I. 4. X. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR

the present Sultan of the Bayko for his pedigree he traced it (as

follows) to Ahmed el Dag, whom we have already met as a Dagu

Sultan : Muhammad " Kebkebe " son of Abukr " Naka " son of 'Omar son of Husayn son of 'Ibba son of Nafi' son of Haggar son of Ahmad

el Dag. At the same time he repudiated all relationship with the Dagu and attributed the similarity of dialects to the fact that the

tribes had long been neighbours in Darfur.

It seems probable that the Bayko either came to Darfur from much the same direction and at much the same period as the Dagu —physically the two are indistinguishable—or else that the Dagu came from the east and were joined in Darfur by the negroid Bayko from the south-east, and that the latter borrowed the language of

the former but preserved their independence. The Dagu dialect bears resemblances to those of Nubia but in this respect falls far behind the Birked dialect^.

The status of the Bayko in el Tunisi's day seems to have been much the same as it is now, but little is said of them beyond that they were ruled by a petty Sultan of their own 2. The tribal wakil

or vizier or President of the Council of Sheikhs (Damdlig), the

samhei of the Dagu, is among the Bayko called the gindi (plur.

genddi). His chief function, outside the sphere of administration,

is said to be that of performing the accession ceremony^ for a newly succeeded Sultan.

Of the subdivisions of the Bayko, once very numerous, only a few are now remembered. These fall into the two main groups of

Subham'n ("Easterners") and Gharbanin^ ("Westerners") and include the following :

TiRKiT Haggar^ (the royal house) Tirkit Marshut^ Korobaiki^ Famaki^

^ E.g.-

English Bayko cow horse

ass

teinye murtanne katchin^

mouth ikunga

Dagu of DarfOr

teiny^ murtani kachine,

or kakin^ akke

Dagu of Sula

teinye murt^ katch^

uke

From Burckhardt's Nubia

(Midob) Nuba Kanzi

(tur) (pormyi)

(utchi)

(al)

tyga mortyga kadja

akka

tyg koky hanoub

agilk The percentage of Birked words that resemble Nubian words is a good hundred per cent, higher, I should say, than in the case of Dagu or Bayko words. The numerals of the latter, for instance, differ entirely from those of Nubia.

- El Tunisi, Voy. Darf. pp. 128, 134, 138.

^ " Yadarrag" =(Ar.) "gives rank to " The Sultan himself was my informant on the point.

* The Bayko cannot pronounce the Arabic "gh," so they call this group the " Harbanin."

* These are Subhanin.