2i8 THE GA'ALlfN AND DANAGLA GROUP in. i. xxvii.

The Shaikia now atoned for many past misdeeds by the heroic defence they made of their country.

They had Uved the companions of their horses, with the lance in their hand : they were to resign the former to strangers, and exchange the latter for harrows and pruning knives; and were to drive an ox round a sakie, instead of chasing an enemy across the desert. They had many Nubians settled in the country, whom they obliged to all the labours of cultivating the ground, and whom they treated as greatly their inferiors. They were now called upon to perform these labours, which they had been brought up to consider as servile, and were to expect no better treatment than that which they had been accustomed to exercise; they were to fall at once to slavery, not from liberty merely, but from tyranny; and again, besides their prejudices against white men generally, they had particular religious ones against the Osmanlies, to whom, in common with the Christians, they applied the term Dog.

However they were completely defeated at Korti and again at Gebel Dayka and they, their women, and their children were subjected to unheard-of brutalities at the hands of the Turks.

Mek Sibayr submitted, and some months later Sha'us followed suit. But warlike and restless as ever the Shaikia were not content to live as mere Felldhin,' and a number of them, under the command of Sha'us, enlisted as irregulars in the Turkish army and accompanied it on its campaign against the Fung in the Gezi'ra. When Isma'il Pasha returned in 1822 the 'Adlanab wer6 granted the lands of the 'Abdullab who had revolted round Halfaya; and others —'Adlanab, SowArab and Kadenkab—settled on either side of the Shabluka.

Throughout the Turkish regime the Shaikia continued to be faithful allies of the Turks, and in every expedition that was made against recalcitrant tribes they, with the Mogharba, formed the bulk of the irregular troops employed. They were similarly used for tax collecting, and their ruthless methods earned them an unenviable notoriety.

Even in the Dervish days they remained faithful to the Turks, but the identity of interests and similarity of methods existing between the two and the hatred which the Shaikia had earned for themselves made any other course difficult for them. After the fall of Khartoum the general amnesty to natives granted by the Mahdi was especially framed to exclude the Shaikia; and Slatin tells the Waddington and Hanbury, p. 99.

-Cailliaud, 11, 32 et seq., and Waddington and Hanbury, loc. cit.

3 Cailliaud, n, 182. * Cp. Cuny, p. 184.

It was they, for instance, who relieved Sennar in 1882 when it was attacked by Abu Rof.