1. 4. VII. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 69 that one would hesitate to accept any of its details as historically correct.

The TuNGUR, however, are generally regarded as having some intimate connection with the Beni Hilal, and, though this may only be an echo of the Kayra tradition, the converse may equally be true, and there also remains the possibility that about the fifteenth or sixteenth century a.d., or even earlier, some Arabs or Arabo-Nubians with a Beni Hilal connection, moved westwards from the cataract region of the Nile to Darfur, mixed with the native races, and came to be generally known as Tungur, a theory not unsupported by local tradition.

There is also the bare possibility that the Tungur may have been related to the Berber tribes dispossessed by the Beni Hilal in North Africa, and perhaps through them to the Beni Hilal themselves. Or they may conceivably present a parallel to the case of the Howara settled in and near el Fasher : these latter are by origin Berbers from Upper Egypt who in Dongola and Kordofan are represented by the nomad Hawawi'r and the negrified Gellaba Howara respectively.

The word "Tungur" in Nubian or Barabra means "a bow for shooting* " ; Nubia was known to the Pharaohs as Ta-sety (Land of the Bow), and "Les Nubiens, dit Masoudy,...se servent d'arcs arabes pour lancer des fleches. C'est d'eux que les peuples du Hedjaz, du Yemen, et les autres Arabes, ont appris a tirer de I'arc.... Les Arabes les nomment les archers hahiles." Their traditions connect them with Dongola and the Beni Hilal, they preserve (as may be seen in Appendix 5) the custom of using the sign of the Cross, their name survives in a rapid on the Nile, and, all things considered, one may say that such evidence as there is clearly indicates a Nubian origin for the Tungur.

If this is correct, a parallel is provided by the case of the Birked which will shortly be discussed.

The Tungur have generally been referred to by travellers as This seems to be Carbou's view {q.v. i, 74 note).

- Cp. MS. D I, cxLiii, and cp. Sir H. H. Johnston's views in Journ. Anthr.

Inst. XLiii, 1913, p. 399. He considers that a large proportion of the "HilaUan" invaders found their way from the cataract region of the Nile "across Darfur to Wadai, Bornu and Baghirmi, where they are represented at the present day by the Shawia. Others again mingled with Hamitic and negro elements and founded the powerful Funj dynasty of Senaar." From the second of these statements I would entirely dissent.

See App. to Part II, Chap. i.

* Reinisch, Die Nuba-Sprache, p. 165.

Quatremere, n, 28.

® Mas'udi, 11, 383 (and cp. II, 2, xxiii above): the Arabic is w»jjOI,,»y«j«~~