xo THE NATIVE MANUSCRIPTS iv. xi.'

as coming to ^gypt about 969 a.d. and migrating to the Sudan about

1171^. Other passages suggest that the date of their coming was about 750 A.D. and the cause of it the overthrow of the Ommayyads by the

'Abbasids, but one naturally regards these with even more suspicion than the other stories^.

Eighthly, we read that "according to Ibn Khaldun the tribes of Arabs descended from Guhayna came after the Muhammadan con-

quest of the Northern Nuba in 13 18 a.d....^," and this statement we have seen to be correct.

Ninthly, the Rikabi'a are descended from Rikab the son of Ghula- niulla. Ghulamulla, it is said^, lived as a young man in Yemen and then moved with his father by way of the Red Sea to Dongola, where

he found the people still "sunk in perplexity and error." He was the thirteenth in descent from Musa el Kazim, who, we know, died

about 800 A.D. 5; and the Awlad Gabir (the fifth generation from

Ghulamulla) were junior by a generation to Mahmud el 'Araki who flourished in the middle of the sixteenth century^. We may there-

fore hazard the second half of the fourteenth century as being very approximately the date of the immigration of Ghulamulla, the ancestor of the tribe which is known by the name of his son Rikab.

Tenthly, the manuscript D 7, speaking of the foundation of the Fung kingdom in 1504 a.d., says that it was followed by a largely

increased immigration of Arabs into the Sudan',

Lastly, Ya'akub el Mugelli is said^ to have entered the Sudan and visited Sennar in 1592 a.d., and his father, the ancestor of the ZenArkha, to have previously immigrated from the Yemen, that is perhaps about 1560 a.d.

XII Some of these traditions relate apparently to individuals only, but one gets a general impression of four tides of Arab immigration into the Sudan.

The first flowed through Egypt in the seventh and eighth cen-

turies and was a natural sequel to the conquest of that country. It was probably of mixed composition and may have contained, among others, tribesmen of Fezar.\ and Beni Ommayya^ and some Ansar.

The second immigration took place in the eighth century across the Red Sea by way of Abyssinia as a result of the overthrow of the

' D 6, XXXIX. - See A 1 1, vii and D 6, x and notes thereto. * ABC, L. • HA, CLXxix, ccvii, ccviii. * Wustenfeld, i, 324. * I-^ 3. '57- '^hc elder brother amonj,' the Awldd Gdbir, Ibrahim el Bulad, came to the Sudan bct\vcen 1554 and 1562 (see D 3, vi, and D7, xv).

' D7, XI. 8 ABC, Liv. * I.e. the ancestors of the Mesallam/a.