276 THE GUHAYNA GROUP 111.3. v.

Guhayna" who in the sixteenth century had "reached a total of

fifty-two tribes in the land of Soba on the Blue Nile under the rule

of the Fung," though most of them were "in the west^."

The main "Guhayna" group having come from the east as

camel-owners and shepherds in the fourteenth and following cen-

turies appear to have straightway pushed as far westwards as Bornu,

but how long elapsed before branches of them moved farther south and became Bakkara we do not know.

In Kordofan these latter groups had been anticipated by the

Ga'ali group from Dongola, who had settled round el Rahad and

el Birka and intermarried with the Nuba, and it may be that the

' Guhayna " Arabs first became cattle-breeders in the countries west

of Kordofan. But at a later date, five to eight generations ago, there was a return movement eastwards caused by adverse political con-

ditions in the west, and various Bakkara groups migrated to join

their kin in southern Kordofan.

The Bakkara of the west, however, have been joined by arabicized

Berbers from North Africa, and it may have been the presence of

these latter that has given rise to the doubtful tradition that the Bakkara came not from the Nile but from Tunis. At all events it was presumably the difiiculty of embodying into their traditions both

the Abu Zayd el Hilali (Tunis) connection and also the real fact of

their original migration from the Nile that gave birth to the apocry-

phal "Great Trek" of Abu Zayd from the east over the Blue and White Niles and Kordofan^.

VI Let us now take the Bakkara tribes separately, from east to

west.

(a) BENI SELfM

Of the Beni Selim of the White Nile the "nishas" can tell us

nothing of any interest. Their country at present extends nearly as

far south as Kaka^, and thus lies north of that of the Shilluk and the Dinka and south of that of the Ahamda, but it is probably only

within the last two centuries that they have been able to dominate

the river banks at the expense of the two former tribes.

In the rains the fly drives them northwards, or eastwards over

the river*.

They mix largely with the Dinka, and not being cultivators them-

selves rely upon them and the Shilluk for their grain supply^.

Though Bakkara, they have taken, no doubt since their move- ment to the river, to breeding more sheep than cattle.

1 See p. 139. ^ See MacMichael, Tribes..., Chap. n.

3 Anglo-Eg. Sudan, l, 130. * Ibid, i, 64. ^ Ibid. 1, 196.