III. 1. XL. THE GA'ALlfN AND DANAGLA GROUP 235

fell, in particular at Toski and Tokar^, and whole villages of them

perished of hunger in the terrible famine of 1889^. What was left of

their power as a tribal unit was ended in 1897, when, on the approach

of the British forces, they projected a rising against the Dervishes. The ''amir'' Mahmud learnt of their intention, attacked and sacked

their headquarters at Metemma and slew over 2000 of them^.

In so far as the Ga'alii'n remain cultivators and herdsmen in their own " ddr" and have not taken to trade in the towns, they preserve much the same degree of tribal organization as do their neighbours

the Batahin, Shukria, etc. The sections (Nafa'ab, 'Ali'ab, etc.) which

graze their herds and sow their crops in the dry watercourses of the

ancient Island of Meroe are each independent of the other with no

single head-sheikh. The families who cultivate the Nile banks live

the ordinary life of the sedentary villager and send such flocks as

they possess eastwards in charge of their semi-nomadic kinsfolk.

In addition, however, to these Ga'alii'n and the town-dwelling community there are numerous isolated colonies of Ga'aliin settled

at intervals along the Blue and White Niles as far south as Kedaref and Kawa, and others, though fewer, in the inland provinces. These

are all sedentary, and unimportant.

XL To sum up, one may say that the word GA'ALiiN is used in two senses: in the first and widest sense it denotes all the loosely

connected group of tribes on the river and inland, Danagla and others, who claim an 'Abbasid descent: in the second it is limited to the

riverain people whose ancestor was Duab ibn Ghanim and whose

chief habitat has been between the mouth of the Atbara and the Shabluka cataract since the beginning of the sixteenth century, if

not for longer.

In so far as the Ga'aliin congeries can be regarded as a single whole its homogeneity consists in the common Berberine or Nubian

strain that exists in a very varying proportion in all its component

parts.

There is also a strong infusion of Arab blood—more particularly

in the Ga'aliin proper—but the error into which the native genealo-

gists have wilfully slipped consists in ignoring the Nubian element and finding the common race factor of the Ga'alii'n in the tribe of KuRAYSH. The facts being as they are, it is impossible to specify any

particular tribe of Arabia as being that to which the Arab element in

the composition of the Ga'aliin group can be attributed in any

exclusive sense.

1 Slatin, Ch. xvi. 2 siatin, Ch, xiii.

* Anglo-Egypt. Sudan, i, 45; Budge, 11, 271.