of the time preceding the 
period of this king and of his predecessor 'Ali Gaji- 
deni, appear to be based entirely upon oral informa- 
tion, and cannot but be liable to a certain degree 
of inaccuracy as to the actions attributed to each 
king, the length of their respective reigns, and even 
the order of succession, where it was not dependent 
on genealogy or descent. For it would be the ex- 
treme of hypercriticism to deny that the royal 
family of Bornu, in the middle of the 16th century, 
could not or may not justly be supposed to have pre- 
served with great precision their line of descent for 
fifteen or twenty generations ; and in this respect the 
chronicle No. 1. is entirely confirmed and borne out 
by Imam Ahmed, who, in the introduction to his His- 
tory, gives the pedigree of his master Edris Alawoma 
up to his first royal ancestor, while the difference in 
the form of the names, and one slight variance in the 
order of succession, as given by these two documents, 
is a plain proof that they have not been borrowed 
from each other, but have been based on independent 
authorities. 
The disagreement in question is certainly a remark- 
able one ; but it is easily explained. For Makrizi, in 
harmony with the extract from the chronicle, names 
the father of the kings Edris and Daud (whose reign 
he places about the year 700 of the Hejra), Ibrahim, 
