[198] These are the same people as the Tunjurs (Tunzers) of Darfur, regarding whose ethnical position so much doubt still prevails. Strange to say, they themselves claim to be Arabs, and the claim is allowed by their neighbours, although they are not Muhammadans. Lejean thinks they are Tibus from the north-west, while Nachtigal, who met some as far west as Kanem, concluded from their appearance and speech that they were really Arabs settled for hundreds of years in the country (op. cit. II. p. 256).
[199] A. H. Keane, "Wadai," Travel and Exploration, July, 1910; and H. H. Johnston, on Lieut. Boyd Alexander, Geog. Journ. same date.
[200] H. A. MacMichael has investigated the value of these racial claims in the case of the Kababish and indicates the probable admixture of Negro, Mediterranean, Hamite and other strains in the Sudanese Arabs. He says, "Among the more settled tribes any important sheikh or faki can produce a table of his ancestors (i.e. a nisba) in support of his asseverations.... I asked a village sheikh if he could show me his pedigree, as I did not know from which of the exalted sources his particular tribe claimed descent. He replied that he did not know yet, but that his village had subscribed 60 piastres the month before to hire a faki to compose a nisba for them, and that he would show me the result when it was finished." "The Kababish: Some Remarks on the Ethnology of a Sudan Arab Tribe," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XL. 1910, p. 216.
[201] See the Kababish types, Pl. XXXVII in C. G. Seligman's "Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLIII. 1913, but cf. also p. 626 and n. 2.
[202] "The Physical Characters of the Nuba of Kordofan," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XL. 1910, "Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem," etc., tom. cit. XLIII. 1913.
[203] See H. A. MacMichael, The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofán, 1912.
[204] Cf. A. W. Tucker and C. S. Myers, "A Contribution to the Anthropology of the Sudan," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XL. 1910, p. 149.
[205] This term, however, has by some authorities been identified with the Barabara, one of the 113 tribes recorded in the inscription on a gateway of Thutmes, by whom they were reduced about 1700 B.C. In a later inscription of Rameses II at Karnak (1400 B.C.) occurs the form Beraberata, name of a southern people conquered by him. Hence Brugsch (Reisebericht aus Ægypten, pp. 127 and 155) is inclined to regard the modern Barabra as a true ethnical name confused in classical times with the Greek and Roman Barbarus, but revived in its proper sense since the Moslem conquest. See also the editorial note on the term Berber, in the new English ed. of Leo Africanus, Vol. 1. p. 199.
[206] Ἐξ ἀριστερῶν δὲ ῥύσεως τοῦ Νείλου Νοῦβαι κατοικοῦσιν ἐν τῇ Λιβύῃ, μέγα ἔθνος, etc. (Book XVII. p. 1117, Oxford ed. 1807). Sayce, therefore, is quite wrong in stating that Strabo knew only of "Ethiopians," and not Nubians, "as dwelling northward along the banks of the Nile as far as Elephantiné" (Academy, April 14, 1894).
[207] Nubische Grammatik, 1881, passim.