Sudan Archive

278 THE GUHAYNA GROUP iii.s.vii.

trees, which almost always group these two tribes and the Ta'aisha

together.

Nachtigal gives some account of the Awlad HAMAYD^of Wadai and

Bornu. They were alleged to be closely connected with the Bulala.

Quand cette tribu, venant de I'Est, emigra au Soudan, una fraction demeura au Kordofan, una au Ouadai, una sa fixa au Bahr-el-GhazaP, una enfin au Baguirmi at au Fitri. Cast catte darniere fraction qui fut le noyau du grand etat qui reunit un jour las territoires das Kouka's, du

Fitri at du Kanam. Catte fraction das Oulad Hamad, devanue tout a fait

sedentaira, s'etait alliea aux Kouka's at an avait adopte la langaga (Tar lisi),

ca qui n'ampechait la langua arabe d'etre rastee axtremamant repandua.

It seems, then, that the substratum of the AwlAd Hamayd of Kordofan is in part Bakkara, akin to that of the Ta'aisha and Hab-

BANIA, and in part Nuba of the Tekali type. Their Arab ancestors may have settled round Tekali at the time of the great Guhayna movement, and they have been reinforced by others of their kin who have returned from the western countries whither they had gone at

the time that the Kordofan settlement first occurred. As in the case

of the ruling family at Tekali^, these Awlad Hamayd may have ab-

sorbed a slight element of the Dongolawi—sufficient at least to make them aspire to a Ga'ali pedigree—and they certainly intermarried

with, or included into their particular group, various families of

other Bakkara.

The Turkish period provides no more than traditions of grazing

disputes and desultory fighting between the Awlad Hamayd the Habbania and the Halafa section of the Hawazma. The eventual

result was unfavourable to the first-named tribe and by the date of

the outbreak of the Dervish revolt they had lost many of their fighting men and a large proportion of their herds. They attempted to resist

the Mahdi at first but were easily crushed, and what was left of the

tribe joined the Dervishes.

It was not until the reoccupation of the Sudan that the scattered remnants of the tribe returned to their ancient haunts and were able

to re-form.

(c) habbAnIa

VIII The Habbania who live between el Rahad and Sherkayla are

a branch of the Darfur tribe of the same name and immigrated from

Kalaka, which is still the headquarters of the main tribe, some four

or five generations ago.

^ "Oulad Hamed—ou Oulad Homeid, dans certaines regions— " (Voy. au Ouadai, p. 13).

^ Not the Bahr el Ghazal of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan of course.

' SeeMS. "A7."

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