8 THE NATIVE MANUSCRIPTS iv. ix.* themselves and their immediate forebears. Where links in the chain

were missing no doubt others were supphed by the imagination, and the critical faculty was presumably brought into play as little as possible ; but it appears to me that it is easy to over-estimate the part played by sheer inventiveness and to under-estimate the general amount of truth underlying statements w^hich as regards the exact form in which they have survived are inaccurate in many details.

X Let us now summarise the information to be gleaned from the manuscripts as to historical and sociological matters.

No mention is made in any manuscript of an Arab immigration

to the Sudan prior to the foundation of Islam, The reason is obviously the lack of interest felt for any ancestor who left Arabia in the pagan

" Days of Ignorance." The desire of all was to display their fathers as pillars of the true faith.

One also notes that the tide of immigration is always represented

as having been by way of the Red Sea ports or of the Nile valley^, and generally the former 2, Nothing is said of any tribe wandering southwards from Tripoli, Algiers or Morocco into the western king-

doms and thence eastwards into the Sudan.

The Isma'ilitic tribes most commonly mentioned in the manu-

scripts as having sent branches to the Sudan are Kuraysh (including

Beni 'Abbas and Beni Ommayya) and Kays 'Aylan, who include Ghatafan, Beni Dhubian (Fezara, etc.), Beni 'Abs, Thaki'f and others.

Among the Kahtanite group we most often meet with Himyar,

who include Kuda'a and Guhayna (a branch of Kuda'a), and with Beni Ghassan.

Extra stress is laid on Kuraysh for obvious reasons, and the Beni

Ghassan are similarly favoured because the tribes of " Ansar," Aus and Khazrag, the "Helpers of the Prophet," were of their number.

From the frequency with which Himyarite names^ occur in

Ga'ali nisbas it would appear that some of the Arabs who claimed an 'Abbasid (Isma'ilitic) origin were really of Kahtanite stock.

XI As regards the various epochs at which Islamic immigration occurred the following data are available from the manuscripts.

Speaking of the conquest of Egypt by 'Amr ibn el 'Asi the author of 1)4 says the armies of the Muhammadans penetrated "to the furthest hmits of the land of the Nuba, to Dabat el Dolib and the

hills of the Nuba*," that is, roughly speaking, to Debba and el Haraza.

• See D 2, IV. 2 j^ particular see D 6. • E.g. Dhu el Kild'a and Masruk. See BA, cxxxiii note. • D4, VI.