[354]

MANUSCRIPT D 7

Introduction

Versions of this work, which represents the only known attempt by

a native historian to give a detailed chronological account of the Fung and Turkish days, are by no means uncommon. General Gordon possessed a copy and presented it in 1881 to the British Museum,

where it is numbered "Arabic 2345." It was no doubt from this same copy that Colonel Stewart had obtained most of the historical facts given in the Report on the Sudan which he wrote at Khartoum in February 1883.

Professor Budge similarly made use of this MS. in writing The

Egyptian Sudan, and Na'um Bey Shukayr must have had access to this or another copy.

Mr Jackson has paraphrased yet another copy, and, by adding

facts drawn from other sources, has woven the whole into the narra-

tive he has entitled Tooth of Fire (published 1912). In the introduc-

tion he says he knows of eight copies in all, and mentions that one copy is in the Imperial Library at Vienna.

JVIy own acquaintance with this work dates from 1907, when

Sir F. R. Wingate, the Governor-General, showed me the rough translation of a copy found in Sennar by Sir R. von Slatin, the Inspector-General.

Notes I took from this MS., which I referred to as " The Sennar History" were incorporated in The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofdn (published 19 12).

The particular copy here translated was made for me at Omdur- man in 1914 from the MS. belonging to Mek Adlan of Sennar, the

lineal descendant and heir of the Fung kings. This had been tem-

porarily borrowed for me by Mr S. A. Tippetts, the Senior Inspector of Sennar Province.

While engaged on editing this copy I found another in possession of the feki Muhammad Abd el Magid of Omdurman. One of his pupils had made this copy for him in the Mahdia from the MS. in

possession of the respected feki Hagyu wad Masi'a, the Ya'akubabi, of Sennar Province.

The original work, to which there is no reason to attribute other than a single authorship, was undoubtedly based, so far as the Fung