2i8 THE NATIVE MANUSCRIPTS iv.ds.

The author does not concern himself with lengthy genealogies of dubious authenticity, but casual details of the inter-relationship of various families are very rife, and are the more worthy of confidence in that they are purely incidental to the main purpose and mutually corroborative.

The biographies contain, as a rule, details of the place of birth,

characteristics, education, career and death of each holy-man, with special mention of his manifestations of profitable and miraculous powers, his teachers, those taught by him, and any remarks made concerning him by other holy-men. In fact the method is very much

that of el Mas'udi's panegyrics.

But though the form is to some extent stereotyped and modelled on more classical prototypes, the style of writing is distinctly original.

The Arabic is Sudanese colloquial and presents a very interesting study. No dictionary would alone enable one to deduce the meaning of all the words and phrases : one has to read them aloud and imagine a Sudanese is speaking.

The narrative as a rule is vivid and fresh : the tale is seldom spun out tediously, and there are occasional gleams of humour. In fact it is in the descriptive narrative of action that Wad Dayfulla shines, and the biographies numbered 52, 60, 63, 66, 74, 143, 153 and 207 are particularly picturesque and realistic.

The grammar is bad, the spelling indifferent, and the style loose; but there is art galore, and even a jumble of personal pronouns referring indiscriminately to two or three different people cannot obscure the fact.

The value of the book is not merely that it tells one for whom the majority of the kubbas that stud the Sudan were built, but that

one gains some insight into the ways of living and thinking and speaking of the people of the land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of their beliefs and customs, their superstitions and practical ideas, are revealed ; and the fact that the author is not aiming

at any such effect must obviously enhance the value of the information gained.

Where any test of the accuracy of dates and statements of fact is

possible by cross-checking, it is surprising how seldom Wad Dayfulla is found nodding. There are no attempts either to record conversa-

tions or to specify dates in the lives of the more remote generations of fekis. When our author knows a date he inserts it : when he does not he omits it. He leaves the impression of a kind-hearted but perspicacious old man of careful and thorough habits, devoting his unusual gifts of memory and narration to the cause of religion, and