I90 THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT ii. 2. liil

LIII It was a few years before Selim's conquest of Egypt that Leo

Africanus travelled through the negro kingdoms of West Africa, and immediately after it that he went on a journey up the Nile valley^. The bulk of his work deals with the half-arabicized Berbers living between the Mediterranean and the Niger. These " Affricani hianchi"

as he calls them, he divides into the five tribes of Sanhaga, Zenata, HowARA, Masmuda and Gumeri (Ghomara^). They were nomads, and the majority of them spoke the Berber tongue^, but most of the HowARA and Gumeri spoke Arabic, though corruptly.

Branches of them had by Leo's time been pushed farther south " to inhabite those deserts which border vpon the land of the negros*," though the main portion of the race remained in the north where they had blended their stock with that of the Arabs.

Of Nubia Leo tells us very little. He says that on the south it was bordered by the " Desert of Goran," i.e. the steppes of northern

Kordofan, and, as has been mentioned, that the Nubians were much

harried both by the Tibbu tribes ("Zingani") who inhabited this

region and by the desert dwellers to the east of the Nile^.

Of Aswan he merely tells us^ that the inhabitants were ''mingled

with the people of Nubia and Ethiopia." Beyond it were villages of

blacks subject to the nomad "Bugiha" (Bega).

LIV Marmol Caravajal, who wrote about 1520 and plagiarized

freely from Leo, states that " Dangala " the capital of Nubia contained

ten thousand houses of mud and was a rich trading centre'.

^ He is an accurate and not over-credulous writer but unfortunately one is often not sure whether he speaks of what he actually saw or whether he speaks at second hand, and he follows no system in transliterating Arabic words into Italian. He was first translated from the Italian into English by John Pory in 1600. Where Leo is at fault in the matter of transliteration Pory makes things worse by care-

lessness and random alterations. Leo uses Ibn el Rakik, el Mas'udi, and el Bekri

freely and undisguisedly. He died in Tunis, after a long sojourn in Italy, in 1552. (See ed. Brown, note to Bk. vii and p. 211.)

^ In this Leo follows Ibn el Rakik {q.v. ap. Carette, pp. 49, 433, etc.). Pory writes "Zanhagi," " Zeneta," "Haoari." For "Howara" Leo wrote "Aoara."

^ Leo, Bk. I, p. 151. * Ibid. p. 157.

^ See Part I, Chap. 2, xli, and Leo, Vol. in, Bk. v, p. 836.

* Ibid. p. 903.

' Vol. Ill, pp. 71 ff. Marmol's remarks concerning the wars of the Prince of Dongola with the nomads of the Bayuda and of the Eastern Desert have already been quoted (see Part I, Chap. 2, xli).