(56.) The extracts which Macrizi has here given from Masoudy’s excellent work, called Meroudj e’dahab, or the Golden Meadows, are made from different parts of it. The great work of that historian, called Akhbar e’Zaman (اخبار الزمان), which I suspect is one of the richest treasures of Arabian literature, is not extant in Egypt. A Shikh from Cairo told me that he had seen above 20 volumes in quarto of it,i[196] in the library of the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
(57.) Arteyt, or Arneyb (ارتيت, ارنيب).
(58.) This does not agree with the statement above, that their colour has a yellow tinge. I believe the colour of the Bedjas and that of the Habesh people to be much the same, from the many individuals of the latter whom I have seen at Mekka. The people of the Amhara province of Abyssinia are certainly less black than the Bedjas.
(59.) Thus I translate و كان القصر فرضة القوص. The word فرضة, is still applied in Egypt and in the Hedjaz to designate the income of the custom-house.
(60.) I call the conqueror of Egypt Amr, because his name is thus pronounced by the Arabs, and not Amrou, as the Europeans pronounce it. The و at the end of عمرو, which is added to distinguish the name from عمر, Omar, is never pronounced.
(61.) Slinging machines (مجانيق), to throw stones, appear to have been used by the Arabs in very ancient times. Some time after the death of Mohammed, the rebel Yezyd defended himself at Mekka against Ibn Zebeyr with similar machines. (V. Azraky’s History of Mekka).
(62.) The different names recorded in these notices of Nubian kings, are all Greek or Christian names. In an odd volume of Macrizi’s “ancient history of Egypt,” called Akhbar Messr fi Ed-daher Elawel (اخبار مصر في الدهر الاول), in the chapter of “the titles and surnames given to the kings of different nations,” I find it stated, that the name of the ancient kings of Nouba was always Kabyl (كابيل), in the same manner as Hatty was the name given to the kings of Abyssinia, Toba to those of the Hemyar race of Yemen, &c. &c. This volume of a work of Macrizi’s, which I believe is no where found complete in Egypt, is the more valuable, because it is written by the author’s own hand, with many notes and corrections.i[197] It belongs to the library of Seyd Mahrouky, the first merchant of Cairo, who has the finest collection of books in Egypt, and which he is continually enlarging, although he has given them to a mosque lately built by him.
(63.) In the history of Bahnase (Oxyrinchus), and that of its valorous defence against the Arab conquerors of Egypt, I find it stated, that a large army of Bedjas and Noubas, headed by Maksouh, king of Bedja, and Ghalyk, king of Nouba, came to the assistance of the Christian chief, Batlos, who was besieged at Bahnase, by the officers of Amr Ibn el Aas. This black army is said to have consisted of 50,000 men. They had with them 1,300 elephants, each bearing upon its back a vaulted house made of leather, in which 10 men took their post in the battle. In the company of the Bedjas were a race of men of gigantic stature, called El Kowad (القواد), coming from beyond Souakin. They were covered with tiger skins, and in their upper lips copper rings were fixed. The Moslims defeated this army. There is a strange mixture of truth and romance in this history, but the arrival of the Bedja army is so well authenticated by a train of witnesses, that little doubt can remain of its having really taken place; although the number both of men and elephants seems to be exaggerated. The elephants of southern Nubia are, as far as I know, no longer used to ride upon.