I. 4. XXV. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 115 The earlier waves of the southward-flowing tide were composed almost entirely of Berbers, but as the Arabs fused with the Berbers in the north and converted them to Islam its composition was proportionately modified, and by the tenth century there were Arabs as well as Berbers definitely established in the more westernly kingdoms and beginning to work their way eastwards. A Berber or Arab origin is claimed for the ruling house in each of the states that border on the southern fringe of the Sahara to the west of Lake Chad.

But from the fusion of Libyo-Berber and negro farther north had already arisen the Tibbu stock which had become all powerful in the Tibesti hills long before the Arabs began to force the Berbers southwards. They had also established themselves in northern Wadai and Darfur, and the later Berber-Arab congeries, though their social influence may have been not inconsiderable, never supplanted them there*.

Thus one might describe the general ethnological aspect of Darfur as distinctively Tibbu in the north and negro in the south. In addition, however, to the Tibbu and the negro element and to the numerous Arab tribes which will be dealt with in a later chapter, there are scattered over the country various debased tribes which, though blended with negro from the south or Tibbu from the north, are at the same time connected on the one side with the ancient peoples of the Nile valley or, on the other, with the old kingdoms lying west of Lake Chad.

Cp. Johnston \nJourn. Anthr. Inst. XLiii, 1913, p. 398, and for some general account of the Berber movement see Part II, Chap, i, Appendix.

Thus Leo Africanus, speaking of Bornu, says (p. 832): "They have a most puissant prince being descended from the Libyan people called Bardoa"; and again (p. 133), "Some writers are of opinion that the king of Timboto, the king of Melle, and the king of Agadez fetch their originall from the people of Zanaga [i.e. Sanhaga] to wit, from them which inhabite the desert." Makrizi and Sultan Bello similarly trace the Bornu dynasty to a Berber origin. (See Dr Brown's note to Leo, loc. cit. and cp. Orr, The Making of Modern Nigeria, p. 60, and App. to Part II, Chap, i.)

See above, Part I, Chap. 2.

* It is noticeable in this connection that whereas the western states had been converted to Islam centuries before Leo wrote his travels in the first half of the sixteenth century—and Ghana as early as 1076 (see Cooley, pp. 42-86, Brown in Leo, p. 838), Bornu was still pagan in Leo's day (see Leo, loc. cit.). According to Ahmad Baba's History {q.v. Barth, iv, 407) Tiliitan the great Lamtuna (Berber) chief who died in 837 A.D. had been the first of his people to adopt Islam and convert the negroes, and Za-Kasi, King of Songhay, was converted in 1009 by missionaries from Egypt.

8—2