III. 1. IV. THE GA'ALlfN AND DANAGLA GROUP 199

kandi likely to choose for identification two peoples whose traditions

or physical characteristics must create a strong presumption against

the accuracy of his diagnosis. El Samarkandi was by no means a

fool ; and it is particularly noticeable that though he classes all ahke

as Ga'aliin he pictures at the same time the approximate degree of

racial closeness or distance existing between the several groups by a

genealogical parable of surprising acumen.

While the real raison d'etre of the traditional identification lies in

the fact that the Arab elements, which permeate in widely varying

degrees both the Danagla and the Ga'aliin groups, and especially

the families of the sheikhs as distinct from the rank and file, are sub-

stantially the same at root, it is also true that the non-Arab substratum on the river from Dongola to Khartoum is to some extent homo-

geneous and, though not directly admitted to the argument, lends to

it a strength and colour that would otherwise be largely lacking^.

IV In the first chapter some mention was made of the Barabra and Danagla and of the migratory activities which these Nubian stocks

directed southwards in the years which followed the downfall of the

Christian kingdom of Dongola about the beginning of the fourteenth

century-. It was stated that many of them settled in southern Kordofan and that to this fact may be attributed the linguistic

affinities between the population of the northern hills of Dar Nuba and the people of Dongola. These affinities^ do not extend beyond

the northernly group of hills, but can hardly be sufficiently explained by the mercantile proclivities of more recent generations of Barabra- Danagla*.

Such of the peoples, sprung from the blend of the two elements, Nubian and Arab, as migrated farther afield to the south and west,

for instance the Gawama'a and the Bedayria of Kordofan, have by now become inevitably differentiated from the northern riverain

stock, since they have incorporated or become themselves merged

in quite distinct negroid races. In this manner the Dubab have be- come to all intents and purposes Nuba like those of Gebel Daier,

the Gawama'a are half KungAra of Darfur and the Ghodiat a

^ The autochthonous element among the Danagla is admitted in D i, cxlix.

* See also introduction to Part IV as to the influx of Arab elements into Nubia about this time.

' Q.v. Lepsius, Ntib. Gramm. p. Ixxvii, and Pallme, p. ii6.

* See Seligman, Jowrw. R. Anthr. Inst. Vol. XLiii, 1913. As regards this modern

settlement of Danagla in southern Kordofan the evidence is ample : see in particular Pallme, pp. 117, 160, 171. Seligman also bases his argument to some extent upon

certain specific mentions of "Danagla" which I made in The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, and he might have made more of this line if he had noticed

that various tribes such as Doalfb, Bedayria and Gawabra, whom I specified as being settled in large numbers in Kordofan, are all properly Danagla.