DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49271#0242
180
C. G. and B. Z. Seligman
CONCLUSIONS.
Some account having been given of the Kababish mode of life, it remains to consider
whether in those matters in which their customs do not follow the recognised practices
of Islam, the divergence is due to African influence, or whether its origin is to be sought
in the persistence of pagan or of early Islamic conditions. There are three foreign sources
each of which may have influenced the Kababish. These are:—
(i) Egyptian and Nubian influence exerted on the journey from Arabia.
(ii) Contact with the negro population of the Sudan.
(iii) The absorption of Beja elements.
There is no a priori reason for postulating any considerable intercourse between nomad
Arabs and settled Egyptians, and the Kababish freedom from the numerous superstitions
regarding jinn, 'afrit, and ghul so common in Egypt seems to support the suggestion that
there was little contact. On the other hand we shall probably not be wrong in assuming
that the process of distillatio per decensum described on page 179 has its origin in the Nile
valley.
There are as far as we know no records which permit of any definite statement as to the
life led by the nomad ancestors of the Kababish in Africa before they reached the Sudan.
We may suggest, however, that this cannot have differed very greatly from that of the
Aulad 'Ali on the western frontier of Egypt at the present day, who, it will be remembered,
trace their origin to the Beni Ukba, the traditional ancestral nucleus of the Kababish.108
The Beni 'Ukba and other stocks from which the Kababish have sprung cannot have
entered Nubia until after the fall of the Christian Kingdom of Dongola, and the geo-
graphical conditions of Nubia make it impossible as a resting place for a pastoral people,
for the Berberine boast that their country is green from the jebel to the water is literally
true. Here is no strip of wilderness, separating the desert from the sown, and the cul-
tivation stretched on one or both banks of the river, covering every inch of alluvial soil,
whether this be three or four miles in width or only a few feet. There can then have
been little opportunity of absorbing either Berberine blood or culture. In Kordofan the
problem presents a different aspect, for here the Berberines undoubtedly exerted con-
siderable influence. They have travelled all over northern Kordofan as traders or settled
as cultivators, and have taken so many Nuba women as wives that it is scarcely an exag-
geration to say that small mixed races have been formed locally. There is, however, every
108 Vide supra, p. 110.
C. G. and B. Z. Seligman
CONCLUSIONS.
Some account having been given of the Kababish mode of life, it remains to consider
whether in those matters in which their customs do not follow the recognised practices
of Islam, the divergence is due to African influence, or whether its origin is to be sought
in the persistence of pagan or of early Islamic conditions. There are three foreign sources
each of which may have influenced the Kababish. These are:—
(i) Egyptian and Nubian influence exerted on the journey from Arabia.
(ii) Contact with the negro population of the Sudan.
(iii) The absorption of Beja elements.
There is no a priori reason for postulating any considerable intercourse between nomad
Arabs and settled Egyptians, and the Kababish freedom from the numerous superstitions
regarding jinn, 'afrit, and ghul so common in Egypt seems to support the suggestion that
there was little contact. On the other hand we shall probably not be wrong in assuming
that the process of distillatio per decensum described on page 179 has its origin in the Nile
valley.
There are as far as we know no records which permit of any definite statement as to the
life led by the nomad ancestors of the Kababish in Africa before they reached the Sudan.
We may suggest, however, that this cannot have differed very greatly from that of the
Aulad 'Ali on the western frontier of Egypt at the present day, who, it will be remembered,
trace their origin to the Beni Ukba, the traditional ancestral nucleus of the Kababish.108
The Beni 'Ukba and other stocks from which the Kababish have sprung cannot have
entered Nubia until after the fall of the Christian Kingdom of Dongola, and the geo-
graphical conditions of Nubia make it impossible as a resting place for a pastoral people,
for the Berberine boast that their country is green from the jebel to the water is literally
true. Here is no strip of wilderness, separating the desert from the sown, and the cul-
tivation stretched on one or both banks of the river, covering every inch of alluvial soil,
whether this be three or four miles in width or only a few feet. There can then have
been little opportunity of absorbing either Berberine blood or culture. In Kordofan the
problem presents a different aspect, for here the Berberines undoubtedly exerted con-
siderable influence. They have travelled all over northern Kordofan as traders or settled
as cultivators, and have taken so many Nuba women as wives that it is scarcely an exag-
geration to say that small mixed races have been formed locally. There is, however, every
108 Vide supra, p. 110.