3o8 THE GUHAYNA GROUP iii. 4. ii.

The natural features of the country they inhabit are eminently

suitable for the breeding of camels and sheep, and in its southern

portion for cattle rearing. To one familiar with these level or gently

undulating stony tracts, intersected by numerous more fertile shallow

valleys and dotted with rocky outcrops, a description of the highlands

of Nejd in Arabia, taken apart from its context, reads as though it must refer to the Kababish country.

When the obstacle of the Christian kingdom of Dongola had been swept away at the beginning of the fourteenth century by the Arabs, and the tribes of Guhayna and their allies poured into the Sudan, many of these, finding the eastern desert sufficiently occupied by

other Arab and Bega tribes, betook themselves to the hardly less

congenial tracts lying west of the river. It has already been explained^

that these parts were not previously unoccupied. The Arabs found

there bands of negro-Hamitic Tibbu and, in the hills, colonies of "Nuba," and it may have taken them several centuries to establish

a complete ascendancy over the plains. The fringe of hills from

el Haraza to Kaga they never attempted to conquer, and it was not

until five or six generations ago that they had entirely extirpated the Nuba from the far less formidable and now uninhabited hills lying

farther north and well within the present "</aV" el Kababish.

III The name of Kababish [sing. Kabbashi) is popularly derived

in the usual manner from a purely fictitious ancestor called Kabsh^, but is more properly to be connected with the word " kabsh," a ram^. At what period the name was adopted there is no evidence*. The names of certain of the subtribes and what little can be learnt of

their past history confirm the conclusion, to which one would arrive

in any case on historical grounds, that they came originally from the

northern portion of the Hegaz.

Let us take examples

:

IV The section which lives round Um Inderaba and Um Sidr and

is essentially a sheep-breeding community is the Awlad 'Ukba.

Tradition tells us that they were "the original Kababish^" and held

1 See Part I, Ch. 2.

^ He generally appears as "son of Afzar"—who again is descended from " 'Abdulla el Guhani," the intent being to connect the Kababish suitably with the Fezara and Guhayna groups.

* Cp. the formation of Ma'aza from " ma'az" (he-goats), and of "'Anaza" from " anz" (she-goats), and perhaps of " Shoa" from " slid'' (sheep). Cp. Carbou,

II, 20, and Burton, Lmid of Midian, 1, 336.

* The Kababish use the word " takabbasha" to describe the collecting together of the various component parts into a single tribal whole.

* The first of the present sections to join them are said to have been the Rowdhla (sing. Rahli) and the Awlad 'On. These, according to very vague tradition, were followed by the Seragab, Awlad Hawal and Nurab.