IV.D3.III. OF THE SUDAN 219

at the same time taking a real pleasure in regaling his contemporaries and posterity with the records of the holy-men of the past.

It is not unlikely that he drew many of his facts from the library

of that Hasan 'Abd el Rahman Ban el Nuka mentioned in D 7, cxc. Hasan's father was a pupil of an ancestor of Wad Dayfulla (see biography No. 89).

As regards the plan followed in the translation, it must be explained that only portions of the text have been selected. There are

in the original many pages containing uninteresting records of move-

ments from village to village, list of pupils, and remarks made by one holy-man as to the excellence of another. In addition, the text is frequently so blurred and blotched or torn that it is impossible to be sure of the meaning of the whole of a passage. I have therefore only translated word for word such portions as are reasonably clear and as describe some incident of interest from the historical or socio-

logical point of view, and have noted in brief paraphrase such points as seem worthy of mention in the remainder.

Word for word translation is shown in inverted commas, para-

phrase in smaller type.

N.B. I. Such facts as are given in the English text of any biography may be taken to occur similarly in the Arabic of the same biography, and where relevant information concerning some holy-man occurs in the untranslated part of the Arabic text of the biography of someone else, it is always included in the notes to the biography of the former.

2. Dates of birth and death are not infrequently given in the course of the Arabic text. Where this is the case the dates are placed, in the English text, immediately after the name of the subject of the biography, whatever may have been their position in the Arabic MS.

3. The English equivalents of Arabic dates, notices of textual emendations, and references to the numbers allotted to the English biographies or to the genealogical trees, are placed in the textual footnotes of the translation.

4. The genealogical trees which form an Appendix to the work are compiled from the scattered remarks that occur at random in the course of the book.

I The first page consists of a fragment of three and a half lines, viz.

"In the name of God the Compassionate and Merciful. The Sheikh, the learned feki, the sage Muhammad Dayfulla, my father and lord,

said 'Praise be to God, the Mightiest of the most mighty '"

II The second page, which is in part torn, gives a brief account, on back and front, of the story of Iblis, Noah, the prophet Idris, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Moses and Aaron.

Ill The third page, also fragmentary, commences with mentions of Jesus and Mary and the Jews. Praises of Kuraysh follow, and quotations