in. 1. XXVII. THE GA'ALlfN AND DANAGLA GROUP 215
The custom mentioned by Cailliaud^ might also be cited in sup-
port of Werne's theory. Speaking of an expedition to the negro
country in the south of the Gezira, he says:
Les Chaykyes avaient fait un mannequin figurant un homme, at cense
representer un des leurs : c'est una coutume etablie parmi aux, d'antarrer un
parail mannequin au lieu ou est fixe le terme de leurs grandes expeditions.
The giant statues hewn by the Pharaohs to mark the limits of their
inruptions are obviously the prototypes of these manikins.
But the gap is too broad to be bridged with such facility : to allow
an Egyptian origin for the Shaikia is an attractive suggestion, with
points of some speciousness, but I should prefer to hazard a theory
that the Shaikia are partly descended from the Bosnian, Albanian and Turkish mercenaries who since the conquest of Selim I (15 17 a.d.)
have done garrison duty and formed settlements in Nubia just as
Carian mercenaries did in the days of Psammetichus I, and to say
that the obvious resemblance of type between them and the Turkish
irregulars who lorded it over the Sudan till 1882 was in part a cause and in part an effect of the intermarriage that took place between
the two^.
XXVII The Shaikia country consists of the rich portion of the
Nile valley which lies between Gebel Dayka in southern Dongola and the upstream end of the fourth cataract^. Within these limits
in old days ruled four of their subordinate ''rneks" at Merowi*, Hannak, Kagebi and 'Amri respectively. Until the latter part of the
seventeenth century they were, like the rest of the Arabs, subject to
the 'AbduUabi " Mdngil" of Kerri, but about 1690 they were en-
nations in the regions to the West of the Red Sea. The Barabarah of Upper Egj'pt adorn their faces with scars exactly Hke the Meccans " Cp. Wellsted, i, 389. The fact that the Ga'aHin and the people of Mekka use the same brand is of course intimately connected with the claim of the former to be Beni 'Abbas, and might at first sight seem to point to the greater antiquity of the custom in Arabia than in the Sudan; but one cannot assume that the ancient custom of the Mekkans had not an African origin in the first instance. For a Nigerian instance see Harvard Afr. Studies, i, 87. Robertson Smith thinks these tribal markings may originally have been totem marks {Kinship..., pp. 214 ff.)-
Professor Seligman (jfourn. R. A. I. xliii, 1913, pp. 646-8) thinks it "almost
certain that the custom" \s.c. in the Sudan] "is derived from immigrant Arabs, and is not an ancient widely spread Hamitic custom." Obviously, however, the custom may be non-Hamitic and yet not derived originally from Mekka. For
certain modern forms of cheek marking see Crowfoot, Customs of the Rubdtdb,
p. 131, and Jaussen, p. 376.
^ ni, 38.
^ Cp. Sir C. Wilson (p. 14). "The military relationship was followed by a more intimate one, for the Turks took Shagieh wives, and the sons all entered the Bashi Baziik force...": and again "The riverain population" [s.c. of Shaikia] "...has sadly deteriorated through close intercourse with the Turk and Albanian Bashi Baziiks in the Egyptian service." * Cp. Lepsius {Discoveries..., p. 259).
* Merowi was their capital in Burckhardt's day {v. Nubia, p. 68),