78 THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR i. 4. ix.

In the palmy days of the Darfur Sultanate the Birked country was the appanage of the Fur dignitary known as the Urundulu^. The latter employed four muluk {literally, "kings") as farmers of revenue there^. The Birked, unUke the Bayko, Dagu, Zaghawa, BoRKU, Mima and Tungur, had, it seems, no " Sultan " of their own^, and it is stated at the present day that they only had a Shartdi or

local 'omda at the head of their tribe. Consequently, it may be presumed that they had no nahds, and certainly they had no

wakil or vizier corresponding to the dingar of the MasaiJt and

the sambei of the Dagu, but only a number of damdlig subject to

the Shartdi.

Their country was known by the name of Kajjar—a term said

to have included the Dagu and Bayko lands also—and the Birked

themselves are still known to the Fur as Kajjara, to the Dagu as Kagarugei and to the Bayko as Kajarge*. They call themselves Murgi.

A few Birked live in Kordofan, south of el Obeid, and it is

traditionally reported in northern Kordofan that about the beginning

of the eighteenth century they were the ruling people in the hills of Kaga and Katul and were ousted thence by the Bedayria^.

The tendency among their neighbours near el Obeid is to class

the Birked with the Tomam and Tumbab, who are negroid tribes

with pretensions to a Nubian-Ga'ali connection^, as of Hamag or Nuba descent.

Now in collecting a small vocabulary of Birked in Darfur in 191

7

I found two interesting facts. In the first place, the Birked of Turza mentioned that the people to whom they were most nearly related in Darfur were those of Gebel Midob ; and in the second place the dialect

of the Birked in southern Darfur'^ bears an obvious similarity to the Nubian and Kanzi vocabularies collected by Burckhardt^. These two

facts transpired quite independently of one another and provide a

clue to the origin of the Birked. It will be remembered that the

people of Midob claim to be an ancient colony of Mahass and

^ See later sub Fur.

- El Tunisi, Voy. Darf. p. 137.

^ Ibid. 138, where no Birked Sultan is mentioned.

* Their name probably survives too in that of the great wddi Kajjar (maps " Kdga," " Kajja," " Kfa," etc.) which runs between Ddr Masdlft and Waddi.

^ See MacMichael, Tribes..., p. 66.

* See Part III, Chap, i, and the genealogical trees of the "A" group in Part IV.

' The Birked of Tarza only speak Arabic. They say their fathers all spoke a "rotana," as the southern Birked still do. The latter are a large tribe, and not a small settlement with Arabs living round them as is the case at Tarza.

* See Appendix 2 to this chapter.