90 THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR i. 4. xix,

Ti'rab towards the end of the eighteenth century ; secondly, negroes whose home, so far as is known, has ahvays been in Darfur. Apart from these two groups, of course, innumerable Dinka, Fertit, Nuba, Niaj\i-Niam and negroes of various other Bahr el Ghazal

tribes have been imported singly or in small batches into Darfur as

slaves, their families broken up, and their wives and daughters used

to breed children for their captors from the earliest period to the

present; but of these it is unnecessary to say more at this juncture.

To the first of the two groups specified belong such people as the TuRUG, who are by origin Nuba from Gebel Tekali in Kordofan, imported by the Sultan Tirab, the 'Abi'dia round Kebkebia and Kuttum, who were slaves of Kordofan tribes imported by the same monarch, and the Dadinga^ who are said to have been in Bornu,

their true home, until about two hundred years ago and to have

sojourned awhile in Dar Tama prior to their removal to Darfur.

The second group is in the extreme south and falls partly within Darfur and the Bahr el Ghazal Province and partly in French

Equatorial Africa. Among these, in Darfur, to the east are the Mandala (or Bandala) and the Shatt, living in the Rizaykat

country and the northern Bahr el Ghazal, and to the west a certain number of Kara, Binga, Banda, Dayga (Digga), Foroke, Funkur,

etc. This latter congeries, however, has its main habitat in the

western Bahr el Ghazal and in the French sphere to the west of it.

It is commonly known by the vague generic term of Fertit, but I

believe that the negroes themselves who compose it distinguish between a western division, all speaking dialects of the same tongue and consisting of Kara, Sara, Gula, Medi, Koio, Vor, Dudu, Binga, Runga and Feri and known in general as " Yer," and a loose

eastern group of "Fertit" consisting of Digga, Bea, Keraysh, Shayre, Bongo, Belunda, etc. To the Arabs, of course, all alike are

"slaves " who have been raided by themselves from time immemorial, and the name of "Fertit" in common parlance embraces all or any

of them. They appear to belong to the Bantu family.

Now in Darfur tradition relates sometimes that the original

habitat of these Fertit was in Gebel Marra and that the Fur race

is no more than a conglomerate body composed of them; or some-

times—a more probable theory—that the aboriginal FuR were a

distinct race though it has amalgamated with the Fertit tribes in

^ Their brand, or rather that of their chief, the Melik Mahmud

el Dadingawi, the most generally respected man in Ddrfur in 'Ali Dinar's time and one of his chief councillors and commanders, is as

(a). Others use such variants as (6). Compare the Fur brand (p. 95). ir