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.