CHAPTER IX NEGROLAND AND THE WESTERN ARABS It has already been mentioned that the whole of the Fezzan and the south-western province of what is now Morocco were conquered by the Arab general, Okbar, in the middle of the seventh century, but that he did not penetrate at either end of the Western Soudan to the territories of the fertile belt. There was not for nearly a thousand years any direct military conquest of these territories by the Arabs. But the Berber tribes, dispossessed and driven southwards by the Arabs, made room for themselves at different periods in the fertile belt, and in doing so necessarily fought with and overthrew or were overthrown by the blacks. As in the case of the conquest of the British Isles by Saxons, Danes, and Normans, this resulted in a very great admixture of blood, and though the black strain would seem generally to have prevailed in point of colour, the characteristics of the races occupying the fertile belt were in the course of centuries so modified that in speaking of them it will perhaps be more accurate to employ the word ** black " than the in many ways misleading term of " negro." The true negro is hardly to be found amongst these races of the northern inland belt — the cast of face, even when jet black in colour, being frequently European in form, with the high nose, thin lips, and deep-set eyes, characteristic still of the Arab of the Mediterranean coast.

The aristocratic thin hand, and the slight, somewhat square shoulders of the Arab of the coast are also frequently noticeable. As a consequence of many invasions from the north this blood no doubt penetrated as far as climatic 83