Mhnology of the AntllO'Erpjptinn Hwlan. 319 It was on the ground of their language that Lepsius* related the Nilotic Nubians with the Nubawis of Kordofan. The connection corresponds with traditions current in Dongola, where the traveller will hear again and again that, although the particular man he is interrogating is, of course, pure Arab from the Hejaz, yet most of the people round are Nubians like the Nubawis of Kordofan. Supposing this relationship to be proved, it would be still uncertain whether the Kordofan people are a colony from the Nilotes or vice versd. But it is also possible that the Nubawis of Kordofan adopted a Nuba language in some by-gone age when there was a powerful Christian or pre-Christian Nubian kingdom on the Nile. If we are to believe Hartmannf — a very good observer — the majority of the Shaigia " Arabi " and many of the Jaalin really belong to the same stock.

This name is derived from medieval Arab historians and has been identified with the Bugatse and Buka of (iii) Begaa. earlier days. It is applied to the tribes living in the eastern desert who speak various languages belonging to the so-called Hamitic group of languages. The principal tribes are Ababda, Bisharin, Amarar, Hadendoa, Halenga, Beni Amer, Habab.

In type they are far more " Caucasian" than those we have previously mentioned, and they occupy the same position and present the same characteristics as many turbxilent pastoral tribes mentioned by Egyptian scribes and classical writers.* As Hamites, one school of anthropologists represented by the Italian Sergi, regards them as an off-shoot of the great Euro- African stock which populated North Africa and Europe : others bring them from Asia.

" Non nostri est tantas componere lites." Nor do we like to hazard an opinion as to whether they or the Nubians were the creators of ancient Meroe. The termination ah which is so common throughout the Berber Province proves that people of the Bega stock once held this district, and their immediate descendants are probably to be looked for among the riverain "Arabs" rather than the desert Begas, for no civilized people would exchange a settled life for a nomad life, least of all so warlike a race as the Begas.

According to W.Max Miiller (" Aethiopien," Berlin, 1904, p. 19), we have in the legend quoted on p. 224, a distorted version of one Hamitic settlement in this very area. The word Sembridae or Semberritae is a hybrid name formed by a North Hamitic people out of a Semitic root, and means, not "Deserters," but "Nomads," "Wanderers." The legend above-mentioned will therefore be the echo of an early Hamitic invasion of a district then peopled by Nubas or Negroes, and of the adoption of a sedentary life by these invading " Wanderers," whose success may explain the shifting of the capital from Napata to Meroe (p. 225).

The first three stocks have been in the country for as long as our records go. The Arabs are comparative new- (iv) Arabs, comers ; it is improbable that they came in any numbers until after the fall of the Christian kingdoms of Dongola and Aiwa (Soba). The traditions of some tribes are against this, but historians only mention raids, and the traditions are not to be set against the historians' testimony. The extension of these raids, which led to the downfall of Christianity and a consequent increase of Arab immigration, was probably due to pressure caused on tribes elsewhere by the conquests of Spain and Portugal on the one side and Turkey on the other. This would give the Arabs an occupation of from four to six centuries, though a slow infiltration from Arabia into the Sudan must have gone on from the beginning.

Now, at any rate, the Arab dominates the northern half of the Sudan, that is, from Egypt to Kordofan. He has nowhere exterminated the original inhabitants ; he has in many cases not yet succeeded in forcing even his language upon them ; he has, unlike the Arabs in Arabia, intermarried freely with them ; but his conquest has been so far complete that his religious ideals and tribal organisation have replaced the older faith and institutions wherever he has cared to carry them. This fact upsets our perspective. The people call themselves Arabs and we accept the name, but it would certainly be a mistake to regard them as Arabians or to recognise as genuine their long pedigrees " of unsullied (?) Arab descent " "going back to early Mohammedan times " (Keane). The present writer believes that the materials newly published by Naum Bey Shoucair (" History of the Sudan," Cairo, 1904 — in Arabic), enable him to trace two distinct steps in the Arabization of the Central Sudan.

Up- to 1500 A.D., the Christians reigned on the Blue Nile ; there are no Gubbas, no mention of Fikis, earlier than this, as would certainly have been the case if many Arabs had been here. About this time the Fungs, a powerful black tribe under Amara Dunkas, became Muslims and, assisted by some Arab immigrants, overthrew the kingdom of Soba. Hardly had they done so when they were themselves menaced by Sultan Selim, the Turkish ■conquerer of Egypt and Suakin ; it was their policy then to represent themselves as orthodox Muslims connected with the most venerated Arab tribes, and a certain Sheikh El Samarakandi, who had wandered to the court of Dunkas, provided the necessary pedigrees, which were duly sent to Selim and by him much admired (Naum II, pp. 73, 74). But the Sheikh did his work clumsily, if it may be judged from a Jaali pedigree which purports to be extracted * '• Nubische (Jiammatik," Berlin, 1880, p. Ixxvii. + Skizze cler Nillander, Berlin, 1866, p. 08.