IV. D 3. OF THE SUDAN 277
instead of keeping the dowry himself, arranged for it to be given to the children of the marriage. When she married Hammad she demanded from him no dowry for herself, because, whereas it is customary in the Sudan for the second husband before marriage to repay to the first husband the amount of the dowry previously paid by the latter, in the case in point
the woman cunningly represented 'Abd el Mahmud as not having yet paid her her dowry. She apparently let Hammad think that 'Abd el Mahmud had divorced her on his own initiative and denied receipt of her
dowry, but at the same time did not mention that it had been transferred to the daughters.
" God Almighty said. . . ." The quotation is from the 4th chapter of the Kuran (beginning): see Sale, p. 53.
For "/fli^iV" see note to para, i, supra. Omdurmdn (or "Um Durman," correctly). I know of no evidence to show the existence of this village at any earlier date than that of Hammad
ibn Mariam. From No. 124 we know he was born in 1646 and died in
1730, and here we have Omdurman spoken of as " his village." It is not at all improbable that he and his relatives founded it. It was a small village of no importance at all until the Mahdia. Then the Khalifa massed whole tribes there, and it has now become the native capital of the Sudan. On
the above evidence we may perhaps date its foundation about 1680- 1700.
Browne mentions it ("Emdurman") in 1794 {q.v. p. 459, App. II).
"His rooms" is " khalwdt." A " khalwa" is properly a place of re-
treat, and is used also to mean the act of retirement by a holy man from the world (see Hughes, pp. 122 and 271). The term is now often used of the guest-houses or rest-houses provided in a village for strangers and attached,
as^a rule, to the mosque: it is often also used in its proper sense of a place of retreat for meditation: cp. note to No. 90.
13. He is here called 'Abd el Rahman, but in the biography of his father (No. 34) the names of two of the latter 's sons are given as 'Abd el Rahman Abu Shanab and 'Abd el Rahim ibn el Khatwa, and "'Abd
el Rahim" is therefore obviously correct.
14. Nilri is a few miles north of Merowi in Dongola.
El Abwdb ["the Gates"] is another name for the Kabushia district, about 80 miles south of Berber. It was so called because it formed the
meeting point of many roads, viz. the two river roads, the road to Napata,
the old caravan route that ran from Kabushia N.N.E. to the Atbara and the Red Sea, and the route that ran S.S.E. through the cultivable valleys to Abu Delayk and Kayli (see Arch. Survey of Nubia, XlXth Memoir, by Crowfoot).
15. For Nuri see sub No. 14.
For '' Khalil" see AB, lxxxix (note) and cp. Jackson, p. 26. We are told here that the year 1107 a.h. was called " Um Hinaydil" [" Mother of little melons "], but in No. 204 that name is given to 1 108 a.h. No. 161 (q-v.) was a pupil of No. 15. "Sheikh ibn Medani" is the son of Medani walad Um Gadayn (Tree 10); q.v. sub Nos. 164 and 162.
17. 'Abd el Rahman is one of the famous Awlad GAbir, whose