88 THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 1. 4. xvi.
In el Tunisi's day they were under four "kings" {i.e. meks)
and their country formed a part of Dar Abo Uma^.
At the present day they are ruled by a petty Sultan with a nahds,
but the administration appears to be, in fact, in the hands of the
tvakil, or dingar—a term denoting properly a small drum (nugdra)
of wood, but generally applied to the melik or fersh who holds the
same. The Sultan conducts business and issues orders through the
dingar, who is, in fact, a sort of vizier. The royal section, that of the nahds, among this southern
Darfur colony is the Serbung, which is subdivided into Sugurbo, KuNDERUNG, Kaidung, Bialung and other subsections; but the
rem.aining subsections are reckoned as belonging to the dingar:
the chief of these are
:
MuNGARE Umbertchung Gunkung Awnung Umbus Fokanyung Merkerinn
The dialect spoken is the same as that of the western Masalit, but
the tradition current as to the origin of the tribe is dijfferent. The
colony in southern Darfur state that their ancestors came from the Yemen via northern Darfur. The fact is that neither division of the
tribe has the remotest idea where it came from and each hazards
a guess to which little attention need be paid.
In addition to the two main settlements described there are some Masalit in Wadai, and others in Darfur in the districts south-west
of el Fasher, namely Dobo, Tawi'la, Gebel Harayz, etc., living among and intermarried with the Fur and Tungur. Their parents were
mostly prisoners of war deposited here and there as colonists by the Fur Sultans.
XVII Erenga and MUN. These two peoples have already been
spoken of as living in the northern part of what is now Dar Masalit. The language of both is ahke and to all intents and purposes is the same language as that spoken in Dar Tama.
The MuN, or Mul, are a very small community and have not more than sixty odd villages. The Erenga are considerably more numerous. They call themselves Birrung, but every other tribe calls them Erenga^. The Mun are called Mun or Ahl el Gebel by Arabic-
speaking people, and Jebarok {i.e. Jebalok) by the Erenga, and MuN or Jebalta by the Masalit.
^ El Tunisi, Voy. au Darfour, pp. 136, 137. See p. 98 and note on p. 95.
" I do not know the origin of the word, but "Eringd" is the MasaUt word for "Arabs." It may be, and probably is, pure coincidence that "erunija" is the family name of the snake people at Tira el Akhdar in southern Dar Nuba (see
Selitrman, Art. " Nuba "), and that the Erenga word for " rain " (or " sky ") is " arr," while at Dilling (northern Dar Nuba) "rain" is " ara," and at Mfdob it is "arri."