14 THE NATIVE MANUSCRIPTS iv. xvi.

instruction in earnest. Dongola and the country north of it, being

so near to Egypt, were probably converted by the end of that century,

but apparently nearly two hundred years elapsed before any religious regeneration was effected south of the junction of the Niles.

Then Mahmud el 'Araki undertook the work. He was followed by a large group of other missionaries, of whom the most famous

were perhaps Tag el Din el Bahari, Ban el Naka, Dafa'alla el 'Araki and Hamid el 'Asa^, and schools and mosques were built for the enlightenment of the people from the northern frontier of the Sudan to Sennar.

This work of instruction and conversion was enormously facili-

tated by the foundation of the Fung kingdom, with its subject Arab

dynasty of the 'Abdullah, a branch of the Rufa'a, at Kerri near the Shabluka cataract.

The power of the Fung king became a guarantee of peace and order throughout the northern Sudan, and his court the meeting- place of all who had any pretensions to learning. Numbers of these latter settled permanently in the Sudan, and their tombs and those of their sons and grandsons are still to be seen overshadowing the villages that have arisen round them.

From the early pioneers who were contemporaries of Dafa'alla el 'Araki and the Awlad Gabir and from their sons and pupils are descended most of the best-known religious families of the Sudan,

'Arakiin, Ya'akubab, 'Omarab, Ghubush and others; and the memory of many is still preserved in the names of villages called after them, Wad Medani, Wad el Turabi, Wad Hasuna, Wad Ban el Naka, Abu Delayk, etc., and in the nomenclature of the children

born to the inhabitants in successive generations^.

XVII The manuscript numbered D 3 is a series of biographical

notices of these holy men, or patron-saints as they might almost be called, from the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the nine-

teenth century, and from it one gleans many interesting details of

* For all these see D 3. The renowned Awlad Gabir were their contemporaries but lived farther north and were successors of Ghulamulla rather than of Mahmud.

* There is a marked persistence of the same proper names in certain localities or amonK certain communities, e.g. " 'Abd el Gelll" among the GELfLAB, "Abu

'Akla" and "Ijammad el Nfl" among the 'Araki/n, "Sughayerun" among the KikAb/a, etc. This is due to the habit of naming children after some holy man

"for luck" and the fact that it is a common custom among the Sudanese Arabs to name the firstborn boy after his father's deceased father and a firstborn Kirl after her mother's deceased mother, with intent "to keep the name alive." (This does not apply exclusively to the case of a firstborn, but occasionally to that of a subsequent child.) Normally, if the grandparent were still alive, the child would not be called after him or her, but {e.g.) in tfie case of a boy, after a late brother of hib father for choice. This is the normal custom but there is no hard and fast rule.