3i8 THE GUHAYNA GROUP 111. 4. XV.

the '"omda" Fag el Nur of the Desisab section, traces his descent through a series of Sayyids, including Ahmad Zarruk, to the Imam

'Ali in thirty-two generations, but there is no reason to assume that

the tree is much better than a detailed fake^.

The common tradition in the tribe is that they immigrated from

the neighbourhood of Fez "some five hundred years ago," or "in

the days of Soba." They claim much of the rainland behind the

village of Soba to belong to them, and even allowing that it is with an

eye to substantiating their claim to cultivation-rights that they desire

to imply to a Government official that they are the earliest owners, and have been there since the days of the Christian kingdom of 'Aloa,

there is nothing inherently improbable in their claim, and one has at

least fairly good evidence, the biography of 'Abdulla Wad Hasoba

el Moghrabi^, that some of them have lived there since the sixteenth

century. The darkness of their complexion proves a long sojourn in

the south, and it is even possible that some of their ancestors were

once the inhabitants of those hostels which Ibn Selim describes as

inhabited by Muhammadans at Soba towards the close of the tenth

century a.d.^

XVI The main sections of the nomad Mogharba are as follows

:

KiBAYDLAB Deraysab Hasobab'* 'Akrabab 'awadullab

'AWLAB \ Bayyada turabiin Hasabullab KokalAb

Chiefly to

^- the east

of Khartoum

Between Abu

Delayk and

'Alwan

Keradis Sa'abab GiDAYAB Fasalab MiKAYBALAB

Ferahab NtJRAB j- Irwayhab j

Chiefly in

the Gezira

I Near Abu

Delayk

The camel-brand of these MoghArba is the "timaysih," a hori-

zontal line under the right eye. The word is the diminutive of " tim-

sdh," a crocodile, and to the Mogharba the brand as described sug-

gests a crocodile lying asleep on the river bank^.

^ Curiously enough Fag el Nur himself has the sallow complexion and strikingly

Jewish cast of countenance of a modern Moor. This may well be due to careful

preservation of the blood of the ruling family from all contamination with purely Sudanese admixture.

^ See D 3 36 and 141.

^ See p. 171.

* I.e. descendants of the Wad Hasoba mentioned above.

^ Compare the cases of the Hawawir (Chap. 8) and Kababish who both include

a section called "Tamasih" ("Crocodiles").