II.2.LII. AND THE INVASION OF DONGOLA 189

L We have seen in the preceding chapter what was the approximate

distribution of the chief Arab tribes in Egypt when el Makrizi wrote

his treatise, a century later than Ibn Batuta. He tells us that the

greater part of Upper Egypt belonged^ to six tribes, the Beni Hilal,

the Beli, the Guhayna, the Kuraysh, the Luata (Howara P)^ and

the Beni Kelab.

Besides these tribes many of the Ansar had settled there and numbers of the Muzayna, Beni Darag, Beni Kelb, Tha'aliba and GuzAM (Gudham)3.

LI From 1382 to 15 17 the Circassian Mamluks held Egypt. They

ruled entirely by the aid of alien mercenaries, Circassians, Turks, Greeks and Mongols, and the country passed through an era of

cruelty, debauchery, corruption and injustice which even in its own stormy annals were unprecedented. During this period revolts of nomads and cultivators alike were frequent, but uniformly shortlived*.

LII In 1504, in the far south, the Fung and Arabs combined to form a native Sudanese kingdom in the Gezira of Sennar.

In 1 5 17 Seli'm I, Sultan of Turkey, defeated the Mamluks, and Egypt, from being an independent Sultanate, became a province of

the 'Othmanli empire.

But Seh'm' s control did not end at the first cataract. The country south of it was already peopled by a race who were more nearly akin

to their northern than to their southern neighbours, and he extended

his rule over them to the neighbourhood of the third cataract and placed them under a number of Kdshifs^. These Kdshifs were

officials of Turkish or Bosnian descent and had under their orders a number of mercenaries, mostly Bosnians, to act as garrisons: in fact, the system of Selim was almost exactly the same as that of Psam- metichus I. The term Ghuzz as used in the Sudan applies in-

differently to these Bosnian mercenaries and to the Mamluks, and there

is no doubt that they settled in Nubia in sufficient number to modify

distinctly the racial type in certain of the northern riverain districts^.

^ The past tense is used.

^ Bouriant gives " Laouatah," Burckhardt (p. 529) "Howata." Either may be correct.

* Makrfzi, Khetdt, 11, 547, also translated by Burckhardt, p. 529. The latter speaks of the Muzayna as "a strong tribe of Beni Harb."

* See Lane-Poole, Hist. p. 327. Most of these Circassians apparently did not know how to speak Arabic, which was merely the language of the common people (Lane-Poole, Quart. Rev. April 1915, p. 542).

^ See Budge, 11, 201, 207, and Norden, i, 58-62.

* Cp. J. A. St John, I, 433. "The inhabitants of Derr are supposed to be the descendants of a number of Bosnian soldiers, established in Nubia by Sultan Selym." They preserved their fair complexion though often intermarrying with blacks. See the account of the Shaikfa in Part IIL