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MANUSCRIPT D 3

Introduction

The remarkable work known as the Tabakdt wad Dayfulla ("Day- fulla's Series") was written, as we gather from biography No. 154, in 1805.

The author, "Wad Dayfulla," was Muhammad el Nur walad Dayfulla walad Muhammad of the Fadliin section of the Ga'aliin. He lived at Halfayat el Muluk, and died in 1809 (see D 7, clxxxv and ABC, xi).

The whole book would normally cover something over two hun-

dred medium-sized pages of closely written Arabic MS. The par-

ticular copy from which the following extracts were taken is the

property of el Ami'n walad Muhammad walad Taha walad el Sheikh Khogali, the Khalifa of his great-grandfather. Sheikh Khogali, whose tomb is near Khartoum North and whose biography is included in the text (No. 154).

The family of Wad Dayfulla, who are now known as the Day- FULLAB, still live at Halfayat el Muluk close to the Khogalab, and

though the latter are Mahass and the former was a Ga'ali, there has been considerable intermarriage between the two groups during the last few generations.

It is practically certain that the Khogalab copy was taken direct from the original, which is believed to be held by the Khalifa of the Dayfullab, and both internal evidence and the inherent prob-

abilities of the case suggest that the copy is a reasonably exact and accurate one.

Other copies are known to exist; e.g. one belonged to the late Zubayr Pasha, one is owned by Sheikh Ahmad el Sunna of Wad Medani, one by the Barriab who live south of Wad Medani, and one by the Khalifa of Sheikh Idris Arbab of Aylafun.

The subject-matter of the book is the biographies of the holy-men of the Sudan for about 300 years, beginning from about the first decade of the sixteenth century — in other words, during the period of the Fung kingdom. The domed kubbas of most of these holy- men have survived to the present, and a fair number of additional kubbas have been built subsequently to commemorate the fekis of subsequent generations.