III. 2. XVI. THE GUHAYNA GROUP 255

the country between the Rahad and the Atbara to the south of the

Shukri'a.

The present habitat of the Dubania is much what it was in the time of Bruce and Baker. There are some of them between Kedaref and Kallabat; but most of the tribe was extirpated by the Dervishes. The survivors are sedentary and poor. A few are at Kedaref with the Shukria, and a few survive in the villages that border on the Blue

Nile.

THE FEZARA group

XVI The term Fezara is now no longer heard in the Sudan, but to

the travellers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and perhaps even until the

'' Mahdia,'^ it was the usual denomination of the largest group of camel-owning nomads of Kordofan and Darfur^. These are now much more distinctly divided and each tribe is known by its own name.

Before embarking on details of these tribes we may remark it as

curious that the Fezara who emigrated from Arabia to Egypt were an Isma'ilitic tribe, a branch of Kays 'Aylan, whereas the Guhayna, from whom the Fezara group of the Sudan claim descent, were Kahtanites and therefore very distantly related indeed to the Fezara

of Arabia. The apparent anomaly is, however, explained to some

extent by the fact that the Fezara and the Guhayna have always been neighbours in the Hegaz, and probably for that reason took

part in the same tribal migrations^ and intermarried with one another. Again, some confusion might naturally arise between the two groups of Fezara and Guhayna owing to the fact that while a section of

Guhayna happened to be named Kays and to have one subsection

called GhatAFAN and another in which the names Dhubian and 'Abs occur at a comparatively early date, the Fezara were the largest

section of the Beni Dhubian, who again, with the Beni 'Abs, formed

the two main branches of the great Ghatafan subtribe of Kays 'Aylan^. But although this similarity of nomenclature may have been due to no more than coincidence, it is more probable that it betokens the close intimacy of the two tribes and their interrelation by marriage.

Let us take the various Fezara tribes of the Sudan in turn

:

^ El Tunisi's map, e.g., speaks of camel-owning nomads called Fezara com- prising the Mahamid, the Megdnin, the Beni Gerar, the Beni 'Omran and the

Messfrfa Zurruk. Bruce's map places "Beni Faisara," " Cubbabeesh," and Beni Gerar in the Bayuda.

^ See Part II, Chaps, i and 2.

* See Wiistenfeld, I and H. and Tree 1 in Part II, above.