1. 4. VII. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 67

has been some misapprehension on this point. It is true that natives

will tell one that first the Dagu ruled, then the Tungur, then the Fur ; but what they mean in the case of the first two is that each in

turn was the most powerful tribe in the country and not necessarily

that one subdued the other or even occupied the same part of Darfur; For instance, the Dagu never had any shadow of power or influence

in northern Darfur or Gebel Marra, and the Tungur never had any connection with the southernmost districts of Darfur or Gebel Marra. The main spheres of the two people were always distinct, except

that they certainly met and overlapped in central-eastern Darfur, that

is to say, in the neighbourhood of el Fasher.

I incline, too, to think that there has been a further miscon- ception as to the Tungur. Nachtigal^ speaks of the last Tungur

king, Shau Dorshid, as living in Gebel Si, and it has been inferred

that the Tungur (all or part) lived in those mountains and that they had the seat of their rule there. But the term "Gebel Si" is a very wide one. It does not include only the rocky, almost impassable, range which forms the northern prolongation of Gebel Marra, but

all the cultivable sandy country with smaller outcrops of rock which

flank the hills for a day's journey or so to east and west. Even in

'Ali Dinar's time and at the present day the head Shartdi of Si, which

is thus a district as well as a range, does not live in the hills but on the sandy fertile tract to the east of it ; and there is no local record or tradition that I have been able to trace, even in Si itself, that the Tungur ever occupied the mountains of Si proper or had their headquarters there. Nor is it in the least likely from what we know of their history that they ever bothered—or were able—to overrun these inhospitable crags and settle there. Why should they when the fertile country to the east, and perhaps to the west also, was ample for the.i.''

The truth seems to be simply that the Tungur, when they arrived in northern Darfur made their headquarters at Ferra in Dar

Furnung to the north-west of Kuttum—all local tradition agrees as

to this—and their control extended over the eastern plains of Gebel

Si^. That the savage mountaineers of Si were overawed by them and perhaps paid them some tribute is not impossible, but there is no

definite evidence of it. That there was copious intermarriage between Fur and Tungur in this neighbourhood is indubitable. The name of Shau Dorshid is familiar in Gebel Si itself to the present day, but the greatest vagueness prevails as to details and opinion is even

^ See History of the World (Helmolt), p. 585.

^ For a description of their remains at Ferra see Appendix 5 to this chapter.