III. 4. XL THE GUHAYNA GROUP 315

Cailliaud (1821) mentions them as exporting salt from northern Kordofan and, when the Turks conquered the Sudan, pretending

to submit but paying none of the tribute demanded of them.

In the Turkish days they were largely engaged in the transport

trade, but were fleeced and swindled unmercifully by the Turks who had always the advantage of being able to seize the Kababish herds when the hot weather drove them to the river and the well-known

watering-places^

.

In 1883 the Mahdi seized el Tom, the head sheikh, and beheaded

him. Many of the Kababish sections then joined the Dervishes, but

the NuRAB and some others retired into the deserts and defied them

under Salih Bey Fadlulla.

Sahh Bey was killed near Gebel el 'Ain in 1887, and until the

reoccupation the Kababish practically ceased to exist as a corporate

entity. Then, however, they collected in their deserts and took

advantage of the unsettled state of affairs to raid the Hamar and

Zayadia, their quondam foes, who had all been Dervishes, and so

enormously increased their wealth in stock.

The present chief of the tribe, which is now richer than at any

previous period, is 'Ali the son of the el Tom beheaded in 1883.

XI To sum up: the Kababish, for so long as anything is known

about them at all, have been a widely distributed but coherent camel- owning congeries roaming the steppes between Dongola and Darfur. The chief difference between the tribe of the present day and that of

the nineteenth and previous centuries is that it is less vexed by the

competition of other tribes in its spacious grazing grounds.

The Beni Gerar have been forced southwards and have become

semi-sedentary. The Dar Hamid too have built villages in their own

country to the south and only send a small proportion of their popu-

lation to the grazing grounds of the Kababish. The Zayadia nomads

are decimated in number : a few graze with the Dar Hamid in Kordo-

fan ; the rest are either sedentary or live in Darfur. The Hawawir are

on fairly amicable terms with the Kababish and graze almost where

they will with them. Such raiding as is done is at the expense of the

wild Bedayat, Kura'an and Mi'dobis of northern Darfur, and takes

^ See Pallme and Parkyns. The latter says the Kababish of Kordofan were "taxed 2000 camels, which impost is now changed into the carriage of 4000

loads of gum from Al Obeid to Dongola," and also 100 horses, and 2000 dollars of

i5pt. (collected not in cash but in smooth-paced riding camels assessed by the Turks at about a quarter of their real value), and a certain number of sheep and

the price of fifty slaves. Salim Fadlulla, the head of the tribe, had met Muhammad

'Ali Pasha in Khartoum in 1838-9 and obtained certain concessions, but they were

of little real value. In 1858, according to Petherick (Upper Egypt, p. 328), the tribe's annual tribute to Egypt was 5000 camels.