III. 4. XV. THE GUHAYNA GROUP 317

as less applicable to them than to the generality of the nomad tribes

of the northern Sudan.

During the Turkish period a steady stream of these Mogharba was poured into the Sudan and nearly all of these remained there as

irregular cavalry and police, being employed in slave-hunting forays,

tax-collecting, etc.^ A certain number also settled in the towns and

villages as traders or cultivators.

XIV At the same time it is clear that even more Mogharba were,

previous to the Turkish conquest, already established on the Blue

Nile and elsewhere, and these may, to some small extent, have acted

as the decoy which led a few of the later arrivals to take up their abode in the same district.

Cailliaud, who accompanied Isma'i'l Pasha's expedition, found

these Sudanese Mogharba established at Soba, Wad el Shaib,

el Kamli'n and Abu 'Ushera, all of which are within a hundred miles

of Khartoum- ; and there is still a large nomadic camel-owning tribe

of Mogharba between Soba Abu Delayk and the Butana which has been established there for many generations^. This tribe bears no resemblance in features or mode of life to the colonies formed of

descendants of Moghrabin or Mogharba who entered the Sudan in

the nineteenth century and subsequently. The latter^ are recog-

nizable by their sallow-pinkish complexions and general resemblance

to the Moorish tribesmen of the North African littoral as they are

to be seen in the coast towns at present, whereas the nomad Mogh- arba of the Sudan are hardly to be distinguished from the average nomads and are, if anything, rather darker in complexion than they.

XV These Mogharba claim descent from, that is to say may have some vague connection with, a certain Ahmad Zarruk, a Sherifi of

the Shadhali sect in Tunis, and the nisba-writers bear out their

contention^. The only detailed genealogical tree I have seen, that of

^ See Pallme, pp. 207-212, and Weme, pp. 138-139, where good descriptions of them are given.

^ He calls them (11, 207-211) "Arabes Maq'arbehs," and it is significant that

it apparently did not occur to him that the name was identical with that of the "Mohgrebins" whom he describes elsewhere as accompanying the army as

irregulars. The c (gh) and the ^3 ('^> or q) are so often confused together in the

Sudan as to be almost interchangeable in proper names, but the same is not the

case in Egypt. Hence the correct preservation of the ft in "Mohgrebins" and its

alteration to a ^3 i" the case of the "Maq'arbehs" who had been some time in the Sudan.

^ A few of them are also settled in the Gezira near Manakil and elsewhere.

* At el Fasher in particular there is a large and recent mercantile community of Moghrabin commonly called " Fezzan."

^ See, e.g., D i clxxiv, clxxv.