11. 2. XXXI. AND THE INVASION OF DONGOLA 175

was so very scarce there that he did not know what to do. He was told

that there were ample resources in Barka and that there were only Arabs

living there, who could not offer any serious resistance. So he went to Alexandria and there held a council... and it was decided to send an expe-

dition to the country of the Arabs and to hasten the gathering of the corn crop before it was harvested.... Letters were also sent to the Arabs demand- ing the payment of their tithes and bidding them cease intercepting the roads by which the slave merchants passed.

Again we read^ that in 1 181 for no particular reason " orders were

sent to seize the crops of the nomads (JArabdn)" in the eastern

provinces and to send them to Bahi'ra. Intercepting caravans and

raiding other tribes seem to have been the main occupations of the nomads, as it still is in Arabia. Numbers of them were also employed

as auxiliary troops in the various expeditions sent to Syria, Barbary, and the Sudan, but these were distinctly untrustworthy.

There is no doubt that each year various sections, presumably

those who had suffered most from oppression or famine, migrated

further afield. Large numbers evidently took up their abode in Upper Egypt, others returned to Syria^, and others probably pushed

further south into Nubian territory.

At the same time there was a considerable body of immigration from Syria: we have seen, for instance, how the Awlad Sinbis

section of Tai entered Egypt in 1050, and how other branches of the same tribe supplanted the Beni Gudham at the beginning of the 'Ayyubite period^.

XXXI Saladin ruled till 1 193 and this period was " the most glorious

in the history of Muslim domination in Egypt*." Sixteen years of his

reign were taken up with campaigns in the East. He also found time, within two years of his accession, to conquer the Mediterranean

littoral as far west as Gabes and to send a couple of expeditions into

the Sudan ^. These latter were rendered necessary by a movement which had begun in Nubia in favour of the Fatimites and had

^ Ibid. p. 140.

- E.g. see Makrizi, Kitdb el Seluk (Blochet), p. 269.

^ In 1154 numbers of nomads accompanied Talai' ibn Ruzzik, the Governor of el Ashmunayn when he moved north and seized Cairo (Lane-Poole, p. 173). The usurper Shawar (1160-1169), who had been Governor of Upper Egypt, was an Arab (Lane-Poole, pp. 176, 186), and his rival Dirgham, in Cairo, was one of the Beni Lakhm (Lane-Poole, p. 176). The nomad armed with a spear and hovering on the outskirts of the battle is easily recognizable in the European accounts of the Crusades, as distinct from the heavy troops in mail, who would be almost entirely negro and Turkish mamluks. On the other hand, in 1249 we find the Kenana installed as garrison of Damietta (Lane-Poole, p. 232).

* Lane-Poole, p. 190.

* See Makrizi, Kitdb el Seluk, p. no; Lane-Poole, Hist. p. 197; Abu Sdlih, pp. 266 et seq.; and Ibn Khaldun (ed. ar. Vol. 5, p. 287, Bk. 11) for what follows.