126 THE TUNGUR-FUR OF DAR FURNUNG [app.
outside, where the grazing and cultivable soil are better, but within reach
of the water supply^.
The villagers themselves are a blend of TuNGUR and Fur, black but
with less distinctively negroid features than the Fur of Marra and Si. They talk among themselves in the Fur dialect but all seem to know
Arabic as well. Such of them as I questioned called themselves TuNGUR, no doubt because of the aristocratic associations of the name, and pre-
served a tradition that they came originally from Dongola, but they ad-
mitted that many of their fellow-villagers were Fur and that the two races had intermarried freely and on no particular system for generations. They
regarded the Tungur as being the real owners of the ddr. Of the
criterion whereby they decided whether a child of mixed origin was Tungur or Fur I could extract no coherent account. There was some talk
of the "mother's mother" {" haboba"), but when pressed for details they
always fell back on the normal Muhammadan Arab custom obtaining in such matters. Their Shartdi, Hasan Kanjok, they called a Tungurawi, but when I met him some days later and questioned him in the presence
of the Fur Shartdi of Si and the Tungurawi Shartdi of Kuttum, he
evidently felt himself in a quandary, and the other two fidgetted uneasily
:
if he called himself a Tungurawi he risked a smile at his pretentiousness and a sneer at his pusillanimity, so he hesitated and tried "Tungur-Fur"
and, when pressed, decided for "Fur." As a matter of fact, "Tungur- Fur" is the term which would best describe the people of Furnung. They
fall into three groups, Fella (Fellanga), Sambella (Sambellanga) and DuMUA. All of these the Tungur proper and the Fur proper alike regard
as FtJR, they themselves seem to regard the Fella as Tungur rather than Fur, and the Sambella as Fur rather than Tungur.
The name of the Sambella would appear almost certainly to be con-
nected in some way with that of the Sambelange section of Dagu, who
consider it to be a corruption of " ShenAbla" (sing. " Shambali "), and with
that of the Sambangato section of Berti^.
' The Tungur round Furnung and Kuttum, like the Berti and most of the rest of the population who cultivate on soft sand in eastern Ddrfur, use for hoeing the ground the "gilmoia" (or "nagara" as the A Tungur call it, and one notes the word is formed from the same root as "Tungur"). This implement is of rough local wood and shaped as shewn. The bend at B is a natural one.
It is rather larger than a right angle. The length from A to B
is about 27 inches, from B to C about 18. The head is of hammered iron and shaped with slightly concave surface as shewn. For hoeing the implement is held with the two hands
at A and used from above downwards and inwards between
the legs. For making holes into which to drop the seed it is
also held in both hands, but the cultivator, as he walks along,
at each step makes with it a short jab into the ground on his
left side.
For hoeing in a garden on one's knees a much shorter instrument of the same shape but with a very much shorter
shaft (B to C being only an inch or two) is used. / See paras. VIII and VI of this chapter Compare too the ^5^, wooden shaft. Dagu brands with those of the Fella and of the semi- 1 ungur ^ '. , . ..?.,.. 1 r? 1 - ^. iron head. Kaitinga living among the Zaghawa.