214 THE GA'ALlfN AND DANAGLA GROUP iii. i. xxvi.
still they unanimously, and with something like scorn, assert that they are no Arabs, and have no descent from such a race^. But whence they come, or to what race they are allied, as they themselves equally deny a Nubian
descent, their small kings, who have their pedigrees at their fingers, could
not, or would not, tell us, much as we tried to get out of them their
genealogy. They firmly maintain that they have been, from most distant
times, the children of the soil, and have ever been the warriors of their
race. One must not put any confidence, as other travellers have done, in what they have learnt from their priests, who are said to assert the contrary
;
though we have not heard it from them, for most of these... are of Arab
families. ...Such pious fathers also fancy, although they may be of a totally
diff"erent origin, that they are able, by means of Arabian descent, to claim
a kind of relationship with the Prophet. Here starts up the interesting
historical question, are these Schaigies, who perhaps really do owe their
present name to some Arabian saint, a part of the emigrated warrior caste
of Egypt, or the descendants of those discontented warriors who were
hospitably received by the kings of Ethiopia ? Their country, their prox-
imity to old Meroe, which they perhaps protected against the barbarous
south, and their own warlike spirit, agree with this tradition; as does also
the fact, that amongst them has never existed any common superior chief,
but all have ever lived free under their moluks ; the present ruling families
are perhaps the old Egyptian leader-race, who, holding the Ethiopian
kings as their only lords, became, on the overthrow of that kingdom, inde- pendent princes, as the Macedonian generals did on the death of Alexander
the Great. Their hair too is thinned, or kept cut short to the head, as
cleanliness, so necessary in Egypt, may have demanded ; and such a custom
is contrary to Arab habits, and those of Nubia and Barabra also, although they have, in common with those races, incisions on the cheeks as marks
of caste ; among the Schaigies these are horizontal
'^.
^ The same is not true of the present day.
^ The facial markings {'' shidukh") of the Shaikia at once connect them with and dissociate them from the Ga'alifn. The term " mushellakh Ga'ali" ("marked with the
' shulukh' of the Ga'alifn") denotes the use of three parallel vertical
slashes on both cheeks. "Mushellakh Shdiki" denotes the use of three parallel horizontal slashes on both cheeks. These two face-brands—(and perhaps the H used by the Sultan of Darfur to mark his slaves)—are the only ones which are universally known throughout the Sudan, though both the Ga'ali and the Shafki brands are not entirely confined to members of those tribes.
The origin of this custom of slashing the face is obscure. Burton {Pilgrimage...,
II, 233, 234), describing the people of Mecca, says: " In most families male children, when forty days old, are taken to the Ka'abah, prayed over, and carried home, where the barber draws with a razor three parallel gashes down the fleshy portion of each cheek, from the exterior angles of the eyes almost to the corners of the mouth. These Mashali, as they are called, may be of modern date: the citizens declare that the custom was unknown to their ancestors. I am tempted to assign
to it a high antiquity, and cannot but attribute a pagan origin to a custom still
prevailing, despite all the interdictions of the Olema." In a note on the above Burton adds: "The act is called 'tashrit,' or gashing.... The citizens told me that the custom arose from the necessity of preserving children from the kidnapping Persians, and that it is preserved as a mark of the Holy City. But its wide diffusion denotes an earlier origin. Mohammed expressly forbad his followers to mark the skin with scars. These 'beauty marks' are common to the