The nomadic or settled Moors (Fig. [137]) of the western Sahara, extending from Morocco to the Senegal (the Trarza, the Brakna, etc.), speak Arabic and “Zenagha,” which is a Berber dialect. These are Berbers more or less crossed with Negro blood. It must further be observed that the name of Moors is very wrongly applied to the Mussulman inhabitants of the towns of Algeria and Tunis and to the Riffians of Morocco.[493]
The Fellaheen, Mussulmans (635,600 in 1894) of the lower valley of the Nile (as far as the first cataract), mixed descendants of the ancient Egyptians, must be included among the Arabo-Berbers because they have abandoned the speech of their ancestors, adopting that of the Arabs, but many of them have preserved intact the type of the primitive Egyptians, fundamentally Ethiopian, so well represented on various monuments in the valley of the Nile.[494] The ancient Egyptian language is preserved, however, under the form of the Coptic dialect which, until quite recent times, served as the liturgical language to the Christian section of the inhabitants of Lower Egypt, known by the name of Copts (500,000 in 1894; cephalic index 76, according to Chantre).
We must likewise add to the Arabo-Berber group the Barabra (in the singular Berberi) inhabiting to the number of about 180,000 the part of the Nile valley situated between the first and the fourth cataract. It is a people sprung from the intermingling of Ethiopians, Egyptian Fellaheen, and Arabs (ceph. ind. 76). One of the most commercial tribes of this ethnic group is that of the Danagla inhabiting the country of Dongola.
II. The Ethiopians or Kushito-Hamites, who are sometimes called Nuba or Nubians,[495] inhabit the north-east of Africa, from the 25th degree lat. N. to the 4th degree lat. S. They occupy almost all the coast land of the Red Sea, and that of the Indian Ocean from the Gulf of Aden to Port Durnford or Wubashi. Their territory is bounded on the west by the Nile, the Bahr-el-Azrek, the western edge of the Abyssinian plateau, Lake Rudolf and Mount Kenia.[496]
In the northern part of this territory dwell the Bejas or Nubians, the different tribes of which, Bejas or Bisharin, Hamrans (Fig. [138]), Hadendowas, Hallengas, etc., are stationed one after another between the Red Sea and the Nile, from the first cataract to the Abyssinian plateau. Certain Beja tribes, like the Ababdeh (19,500), to the north in Upper Egypt, partly of settled habits, the Beni-Amer to the east, the Jalin to the west, are in a large measure Arabised, but still speak a Hamitic language, while side by side with them dwell Semitised Ethiopian tribes, speaking only Arabic like the Habab and the Hassanieh of the Bayuda steppe or the Abu-Rof and Shukrieh of the lower basin of the Blue Nile.[497] It is in the same category of Semitised Ethiopians, but speaking the Amharinga and Tigrenga dialects, etc., which have sprung from a different Semitic language, Ghéez, that we must place the inhabitants of the north and east of Abyssinia, as well as the natives of Kaffa and the east of Shoa, who have sprung from the intermingling of the Gallas (see below) with the Arabs.
FIG. 138.—Hamran Beja of Daghil tribe;
height, 1 m. 79, 25 years old.
Hair arrangement characteristic of Ethiopians.
(Author’s coll.)
The Amharinga language is spoken in Amhara and Godjam; the Tigrenga farther to the north, in Tigre; the Curagheh, derived from the ancient Amharinga, to the west of Lake Zuwai and to the south of Shoa, and the sources of the Hawash. The term “Abyssinian” has only a political signification, like that of “Austrian” for example; it is a corruption of the word “Habeshi” (“mixed”), which the Arabs formerly gave in derision to the inhabitants of the Abyssinian plateau united together into a Christian state. The substratum of the population of the Abyssinian plateau is formed by the Agaw, Ethiopian in type, Hamitic in language, but the Abyssinians of the higher classes are strongly Semitised. The national religion of the Abyssinians is monophysite Christianity, closely allied to the Coptic religion, but impregnated with Mussulman, Judaic, and indigenous animist elements.
To the south of the Abyssinian plateau, from the neighbourhood of Lake Tsana to the extreme limits of the extension of the Ethiopian peoples to the south and west is the territory of the Gallas or Oroma, representing the purest Ethiopian type. To the east of the Gallas, from about the 42nd degree long. east of Greenwich, dwell the Somalis, probably only Gallas more or less intermingled with the Arabs, who for several centuries have overrun the country. They occupy the whole of the seaboard from Cape Jibuti (at the southern extremity of Obok) to the mouth of the Jeb, or Jubba, and the plain of Aji-Fiddah, which extends below the equator, but in the interior of their country, especially in the north, numerous Galla tribes are found.