F U N G ORIGINS

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 FUNG ORIGINS.
By A. J. A r k e l l , M . B . E . , M.C.
(PLATES I—XIII.)

T H E R E have recently appeared in Sudan Noies and Records two very

interesting articles (by Mr. Chataway in Vol. X I I I , p. 247, and
Mr. Nalder, Vol. X I V , p. 6 1 ) , which attempt to prove that the theory of
the Shilluk origin of the Fung is in the highest degree improbable. The
following is written in defence of the older theory.
In order to get the best chance of solving what Mr. Nalder calls
this minor mystery of African history, it is necessary to get as clear an
idea as possible of conditions in the Gezira at the beginning of the sixteenth
century.
That the centuries that preceded it were ones of retrogression and
decay is indicated by the fact that no records survive, and that such
historical evidence as there is, is most meagre.
Civilisation no doubt first came to the Gezira from Egypt, and later
v i a Napata. Navigable waterways were in early days man's best lines
of communication ; and once the cataract at the Shabluka was passed,
there was nothing to prevent a boat reaching the cataract at Roseires.
By 750 B.c. a fully developed Ethiopian kingdom had emerged into
1
view with the seat of government at Napata. This state was a repro-
duction of the Ammonite theocracy at Thebes. The state God was Ammon.
His control was even more absolute than at Thebes, and eventually
even the king was obliged to abdicate at the God's demand, who then
installed another ruler. The king bore Pharaonic titles, and other state
designations remained Egyptian for a long time.
Professor Reisner in Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. I I , p. 65, has
pointed out that Sir Henry Wellcome's excavations at Jebel Moya have
shown that the last century or so of the occupation of Jebel Moya was
that in which lived Tirhaqa and Tanutamon down to about the time
of Aspalta, i.e., c. 700-570 B.C., and that the village had direct trade
communication with Napata.
This kingdom of Ethiopia founded a school of Egyptian craftsmen
at Napata (especially for building and decorating the great temple of
Ammon at Jebel Barkal), on which basis rested the whole history of the
* Breasted. History of Egypt, p. 5 3 8 .
4
 202 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

1
culture of Ethiopia. The subsequent history of this culture was one
of comparatively rapid deterioration and decline, as the Egyptians resident
2
in the country died and were not replaced. Professor Reisner considers
that down to about 300 B.C. the kingdom of Napata ruled the whole of
3
Ethiopia as far as the swamps of the White Nile. The power of this
kingdom was founded on the exploitation of the control of the trade
routes between Egypt and the south, and the roads to the gold mines.
About 300 B.C. power moved from Napata, the capital of Northern
Ethiopia, to Meroe, the capital of Southern Ethiopia, owing partly to
the exhaustion of the gold mines of the northern desert. The Meroitic
kingdom was culturally and politically merely a continuation of the
kingdom of Napata, all her civilisation being derived from Egypt.
There is some reason for believing that Sennar, destined later to
become the capital of the Fung, was a settlement under the kingdom
of Meroe, if not earlier. The name Sennar, which is not reasonably
explicable in any known modern language, means " rain storm " or
4
" tempest " in ancient Egyptian. A little reflection will show what a
suitable name this is for any colony from rainless E g y p t , Napata or
Meroe, situate as it is just within the zone of regular rainfall. No doubt
its importance was that it lay on the direct and easiest route to the gold
and slave-producing country now known as Beni Shangul.
It is probable that the numerous large hafirs that dot the Gezira
west and south of Sennar date from the Meroitic period also, for besides
being distinctive of Meroitic culture, they point to a period of greater
prosperity than appears to have occurred since then.
The close of the kingdom of Meroe is obscure. Professor Reisner
suggests that the inscription of the king of Axum indicates that the
Axumite Abyssinians conquered Meroitic Ethiopia about 350 B.C. The
northern provinces had already been seized by the Blemmyes and
Nobadœ, and the wealth of Meroe had already declined to such an extent
that Professor Reisner remarks that no great force of arms can have
6
been necessary to overthrow it. (Note this is the first appearance of
Abyssinia on the scene of the history of the Gezira.)
1
Professor Reisner in Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V, pp. 1 7 3 and ff.
* Breasted, p. 560.
' Nero's expedition also reached the Sudd. Budge. History of Ethiopia, Vol. I I ,
pp. 1 7 0 - 2 and 348.
* Budge. First Steps in Egyptian, p. 5 3 .
'-Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V, p. 191.
 F U N G ORIGINS 203

But Hillelson, quoting Herr Zyhlarz, on p. 1 3 9 of Sudan Notes and

Records, Vol. X I I I , has shown that it is highly probable that this was
only a predatory raid on the part of the Axumite king, who found the
" B Group " negroid Nubians had just invaded the Gezira, and having
given the Meroitic kingdom its coup de grâce had remained in possession.
1
MacMichael points out that whenever Christianity did come to
Aloa, probably about the end of the sixth century, it did not come from
Abyssinia, but from Alexandria. He notes that in the seventh and eighth
centuries A . D . there seems to have been bickering between Abyssinia
and the Nubian kingdom of Dongola, but there is no evidence that
Abyssinia exercised any lasting control in the valley of the Nile.
Ibn Selim (fi, 975-996) describes Aloa as independent of the kingdom
of Dongola, and Soba, the capital of Aloa, as a town of good buildings,
large monasteries, churches rich in gold, and gardens. He notes that
there was at Soba a Moslem quarter, and that Aloa was richer than
Dongola, having more soldiers and horses. He states that Soba obtained
its bishops from Alexandria, and describes the Kasa (presumably connected
with Kush and Meroe) as a tribe inhabiting the Gezira south of Aloa.
Christianity, as the worship of Ammon before it, seems to have been
very largely a state religion, for Ibn Selim notes that the people of Aloa
2
mostly sacrificed to God in the form of the sun, moon or stars, while
others merely worshipped the sun or fire or trees or animals ; and
3
Crowfoot has shown that Christianity was adopted without revolutionising
8
the life of the Sudan. He also records the finding of the ruins of a
church as far south as Jebel Segadi in Sennar district ; and Chataway
has shown that the influence of Christian Soba stretched up the Blue
Nile as far as Roseires.
3
Crowfoot has also pointed out that the fact that very little painted
or wheel-made pottery has been found on late sites in Berber and on
the Blue Nile indicates that there was an early decline in the culture
of Aloa, and he attributes the reason for this earlier decline and longer
survival of Christianity in the south to the fact that Soba was further
from the good and evil of Egypt than Dongola.
1
History of the Arabs in the Sudan, Vol. I, p. 47.
a
Note. Sba = " star " in ancient Egyptian, and Alu is the Bull, the constellation
Tanrus, in Sumerian. Has this any significance ? Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, Vol. 2, p. 888. For a connection between the constellation Taurus and Osiris, see
Osiris, by H. P. Cooke, pp. 2 0 - 2 3 .
' " Christian Nubia," Journal of Egyptian Archaology, Vol. X I I I , p. 141 and fi.
4 A
204 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

By 1 3 2 3 the Christian kingdom of Dongola had to all intents and

purposes ceased to exist. The Arabs (mainly Guhayna) were pouring
into the Sudan from E g y p t and rapidly overrunning it as far as
Abyssinia and Darfur. To quote Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), "the kings
of the Nuba attempted to repulse them, but they failed ; then they
won them over by giving them their daughters in marriage. Thus was
the kingdom disintegrated, and it passed to certain of the sons of Guhayna
on account of their mothers, according to the custom of the infidels as
to the succession of the sister or the sister's son. So their kingdom
fell to pieces and the Arabs of Guhayna took possession of it. But
their rule showed none of the marks of statesmanship, because of the
inherent weakness of a system which is opposed to discipline and the
subordination of one to another. Consequently, they are still divided
up into parties, and there is no vestige of authority in their land, but
they remain nomads following the rainfall like the Arabs of Arabia.
There is no vestige of authority in their land since the result of the
commingling and blending that has taken place has merely been to
exchange the old ways for the ways of the Bedouin Arab." I do not think
this means that the pre-Arab sedentaries gave up their old mode of life and
took to being nomads, but that the Arabs did not give up being nomads
or their petty feuds, and so there was no stable government in the land.

We hear nothing of Aloa, and might imagine that it, too, had
fallen to the Arabs, but apparently it survived for more than a century
cut off from its northern neighbour, and still nominally Christian, but
unable to obtain priests and teachers. A vivid picture is given in
1
Francis Alvarez, who wrote in 1520-X527 of Aloa's last despairing
attempt to obtain priests from Abyssinia, and the Prester John's refusal
to send them.
There seems, thus, to be little evidence for Chataway's assertion
of an age-long connection between Abyssinia and the villages of the
Blue Nüe—a predatory raid in 350 B.c. and a refusal by the king of
Abyssinia at the end of the fifteenth century A . D . to send priests to Aloa.
The age-long connection is rather with Egypt, the community of interests
and cultures is that of the valley of the Nile. Chataway was perhaps
in part confused by the fact that Beni Shangul was included in Abyssinia
by the boundary commission of 1902, although its historical and
1
Quoted by Hillelson in Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. X I I I , p. 147.
 F U N G ORIGINS 205

ethnological associations are practically wholly with the Sudan and not
with Abyssinia. Beni Shangul was undoubtedly first exploited by
ancient Egypt as a source of gold and slaves, as Chataway recognises.
Its inhabitants are all Berta and similar races, and none of them Abyssinian,
and it is geographically part of the basin of the Nile, the real natural
boundary between the Sudan and Abyssinia being the edge of the
highlands farther east.
It would seem that Chataway has little better reason for believing
the assertion of an Abyssinian king (who, after all, would not be a
disinterested witness) made in a letter c. 1600, if indeed such a letter
exists. I have not been able to trace it. Chataway appears, possibly,
to refer to the letter from Tecla Haimanout to Bady wad Unsa, written
in 1706, about the detention in Sennar of M. du Roule, in which he
requests Bady to " pay regard to the ancient friendship which has
always subsisted between our predecessors since the time of the king
1
of Sedgid and the king of K i m to the present day." On this letter
Bruce* comments : " The kingdom of Sennaar . . . was but a
modern one, and recently established by conquest over the Arabs.
Therefore the kingdoms of Sedgid and of Kim were, before that conquest,
places whence this black nation came that had established their sovereignty
at Sennaar by conquest, from which therefore I again infer, there never
was any war, conquest, or tribute between Abyssinia and that state."
I agree with Bruce that there is no assertion of Sennar's vassalage here, if
this is the letter to which Chataway refers. This is rather the language
used by one sovereign state to another, and it is not overlordship,
but long-standing friendly relations that are claimed.

Nalder, too, considers that there are indications that the Fung in
3
early days were regarded as tributary to Abyssinia ; but MacMichael
is more cautious : " The Abyssinians no doubt considered Sennar, or at
least that portion of the kingdom that was bounded by Abyssinia, as
theoretically a subject state."
The probability is that the Arabs and Beja nomads were really
the cause of this confusion. Then, as now, they no doubt wandered
' Kim, I suggest, may be ancient Egypt, which was known as Khem ; see, for example,
Wilkinson, Anctent Egyptians, Vol. I l l , p. 198 ; though the king of Sedgid looks like
Melik Segued or Susenyos, who made war on Sennar in 1617.
1
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Vol. IV, p. 3 (all references to Bruce in this
article are to the Second Edition).
• loc. cit., Vol. I I , p. 411.
206 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

about the uninhabited lands on the frontier, and endeavoured, by playing

off one power against the other, to avoid paying tribute to either. Bruce
1
hints as much : " The Arabs, who fed their flocks near the frontiers of
the two countries, were often plundered by the kings ol Abyssinia making
descents into Atbara ; but this was never reckoned a violation of peace
between the two sovereigns. On the contrary, as the motive of the
Arabs for coming south into the frontiers of Abyssinia was to keep
themselves independent and out of reach of Sennar, when the king of
Abyssinia fell upon them there he was understood to do that monarch
service by driving them farther down within his reach. The Baharnagash
has been always at war with them ; they are tributary to him for eating
his grass and drinking his water, and nothing he ever does to them gives
any trouble or inquietude to Sennar."
This is also indicated in the conversation alleged to have taken
place between Susenyos and the Queen of the Shepherds from Mandera,
recorded by Bruce,* in which Susenyos does not claim that Sennar was
his vassal, but that the Shepherds were his vassals, and that he intended
to maintain his ancient rights over them, which he considered the Fung
had usurped.
No doubt Abyssinia was jealous of the Fung kings, and at various
times would have liked to make them her vassals by force or guile ;
but since there is no evidence that she ever did so I do not think Chataway
is justified in concluding that B a d y Sid el Qum in his quarrel with
Susenyos was apparently throwing off a vassalage. Once more I will
3
quote Bruce , and let the reader judge for himself :
" Abd-el-cader son of Ounsa was the ninth prince of the race
of Funge then reigning : a weak and ill-inclined man, but with whom
Socinios had hitherto lived in friendship, and in a late treaty had
sent him as a present a nagareet, or kettledrum, richly ornamented with
gold, with a gold chain to hang it by. Abd-el-cader, on his part,
returned to Socinios a trained falcon, of an excellent kind, very much
esteemed among the Arabs. Soon after this Abd-el-cader was
deposed by his brother Adelan son of Ounsa, and fled to Tchelga,
under the protection of the king of Abyssinia, who allowed him an
1
loc. cit.. Vol. I V . p. 4.
' loc. cit.. Vol. I I I , pp. 3 1 8 and 3 1 9 .
• loc. cit., Vol. I I I , p. 3 1 2 .
 FUNG ORIGINS 207

honourable maintenance : a custom always observed in such cases

in the East by princes towards their unfortunate neighbours.
" Baady son of Abd-el-cader, an active and violent young prince,
although he deposed his uncle Adelan, took this protection of his
father in bad part. It was likewise suggested to him that the
present sent by Socinios, a nagareet or kettledrum, imported that
Socinios considered him as his vassal, the drum being the sign of
investiture sent by the king to anyone of his subjects whom he
appoints to govern a province, and that the return of the falcon was
likely to be considered as the acknowledgment of a vassal to his
superior. Baady, upon his succession to the throne, was resolved
to rectify this too great respect shown on the part of his father by an
affront he resolved to offer. With this view he sent to Socinios two
old blind and lame horses."
It would seem rather that the Fung were only regarded as tributary
to Abyssinia in the vainglorious imagination of certain Abyssinian
monarchs. Neither does it seem certain that the Fung custom of
girding, to which Nalder appeals, is the same as the Abyssinian
one. The latter is undoubtedly exactly as described by Nalder
(see Bruce, Vol. V, p. 1 6 1 , " uncovered to the waist, in token of humility " ) ,
but was this the Fung custom ? The Ya'qubab also have a custom of
girding in the presence of a superior (see Plate I, Fig. 1) in which only the
left shoulder is exposed and over the other the tob is passed from back to
front before being tucked into that part which is tied round the waist.
As Nalder notes, the Ya'qubab definitely copied this from the Fung,
as they did the kukur and tagia um gerein ; and I am informed by the
Fung mek Hasan Adlan of Singa that, as far as he knows, the Fung
method was the same as the Ya'qubab method and not as the Abyssinian.
There is also a similar custom of girding in the presence of a superior
in Northern Darfur, but I forget the details. But even if the Fung and
Abyssinian methods of girding were exactly similar, why should not the
custom have come to both peoples from some common source such as
ancient E g y p t ?
Nalder also mentions the use of the title Arbab in Abyssinia as well
as among the Fung. I am informed by Mr. Hillelson that this title
is an Arabic one, the plural of rabb, comparable to the Central Arabian
use of shuyukh for " great sheikh," although previously I had thought
208 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

it might be connected with the ancient Egyptian erpa ("prince ") with
which it seems exactly to correspond, for among the Fung and their
14
subjects Arbab did mean prince,*' being properly applied only to the
relatives of the mek and, by extension, to the relatives of the mangils.
But in any case, its existence in Abyssinia should not carry much
weight in our present argument, for it may easily have come to both
Abyssinia and the Fung from a common source.
It would seem that the main evidence in support of the theory
of an Abyssinian or Upper Blue Nile origin of the Fung is their own
tradition that they are related to the Prophet through an Omaiyad,
who came to the Sudan via Abyssinia, and marrying the daughter of a
Sudanese king founded the Une from which, about 800 years later, sprang
Amara Dunkas and his descendants.
But if during the last four centuries the origin of Amara Dunkas
should have been so lost in oblivion that it is open to argument whether
he came to Sennar from the north or from the south, from the Upper
Blue Nile or the White Nile, can much reliance be placed on the tradition
of the same people as to an event which is supposed to have happened
twice as long a time before Amara Dunkas as has elapsed since his
date ?
The traditions, moreover, of all non-Arab Moslems are notably
unreliable, because on becoming Moslem they immediately claim Arab
descent, in view of the importance attributed by that religion to relation-
ship to the Prophet. As a good example, I might quote the present
sultan of Dar Masalit, who can have no Arab blood in him, and yet
who seriously claims that he is descended from the Beni Qoreish and
produces a complete genealogy in support of his claim.
There is, I maintain, no external evidence to support the Omaiyad
tradition ; and here the question of the alliance between Amara Dunkas
and Abdallah Gamma' is of great importance, as Nalder points out. Of
course, the Arabs in the sixteenth century were no more tolerant in their
attitude to 'abîd than they are to-day, and the fact that the Fung dynasty
was known all over the Sudan as the sultana zerqa seems to render it
unlikely at the start that any Arab blood was recognised in their veins
when they acquired that name. In fact, far from that alliance proving
that the Fung royal family must have had an Arab ancestor in their dim
past, and so probably have entered the Sudan via Abyssinia, I do not
SUDAN N O T E S AND RECORDS. PLATE II

FIG. I.
Mek Hamza Redwan and his son. who arc the last survivors of the original Hamaj of
Jebe! Moya, and so of those " ancient and native princes " said by Bruce to have been
conquered and converted by Abdelgadir, the second (or third) Fung king, {Seepage 2 1 2 . )
Mez Hamza's great-grandfather Gahanİ was mek in 1 8 2 1 .
 FUNG ORIGINS

believe that there ever was such a voluntary alliance as the Fung Chronicle
(MacMichael MS. D7) alleges.
It has hitherto been generally held that this Fung Chronicle is our
most original, and so most reliable, source for Fung history, but according
to the present Ya'qubabi Omda of Sabil in Sennar district it was written
by his father Zobeir wad Abdelgadir (who was also known as Zobeir wad
Dawwa after his mother).
1 2
On the authorship of this Chronicle, MacMichael quotes Jackson
as saying that all the copies he had seen " seem to be derived from the
account put together by Abdel Dafaa, and an abstract of this, with a few
alterations and additions, made by Zobeir wad Dawwa." The source of
3
Jackson's opinion was Naoum B e y Shoucair, who states at the end of
his account of the Fung that his information was taken " from the history
of the kings of the Fung by Abdeldäfi' and Zobeir wad Dawwa, which
seemed to be an abstract made by wad Dawwa from the history of
Abdeldäfi' " w i t h a few notes added." As noted by MacMichael, though
the reference should be Vol. I I , Part IV (Introduction), p. 72, Naoum B e y
also at the beginning of his account of the Fung speaks of Sheikh
Abdeldäfi' as the author of the Fung Chronicle without mentioning
Zobeir. MacMichael, however, makes it quite clear that there is every
reason pace Naoum B e y to conclude from internal evidence that the
Chronicle is the work of a single author, and he a Ya'qubabi of Sennar,
a follower of the Sammania tariqa, and much in touch with Turkish
officials (all of which fits in with Zobeir wad Abdelgadir, who naturally
" spoke with exaggerated respect of Sheikh Abdelgadir wad Zayn " his
father, and " indulged in gross adulation of Gaafir Muzhar Pasha," who
made him President of the Court of Appeal in Khartoum), who compiled
the history about 1872 with one or more Fung king lists as a basis and
the Tabaqat wad Deifallah for occasional reference and quotation.
A study of the Fung Chronicle will show that when one deducts the
bare king list, the account of Soba in pre-Fung days (which at the outset
appears to give the Chronicle an air of antiquity and so authority, but
which MacMichael has shown is taken via Maqrizi from Ibn Selim),
the extracts from Tabaqat wad Deifallah, and the account subsequent
1
loc. cit.. Vol. I I , pp. 354 8.
R
1
Tooth of Fire, p. 111.
' The Ancient History of the Sudan (Vol. II of his work), p. 96,
210 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

to the rise of the Hamaj in 1 7 6 1 , there is little left that concerns the
first two centuries that could have come from any real history written
by Ibrahim Abdeldâfi* in 1820. And even if part of the Chronicle did
come from that source, it must be remembered that no native historian
is likely to be concerned with historical accuracy all the time, and that
Ibrahim Abdeldâfi' was a Gamu'i, and so not specially interested in the
Fung.
Actually for the period between 1504 and 1650, after extracting all
that obviously comes from the other sources mentioned above, we have
nothing left but the story of the alliance of Amara Dunkas with the
Abdallabi, the scattering of the Nuba after the Fung-Abdallab succession,
the reforms of king Dakîn, and the revolt of Sheikh Agìb in the reign of
king Adlan wad Aya.
The scattering of the Nuba is an obvious piece of padding that would
have come naturally to Zobeir, being based on the distribution of the
Hamaj or Nuba in 1870.
The account of the reforms of king Dakîn is probably merely an
expansion of an alternative reading sahib el 'adi for the nickname sahib
1
el 'âda given to this king in the king list quoted by Naoum B e y from
a
CaiUaud, and in MS. B A .
The next king about whom the Fung Chronicle gives any detail is
B a d y Abu Dign ( 1 6 4 2 - 1 6 7 7 ) , but its first statement, that he was ** a man
of bravery and generosity and high purpose. He raided the White Nile
and engaged its inhabitants, who are called Shilluk/' sounds more like
flattery of some Turkish official of 1870, for it is exactly what many of
them were doing at the time Zobeir wrote the Chronicle, than a piece of
accurate historical information. The Chronicle adds no details to this
bare statement, but proceeds to an account of Bady's raid on Tegale.
Anyone in 1870 raiding Tegale would have raided some slaves off the
Shilluk en route as a matter of course.
It is comparatively immaterial to my present purpose to consider
whether this raid on Tegale is historical or not ; but the Chronicle's
next statement that it was Bady Abu Dign who built the five-storied
palace at Sennar is demonstrably inaccurate. Bady Abu Dign died in
1677, and if he had built the palace of which CaiUaud in 1 8 2 1 gives an
1
loc. cit., p. 7.
• MacMicbael, loc. cit., I I , p. 36. See also p. 49 below.
 F U N G ORIGINS 211

illustration and describes as " built of four (sic) stories in red brick
. . , dominating the town . . . already beginning to fall into
ruins," how could Poncet in 1699 have described it as " a confused heap
1
of buildings without Symmetry or Beauty " ? As late as 1 7 7 2 , Bruce
describes it as " all of one storey, built of clay," so that if it was built
by a Bady, it was almost certainly built by that Bady VI wad Tabi I I ,
who alone of the kings after 1 7 7 2 reigned long enough to have undertaken
such a work, and who was deposed by the Turks in 1 8 2 1 . Anyone
with experience of Sudan buildings will realise that the damage shown
in Caillaud's picture might easily have occurred to such a pretentious
building, which was probably constructed with mud mortar only, if
neglected for only one Sennar rains.
My object in going into this detail has been to try to indicate that
there is every reason to doubt the accuracy of the Fung Chronicle for the
first two centuries of the Fung sultanate, if there is external evidence
to support those doubts and also to call to mind what has already
been pointed out by MacMichael, that the Fung Chronicle is considerably
later in date than Bruce's " T r a v e l s " ; added to which is the fact that
prima facie, being composed by a native writer, it is far less likely to
be historically accurate than Bruce, where their accounts of the same
events differ.
The Fung Chronicle is our only authority for the apparently impossible
story of how Amara Dunkas and the Gawasma Arabs under Abdallah
Gamma' made an alliance, collected at Jebel Moya, and from that base
overthrew the Nuba kings of Soba and Gerri. (Is there any evidence
that there ever was a Nuba king of Gerri ? though later Gerri was of
importance because it was the seat of the Abdallabi Mangil.) Why
the Fung should have allied with the Arabs is not clear in this account ;
or why their combined force should have chosen Jebel Moya as a base ?
Natural as this rallying place might have been for the Rufa'a of Malik
Abu Röf in 1870, Jebel Moya, despite its name, has no water supply
sufficient for such a gathering as we must presume, and all its wells are
up in the hills, and so in 1500 must have been in possession of the enemy,
the " Hamaj," for we find Bruce* in 1 7 7 2 stating that both Jebel Moya
and Jebel Segadi were each then still " governed by the descendant
1
loc. cit.. Vol. V I , p. 352.
» toc. cit.. Vol. V I , pp. 385-6.
212 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

of their ancient and native princes, who long resisted all the power of
the Arabs . . . They continued to be Pagans till the conquest of
the Funge. Bloody and unnatural sacrifices were said to have been in
use in these mountainous states, with horrid . . . cruelty, till
Abd-el-cader " (son of Amara Dunkas) about 1554 besieged Moya and
Segadi and forced the princes to surrender.
Not only must Jebel Moya have been an unsuitable place for such
a gathering, but as Nalder has pointed out, a voluntary alliance between
the black Fung and the Arab chieftain Abdallah Gamma', in which
he accepted what is acknowledged by everyone to have been not even
an equal, but a distinctly inferior position, is highly improbable ; unless*
as I now suggest, Bruce was right when he stated that the Arabs were
first defeated in war by those blacks ; when, being strangers in the land
to which they were powerfully attracted by such good grazing, as would
seem to them El Dorado after the deserts they had passed on their way
from E g y p t , when for the sake of their flocks and herds (see Ibn Khaldun,
already quoted—they were disunited tribes and sections of tribes each,
as to-day, interested first of all in their own animals and combining
only for self-defence), they would quite naturally have bowed to force
majeure and pocketed their pride of race in order to gain grazing and
security by accepting a practical independence under their own viceroy*
the Abdallabi Mangil. The latter obviously had powers of life and
death over the Arabs, and he, in order to keep in the good books of the
Fung, merely had to collect all the Arabs* tribute punctually.

(Further, if, as we shall see later, it suited the Fung to adopt Islam
and, consequently, to claim relationship to the Prophet, what more natural
than that their Arab viceroy should have obtained seniority over the other
viceroys ?)
This theory that the Arabs were defeated in war by the Fung is
borne out by a tradition that I have heard several times in Sennar district,
that the Arabs were in occupation of the country before the Fung and
were worsted by them in war. I have been unable to trace any tradition
to the contrary of a voluntary alliance between the Fung and the
Abdallabi that is not obviously inspired by the Fung Chronicle.
1
Bruce, moreover, definitely states : " In the year 1504 a black
nation hitherto unknown, inhabiting the western banks of the Bahr el
' loc. cit., Vol. v i , p. 3 7 0 .
S U D A N NOTES AND RECORDS. PLATE III.
 F U N G ORIGINS 213

Abiad about latitude 1 3 ° , made a descent in a multitude of canoes or

boats upon the Arab provinces, and in a battle near Herbagi they
defeated Wad Ageeb, and forced him to capitulation, by which the Arabs
were to pay their conquerors, in the beginning, one half of their stock,
and every subsequent year one-half of the increase . . . Upon this
-condition the Arabs were to enjoy their former possessions unmolested,
and Wad Ageeb his place and dignity, that he might always be ready
to use coercion in favour of the conquerors, in case an}' of the distant
Arabs refused payment ; and he became as it were their lieutenant.
This race of negroes is in their own country called Shillook."
If the Fung were a band of Shilluk adventurers who found the
kingdom of Aloa on its last legs, with its country overrun by Arab tribes,
who grazed their animals at will on the cultivations of the old sedentary
inhabitants of the country, it would not have been difficult for this
new Shilluk dynasty to have identified itself with the interests of its
subjects, with whom it was more closely related by race and culture.
By taking advantage of their subjects' exasperation against the Arabs,
who may quite easily have reduced them to the verge of starvation,
they may very well have adopted that device commonly used by con-
querors for diverting the attention of the conquered from their defeat,
and forging the link of a common interest between conquerors and
conquered, namely, that of undertaking operations against a common foe.
If the Fung were thus a new dynasty of Shilluk origin that reanimated
the defunct kingdom of Aloa, and soon after their accession for some
reason or other adopted Islam, it is easy to imagine how the legend of the
Omaiyad ancestor of the Fung may have arisen. Why should it not have
been the fabrication of the fertile brain of that shadowy figure
El Samarqandi, who was probably an adventurous fiki who came via
E g y p t to the Guhayna, and obtained from them by king Amara, was
employed by him to prove that black was white or, at any rate, had a
white ancestor. One can imagine El Samarqandi questioning the Shilluk
on their legends and traditions, their ancestors and history, until he had
formed the Arabic name of Amriyyun (see MSS. B A , A2 and D6) from
Amara, the Arabic form he gave to Omaro or Umakra, the name both
1
of the second man according to Shilluk legend, and of the founder of their
1
Westermann, loc. cit., pp. xli and 156. See, however, note 99 ior another possible
explanation of the name Amara Dunkas.
214 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

dynasty on the Blue Nile, and one can imagine his choosing the Beni
Omaiya for their ancestors, because of the similarity of their name to
that of Omoi, the brother of Nyikang, the legendary ancestor of the
White Nile Shilluk, who together started on their wanderings that settled
the Shilluk on the White Nile and the Fung at Sennar. Perhaps Omoi
was an historical person who left Nyikang settled on the Upper White Nile,
whence some of them pushed on up the Blue Nile. If so, one can easily
imagine El Samarqandi relating his name to the Beni Omaiya, some of
whom certainly did take refuge in the Sudan. The reason for the name
Amriyyun obviously bothered the old pedigree writers. While BA and
A2 say they are the descendants of Suliman ibn Abdelmalik el Amawi,
others insert another ancestor to account for the name, which is otherwise
inexplicable ; thus An inserts one Omar as the father of Suliman and
son of Abdelmalik, while D6 says they were descended from Amr the
son of Suliman Abdelmalik.
This new Shilluk dynasty would soon have found that they required
a name to distinguish themselves from the Shilluk of the White Nile
and their own subjects. If they adopted Islam, it is quite natural that
they should have called themselves by their own name for Moslems, which
was also a synonym for Arabs or strangers.
1
Westermann states : " Fung or Fun is probably identical with
the Shilluk word bwon (= stranger), for in Shilluk and Nubian the
letters ' b * and ' f ' are interchangeable. In Nuer the word for stranger
sounds like fon. In the Fung language (there is, however, no Fung
language. Presumably it was originally Shilluk, but Westermann no
doubt means Hamaj of Gule) Bunj equals Arab, i.e., stranger."
One might compare the case of another branch of the Shilluk who
adopted the (Dinka) name of J u r (= stranger).*
Mr. Nalder says it is difficult to see how, if the Fung were Shilluk,
they could have become Moslems by the time of the alliance between
Amara Dunkas and the Abdallah. He agrees, however, that they were
always only a small aristocracy who imposed their rule on alien subject
populations ; and by my present theory their first subjects were the
inhabitants of the old-established kingdom of Aloa, which had been for
some time subject to the influence of Islam. We have already noticed
1
The Shilluk People, p. Iii.
» Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. X I V , p. 50.
 FUNG ORIGINS 215

in Ibn Selim that there was a Moslem quarter in the capital of that
kingdom five centuries before Amara Dunkas ; and that there is a tradition
in Sennar district that the Arabs were in occupation of the country before
the Fung
1
Crowfoot has pointed out that the Arab invasion, the tide of which
grew much stronger after the fall of the Christian kingdom of Dongola
two hundred years before Amara, created a medium more favourable
to Islam than to other religions.
2
And Naoum Bey, quoted by Jackson, has given a very plausible
explanation of the circumstances of the conversion of the Fung. " Thir-
teen years after the founding of the dynasty. Amara was brought into
relationship with a foreign power. Selim, sultan of Turkey, having
defeated the Egyptian army outside Cairo in 1 5 1 7 , began to turn his
attention to the South. Amara, hearing of an expedition that Selim
had sent to Suakin, Massowa, and Abyssinia, feared an invasion, and
sent to Cairo, pointing out that he and his followers were Arabs and
true Mohammedans " (the two terms would then have been synonymous to
a Shilluk) " and that there was no ground for a religious war. The
letter that he sent was accompanied by a series of genealogical tables
(said to be extant still in Constantinople, and to contain some non-Islamic
names), drawn up by an Imam of Sennar called El Samarqandi, proving
that the Fungs were of Arab origin. The recipient acknowledged the
claim of the Fungs, with the result that their rule was recognised as far
north as the third cataract." There seem to be traditions of a clash
between the Fung and the troops of Selim in this area ; and there is said
to be an island near Old Dongola called Banganarti (Mahass for the
" Island of the Fung ") to this day, and there are people who claim to
8
be Fung still living in the vicinity.
It is interesting to note the following quotations from Bruce that
help to confirm this theory :
(1) " Funge, that is, Shangalla converted to Islamism."*
(2) " They were soon converted to Mohammedanism for the sake of
trading with Cairo, and took the name of Funge, which they
interpret sometimes lords or conquerors, and at other times
1
"Christian N u b i a " loc. cit. {Journal of Egyptian Archaology, Vol. X I I I . )
1
Tooth of Fire, p. 22.
• See also MacMichael, loc. cit., Vol. I I , pp. 6 and 7.
• loc. cit.. Vol. V I I , p. 89 — Murray's Life and Writings of James Bruce, p. 416.
2l6 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

1
free citizens, {i.e., Arabs or Moslems, as opposed to 'abid (slaves
—blacks).
L e t us now examine what evidence there is for definitely connecting
the Fung with the Shilluk of the White Nile.
The statement in Bruce that the Fung were of Shilluk origin is
confirmed by Werne, a German officer who accompanied the Turkish
2
army on an expedition to Kassala in 1840, and who states that the
Fung " still possess their old pride of race and country, and do not wish
to be looked on as genuine Arabs . . . According to their own
tale, the Fungh descend from races of inhabitants of the Defafonj of the
lands of the Dinka and Shilluk, where yet their forefathers' race may be
found." There is no reason to believe Werne was merely echoing Bruce.
In fact, there is no evidence in the book quoted that he had ever read
Bruce. His informant was obviously Dafallah wad Mohamed Adlan
Dafallah, who was a descendant of the Hamaj wazir Mohamed Abu
Likeilik.
It is very significant that the tradition of the Hamaj, the descendants
of the people who were inhabiting the Gezira before the Fung conquest,
and who, therefore, of all people are likely to know the truth about the
Fung, should be that the Fung were Shilluk. This is confirmed by Mr.
J. W. Robertson, D.C. Roseires, who informs me that he recently discussed
the origin of the Fung with a number of Hamaj elders at Gule, and that
they were all positive the Fung were Shilluk.
Werne* records that " there is a hill of that name (Defafonj), an
extinct volcano, in the land of the Dinka about n° N. lat., that he had
ascended."
8
Petherick also describes a hill on the White Nile about i i ° N. lat.,
which he says was called Jebel Tefan in his day (1862). I suggest that
this must be the hill now known as Jebel Ahmed Agha, south of Gelhak ;
and that it is one and the same hill which has become Jebel Tiafam in
the account given me by the Omda of Abu Geili, as being one of the
places where the Fung settled on their way from the Hejaz via Abyssinia,
and also has become Jebels Teifa and Farn in another version of the same
legend recorded by Nalder.
1
loc. cit.. Vol. V I , p. 3 7 1 .
* African Wanderings, p. 78.
* Travels in Central Africa, Vol. 1, p. 9 6 .
 FIG. I, F I G . 2.
A F u n g K ı r a man, showing the peculiar c u t on t h e S h e i k h M o h a m e d T o m w a d Zobeir Abdelgadir. the
s h o u l d e r , w h i c h it is s u g g e s t e d r e s e m b l e s a kitkiir, p o s s i b l y Y a ' q u b a b i O m d a of S a b i l , with the relics of Sheikh
h a s a h i e r o g l y p h i c o r i g i n , a n d i s t h e r e a s o n for t h e n a m e M u s a A b u Q u s s a . of w h o m he is the Khalifa.
K i t f a w i frequently used a m o n g this branch of the F u n g . T h e s e r e l i c s i n c l u d e t h e k u k u r (the t w o m i d d l e legs
a r e missing), t h e t a q i a , w o o d e n shoes, t w o iron s p e a r s ,
w o o d e n staff, a n d i m m e n s e r o s a r y .
 F U N G ORIGINS 217

It is, further, of significance that in B A , the oldest part, which

seems to have been written or copied by a Rikabi about the time of the
foundation of the Fung kingdom, makes Hasan el Hilali, himself the
son of a black concubine, marry a woman called Lula, and become the
ancestor of the Shilluk, Dinka, and K i r a (a branch of the Fung of whom
there are survivors to-day at Eweisab in Sennar district, but who may
possibly be of some non-Fung origin, enslaved by the Fung). There is
an obviously later part tacked on to this MS., apparently after 1 8 2 1 ,
which gives the usual descent of the Fung (Amriyyun) from the Beni
Omaiya.
MS. B i , which comes from the same sources as B A , though emanating
from Dongola in the 17th or 18th century, definitely gives Hasan el
Hilali as the ancestor of the Fung (sections Kira, Kiran, Karanku, A y w a ,
Ounsab, and Audunab). Unless, therefore, one is prepared to believe
with these MSS. that the Shilluk and Dinka are Beni Omaiya (Guhayna),
one may, I think, call the original author of this pedigree as a witness
that the Fung and Shilluk have a common ancestor.
We may perhaps notice in passing that we appear to have here a
clue to the solution of the mystery of Lui or Lulu mentioned by Mr.
Nalder. The oldest known mention is the inscription on the Fung
1
drum which dates from the time of Bady wad Noi ( 1 7 3 3 - 1 7 6 6 ) and says
that Amara Dunkas came from Lui. Can this be Lui, one of the divisions
8
of the Shilluk country on the White Nile ? In any case, the mention in
BA of Lula as ancestress of the Shilluk, Dinka, Kira section of the Fung,
and incidentally Ulu el Ghaya, is significant ; for MacMichael comments
that all her descendants seem to be negro tribes from the upper reaches
of the White Nile, and we would appear to have some indication that
3
Lui or Lula was an old name for that part of the world.

D6, which appears to be derived from El Samarqandi, indicates

that possibly that worthy is responsible for the confusion between Lui
and Ulu, one of the Hamaj districts of the southern district of the Fung
Province. If so, he probably altered Lui to Ulu, as being more or less
on the route from Abyssinia. (The reference to the gindis of Lulu in
the Fung Chronicle may be inspired by a similar misunderstanding of the
1
Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. I V , p. 211.
* Westermann. Shilluk People, p. 1 2 7 .
• For Shilluk on the Loi River north of W a u , see Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. X I V ,
2l8 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

inscription on the Fung drum, which actually says that the old line, and
not that of Noi, came from Lui). There was, in any case, bound to be
confusion between Lui and Ulu after the Shilluk origin of the Fung had
been forgotten.
The Fung Kira of Sennar district admit a Shilluk connection, though
they, too, drag in the Beni Omaiya, and the version given me by them
recently at Eweisab was that they were descended from Ahmed Kir,
the son of Suliman el Amawi, whose mother was the daughter of Kir,
the Shilluk king of Jebel Kir, which they can only locate vaguely as
" in the south."
May there not, too, be some significance in the version mentioned
by Nalder of the Fung's presumably legendary journey from Abyssinia,
in which their route is said to have taken them from the Abyssinian
foothills across to the White Nile.
We have now reviewed a number of clues, none of which may be
convincing in itself, but the combined effect of which is a body of evidence,
which if not strong, is, at any rate, I suggest, stronger than that in support
of the Abyssinian or upper Blue Nile origin of the Fung.
But Bruce is our trump card. From our discussion of the Fung
Chronicle it will have been seen that Bruce is our oldest, and largely
for that reason alone, our best authority on the origins of the Fung.
He was admittedly writing 250 years or more after the foundation of
the Fung kingdom, but what is specially important is that he is our
only authority who was writing when the days when the Fung kings
really ruled were still fresh in the memories of men, and before the
Egyptian occupation, which seems to have increased the prestige of
the Mohammedan Arab in the Gezira at the expense of the pagan black,
who was then looked on as a natural slave. It is clear from Bruce's
work that in his day Islam was of little importance in Sennar. Though
the mek and some of the Fung pretended to be Moslems, the majority
of his subjects were openly pagans ; and if a pedigree proving one's
descent from the Prophet was useful as a diplomatic document, it was
not necessary to prove one was a gentleman. Hence, Bruce could say,
1
in 1 7 7 2 , that " Slavery in Sennaar is the only true nobility." Anyone
who has served in the Sudan will realise that slavery means " being
black " as opposed to Arab ; " slave " being in Arabic, Bruce's medium
1
loc. cit., Vol. V I , p. 3 7 2 .
 F U N G ORIGINS 219

of conversation, a synonym for black, i.e., in 1 7 7 2 , the only true nobility

was still to be descended from the original Shilluk conquerors.
Neither Chataway nor Nalder have been fair to Bruce. One feels
that they can only have read his " Travels " in an abridged edition.
Why else should they be trying to reintroduce that old fashion of
1
disparaging him which had quite gone out, and to which Wilkinson
refers in the following : " The name of Bruce ought not to be passed
by without a tribute to the injured memory of one whose zeal was rewarded
with reproach and disbelief. How easy is the part of a sceptic ! What
a slight effort, yet what an air of superiority and appearance of learning
attend the expression of a doubt ! Bruce had been provokingly enter-
prising. Many of his readers were incredulous, because he had done
what they, in the plenitude of their wisdom, conceived impossible ; and
many of those most violent in their censures had neither sufficient
experience nor knowledge of the subject to hazard an opinion. E n v y
prompted some, and fashion more, to speak of Bruce's narrative as a
tale of wonder or a pure invention, and those who had never read his
work fearlessly pronounced a censure to which others were known to
assent. B u t it is gratifying to find that more mature investigations
of the present day have vindicated the character of this distinguished
traveller . . . and his veracity."
Why, for instance, does Chataway suppose that Bruce wrote down
all his information uncritically from Ahmed Sid el Qom ? There is no
reason for believing that the statement that the person who commands
at Fazogli is not a Fung, but the original native prince, was made by
4
Ahmed Sid el Qom, as one will see if one peruses the context. Neither
is there any reason for believing that when at Sennar, Bruce " could
not freely seek the truth, which any way, would have been difficult to
find in such an atmosphere of intrigue and propaganda." Intrigue and
propaganda would not have been concerned with events that had
happened over 250 years previously ; and we may quote Bruce himself
to the contrary : " I often conversed . . . in great freedom . . .
8
and from them I learned many particulars."
1
Ancient Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 436.
1
loc. cit.. Voi. V I , p. 391. See also Vol. V I I , p. 9. Actually, despite the claim of the
present Mek of Fazogli to be a Fung, there seems reason to believe that the Meks of Fazogli
may have been Berta like their subjects. T h e names on the üst of the kings of Fazogli
in Caillaud do not seem to be Fung names.
» V o l . V I . p. 373.
5*
220 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

Admittedly Bruce was careless at times and made frequent mistakes

1
over details. The one quoted by Nalder was a peculiarly easy one to
make in view of the various shades of meaning of akhu in Arabic, and
the fact that Bruce had never met Mohamed Abu Likeilik. For all that,
he was an experienced traveller who, before his attempt to trace the
Nile to its source, had, as a consul, explored Algeria and Tunis. He
was adequately fluent in Arabic and he was obviously interested in the
origin of the Fung, and spent a large part of his enforced detention at
Sennar in questioning natives on this subject. The quotations from his
Journal given by Nalder hardly give a fair impression. Actually, the
first quotation given as one extract is a combination of two extracts.
" The Fung were originally Shankala or Hamidge "* is a note made
by him at Teawa (near Gedaref) on March 23rd, before he ever reached
Sennar, " and are, as they are called, Funge, that is, Shangalla converted
to Islamism," was written immediately on his arrival at Sennar at the
end of April. It is of interest to continue this quotation : " Funge,
that is, Shangalla converted to Islamism, of the country' whence those
Shangalla came who drove out the Arabs under Wad Ageeb. Of these,
the government is composed. The common Shilook, or troops of the king,
are mostly pagans even yet."

8
In June, however, we find Bruce writing : " The mek of Sennaar
pretends to be descended from the noble Arab tribe. Beni Ommai : but
his woolly hair, and black flat features, show him to be a Shangalla ;
the particular name Shilook. These inhabit the large islands in the
river El Aice . The name of Shankala, given to the true blacks in
Abyssinia, is not known in the kingdom of Sennaar, though in features
and complexion they are the same people. The river El Aice is twice
as broad as the Nile and very deep in all the course of it. Before it
joins the Nile are many islands, in these dwell the Shilook, who rob in
barks up the whole of it. The other blacks come from Guba, Nuba,
and Fazuclo, three southern provinces which depend on Sennaar."
Had Nalder read this last extract, how could he have continued to " wonder
whether in this case Bruce was not misled by the superficial resemblance
between Shangalla, in whom he was very interested, and Shilluk " ?
1
Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. X I V , p. 62.
1
Murray s Life and Writings of Jantes Bruce, p. 4x3. Travels, Vol. V I I , p. 89.
» Murray's Life and Writings of James Bruce, pp. 4 1 7 and 4 1 8 . Traveli, Vol. V I I
pp. 90 and 9 1 .
 F I G . 1.
Kukur said to have been made by Tajeldin el Bahari c. A.D. 1530, and now
with Sheikh Mohamed Tom el Zobeir'at Sabil in Sennar district, the Khalita ol
the Ya'qubabi Sheikh Musa Abu Qussa. (See Plate IV. Fig. 2.)

FIG. 3.
The kukur shown in Plate V, Fig. 2. the
iron " shaibas," and other relics, at the east
end of the large rakuba that forms the mosque
at Hujjaj (see Plate X I , Fig. 2). Ya'qubab
relics are only brought out during festivals.
F I G , 2. Note the Zikr in progress.
Kukur said to have been made by Sheikh Marzuq wad Ya'qub c. A . D . 1640.
This kukur and the wooden shoes also shown are part of the insignia of the
Khalifa of Sheikh Marzuq, and are now with Sheikh Hamdan Abdelgadir at
Hujjaj in Sennar district.
 F U N G ORIGINS 221
Had he still wondered, he might have read on, where, on August 2nd, 1 7 7 2 ,
1
Bruce writes : " The Shillook are very numerous. There are three
2
principal islands." (Aba, Musran and Belli. ) " These are scarcely a
day's journey above the river El Aice. They leave these islands in the
rainy time, and repair to them in the dry season : and then they ravage
and plunder all the neighbourhood. There are several other islands
farther up. Their towns are on the west side of the river, and very
numerous." (There are many old sites on the west bank of the White
Nile between Kosti and Kaka.)
3
A further entry, which space prevents me from quoting, shows
how, by J u l y 20th, 1 7 7 2 , Bruce had gradually arrived while at Sennar
at a very fair understanding of the distribution of the black races south
and west of Sennar, which he was unable to visit. He had indeed made
one considerable mistake in thinking the Kordofan Jebels Dair and
Tegale were a continuous range of mountains stretching from Fazogli
to the Nuba mountains, in which rose the White Nile—but he had got
the relative positions of Darfur, Kordofan, the Shilluk on the White
Nile, and the Hamaj stretching from well inside the present western
frontier of Abyssinia, including all the Berta country, and across beyond
Gule to the White Nile, administered from Fazogli.

To the extracts from his journals already quoted, we may add the
following from his book :
" A s I was perfectly disguised, having for many years worn the
dress of the Arabs, I was under no constraint, but walked through the
town in all directions, accompanied by any of those different nations
I could induce to walk with me ; and as I constantly spoke Arabic, was
4
taken for a Bedowe by all sorts of people."
" This is all that I could ever learn from this people ; and it required
great patience and prudence in making the interrogations, and separating
truth from falsehood ; for many of them (as is invariably the case with
barbarians), if they once divine the reason of your inquiry, will say
whatever they think will please you."*
" I soon saw it was in vain to endeavour to learn anything from
Guebra Christos : he answered in the affirmative to every enquiry :
1
Murray's Life and Writings of James Bruce, p. 4 1 9 . T ravels, Vol. V I I . p. 92.
' See Map, Sudan Notes and Records. Vol. X I I I , p. 1 4 8 .
* Murray, loc. cit., p. 420. Vol. V I I . p. 93.
4
loc. cit.. Vol. I , p. 9 1 .
* loc. cit.. Vol. I I , p. 4 1 0 .
222 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

when I asked if it was blue, it was blue : and if black, it was black :
1
it was round and square and oblong just as I put my question."
These quotations show Bruce's method of enquiry, the only possible
method under his circumstances of arriving at the truth, that of
questioning anyone he could, and accepting that answer only as correct
that he had obtained from more than one source, and of getting his
informer to compare the peoples under discussion with any other peoples
known to them both. Hence his frequent mention of the Shangalla
whom he had already met in Abyssinia in his notes on the history and
peoples of the kingdom of Sennar.
If Bruce's statement that the Fung were of Shilluk origin is correct—
and Nalder has shown that this is the only likely alternative to the theory
that they came from the Upper Blue Nile—it fits in very well with all that
is known of the previous and subsequent history of the Gezira and the
Shilluk.

Westermann* has pointed out the likelihood that the Fung were
the northernmost wave of a great movement of Shilluk and allied peoples,
by showing that taking 1 3 i years as the average duration of the reign
of an African ruler, the date of the foundation of the White Nile Shilluk
kingdom by Nyikang falls in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
There seems no reason to doubt 1504, the date given by Bruce for the
foundation of the Fung kingdom.* The coincidence of the foundation
of the two kingdoms is, therefore, remarkable.
At this time the Shilluk inhabited both banks of the White Nile
as far north as K a w a , and perhaps farther north ; consequently, it seems
not unlikely that some of them should have pushed on up the Blue
Nile, especially as they had only just arrived on the White Nile, and
were still in a state of upheaval. In 1842 the Shilluk still inhabited the
4 5
islands of the White Nile as far north as El Dueim. Petherick records
that in 1 8 5 3 the Shilluk raided as far north as Wad Shelai, though their
6
most northern village was Kaka, as to-day. By 1 8 6 2 K a k a was in ruins
as a result of systematic slave-raiding.
1
loc. cit., Vol. V , p. 1 7 2 .

' MacMichael. loc. cit., Vol. I I , pp. 4 3 2 - 4 .

4
MacMichael. loc. cit.. Vol. I, p. 49.
* Egypt, the Sudan and Central Africa, pp
« Petherick. Travels in Central Africa, Vol
 F U N G ORIGINS 223

From my own experience in the southern district of the White Nile

Province I know that there is an old site in Arusa Island at Kosti said
be an old Shilluk one, and that as one goes south from Kosti such sites
get more and more frequent, especially on the west bank. The Arabs
of the district have faint memories of prolonged hostilities with the
Shilluk, who were in occupation of the river, from which they were only
displaced with difficulty.
If, then, the Shilluk dominion on the White Nile is now only a
shadow of what it was a hundred years ago, and if all the Shilluk on the
Lower White Nile, who would be the ones in direct touch with Sennar,
have been wiped out by rival Arabs and Turkish slavers, is it surprising
that the Shilluk of the Upper White Nile to-day should have forgotten
that the Fung were Shilluk like themselves, especially when they had
changed their name and religion four centuries earlier, it being further
remembered that the Shilluk seem to have no written records whatever ?
In addition to the extract quoted above from Bruce's journal of
August 2nd, 1 7 7 2 , to the effect that the Shilluk in the summer occupied
Aba, Musran and Belli Islands, Bruce makes the further significant
1
statement :
" There are three principal Governments in the kingdom of Sennaar.
The first is El Aice, the capital of that country from which the Shilook
came . . . with incredible fleets (of boats like canoes) their invasion
was made when they undertook the conquest of the Arabs, who had not
the smallest warning of the attempt . . . It must be a relation of the
mek of Sennaar that commands at El Aice : and he is never suffered to
leave that post to come to Sennaar." (The other governments were
Kordofan and Fazogli.)
2
El Ais (or Allais, see D7 ) is said to have been the place where stands
the village of K a w a to-day. Its name is obviously an arabicised form
of the Shilluk word laich, meaning " wide " or " broad," which is the
3
distinctive feature of the White Nile at this point. Browne gave the
following description from conversations with Gellaba about 1798 : " Hellet
1
Allais is situated on the west of the river. The river Bahr el Abiad '
is here of such breadth that the features of a person standing on the
1
loc. cit.. Vol. v i , p. 390.
* Mac-Michael, loc. cit., Vol. I I , p. 366, foot-notes 3 and 4.
3
Travels in Africa, pp. 4 5 2 - 3 .
224 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

other side cannot be distinguished, but the human voice is heard . . .

On the eastern side of the river is Shilluk . . . within sight . . .
a town of idolaters, built with clay . . . The people of the Shilluk
have the dominion of the river, and take toll."
The fact that it had to be a relative of the mek of Sennar that had
to command at Allais, when the usual Fung custom was to employ a
native viceroy to govern non-Fung races, seems to indicate that Allais
was the home of the Shilluk before they founded the Fung kingdom ;
and the presumption is that they left some of their number behind
there, who would only submit to a relative of their royal house.
Hitherto, as Nalder admits, the Fung institutions of mangil and
kukur have remained unexplained ; but I suggest that the Shilluk
theory of Fung origins offers a possible explanation.
1
Palmer has noted the striking comparison between the title mangil
and the modern Tuareg title for tribal chief, amanokel.
He is no doubt right in deriving, as he does in the same article,
Manbali, the name of the largest church at Soba, from Ammon, the god
with the ram's head and horns, whose worship, as we have noted, was
the state religion of Napata and Meroe. At Soba has been found the
remains of an old temple dedicated to Ammon, in which was the stone
ram taken to Khartoum by Gordon. That this temple was later turned
into a Christian church is indicated by the Coptic cross cut on some of
its pillars, though it continued to be called after Ammon.
Palmer is also no doubt right in associating the Fung horned head-
dress (taqia urn qerein) with the ram's horns of Ammon. MacMichael* has
already compared the Fung tagia with the turban and two horns worn
by Jausar of Bujaras, the capital of the district between Assuan and
8
Korosko in the 13th century ; and Professor Griffith in his account of
the Oxford excavations in Nubia has recorded the discovery of wall
paintings in Christian churches—the Rivergate church at Faras and
the church of Abdelgadir, both in Haifa Province—which represent the
eparch or ruler of the Nobadie, whose capital was at Pachoras (Faras,),
wearing a head-dress with horns, on which Professor Griffith comments :
" The kings of Sennar inherited a portion of the Christian empire of Nubia,
1
Sudan Notes and Records, Vol, X I I , p. 2 5 7 .
* loc. cit.. Vol. I, pp. 1 7 7 and 249.
* Annals of Arckaology, Vol. X I I I , p. 77 and Plate Ixi ; and Vol. X V , p. 70 and
Plate xxxii.
 FUNG ORIGINS 225

and the Christian kings inherited from Meroe. It seems probable that
the horns of the Christian kings are to be derived from the ram's horns
(of Ammon and other gods) seen in the head-dress of Meroitic rulers, as in
those of their Ethiopian and Egyptian predecessors."
In the temple which was built by Amenophis I I I (c. 1 4 1 5 - 1 3 8 0 B.c.)
at Soleib in Nubia, Ammon is represented as a king having the royal
head-band, but " around his ears the twisted horns peculiar to Ammon
in Nubia . . . and upon his head a small crest bearing the moon's
crescent and disc, as worn by the ancient lunar deities, Thoth of Shemu,
1
and Khonsu of Thebes."
In both paintings of the eparch of the Nobadx above-mentioned,
he is shown wearing, in addition to the horns, a crescent moon supported
by a slight stem springing from the crown of his head.
Now the Ya'qubab taqia urn qerein (see Plate I, Figs. 1 and 2) which
is worn by the muqaddams of that tariqa on festivals and is admittedly
copied from the Fung meks apparently preserves the stem that supported
the crescent, although the crescent itself has not survived; and, further,
the curve of its ear flaps or horns is exactly that of the ram's horns of
2
Ammon, as represented in Meroitic temples.
But Ammon himself, though his name might be preserved in Manbali
at Soba as long as that building survived, would presumably have been
forgotten by A . D . 1500, and it is doubtful whether the title mangil,
which we first hear of then, is connected with him, though that is by
no means impossible-
It should be noted, too, that mangil was not a title of the Fung mek
of Sennar or of the lesser Fung rulers of Allais, Keili, Fadasi, etc., as one
would have expected it to be if it was associated with Ammon, but it was
the title given by the Fung to the heads of conquered non-Fung peoples,
if they were of sufficient importance, who after their defeat were
reinstated by the Fung as their viceroys. Mangil certainly came to be
a title of great honour, and one that was much coveted, but I suggest
that under the circumstances the title mangil is possibly a Shilluk one
meaning "captive (or slave) of the Shilluk''—Mano-Chol (see Wester-
mann's vocabulary) ; and if this is correct, it would appear to give a

* Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Article Heroes and Hero-gods

{Egyptian), Vol. V I , p. 647.
» Sec Crowfoot, island of Meroe. Plates xviii. xxi and xxiii, íor represenUtions oí
Ammon at Naga.
 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

reasonable explanation of the alternative and apparently later form*

mangiluk, when the Choli were coming to be known as the Shilluk, i.e.,
1
Mano-Shilluk. In apparent support of this theory it is interesting to
read in Bruce that Jebel Moya and Segadi were still, in 1 7 7 2 , governed
by the descendants of their ancient and native princes, who had been
forced to surrender in 1554 by Abdelgadir son of Amara Dunkas. '* Having
fastened a chain of gold to each of their ears, he exposed them in the
public market place at Sennaar in that situation and sold them to the
highest bidder, at the vile price of something like a farthing each. After
this degradation, being circumcised . . . they were restored each
to their government as slaves of Sennaar, upon very easy conditions of
8
tribute, and have been faithful ever since."
Here at least, I suggest, we have a reasonable explanation of that
peculiar Fung institution, the mangil. He was the vassal, the slave,
of the Shilluk.
The mangil on his appointment was crowned with the horned head-
dress, which we have seen must have been inherited from Soba, and
seated on the throne called kukur, in imitation of the Fung mek's own
coronation ceremony. We have the authority of Professor Griffith'
that the name of this throne is not to be explained by ancient Egyptian ;
though I would point out that the hieroglyphic for " k " is Q > , which
is apparently a throne exactly like the Fung kukur ; and further, that
the Fung K i r a of Eweisab near Sennar (who are the descendants of El
Gindi Kitfawi, Rahma Yunis (who was the amin of king Bady wad Noi,
c. 1 7 6 1 (see Appendix), and Zein Harun, the amin of king Bady Abu Shilukh,
who was killed by that king for intriguing with Abu Likeilik) have till
recently used a mark strongly reminiscent of this hieroglyphic on the
shoulder of their men {see Plate IV, Fig. 1 ) , and that this mark was used, I
am told by the king's amin or wazir as his signature on documents. (See
Appendix for a translation of such a document, where the lower half of this
mark survives in the original ; and my informant, one of the Fung Kira,
said he had seen the whole mark with his own eyes, though the original
document is now frayed.) These Fung K i r a (see page 2 1 7 above) seem
1
Or Mane in Shilluk can mean " a junction " {of two rivers), so could not a similar
word mean " ally," and Mangil " the ally of the Shilluk " ? If we are on the right track
here, perhaps Manofana, the title of the Hamaj chiefs of Sillak and Ulu, is on a similar
analogy Mano-Fun " the slave (or ally) of the Fung."
* loc. cit., Vol. V I . , p. 386.
» op. cit.. Vol. X I I I , p. 78.
 F U N G ORIGINS

to be a family of wazirs, and the sign of the throne was presumably

the symbol of their authority, and the name Kira was perhaps derived
from it. If they were not really Fung, but older inhabitants of a negroid
origin, the survival of the hieroglyphic from the kingdom of Aloa is all
the more intelligible. The name Kitfawi which occurs occasionally in
this family presumably means " the man with the mark on his shoulder "
(katf).
Palmer (loc. cit.) is almost certainly right İn associating the word
kukur with the old and widely used root kur, kar, ker or kir, denoting
greatness or authority (this is presumably also the root in kursi and
even our English " chair ") ; but some of his other alleged associations
appear too fanciful. Here again, need we go further than the Shilluk,
in whose language Westermann gives ka = " place " and kur =
" authority," so kakur = " the place of authority " ?
There seems to be little doubt that both the chair and the stool
that have become common articles of furniture, even among some Sudan
tribes, were originally the prerogative of the great, and often only of the
king, and so a sign of authority. The stool was the father of the throne
and the chair.
There has hitherto been some doubt as to what the kukur might
be like. Jackson 1 mentions having been told that the kukur was forty
feet high, and reached by steps, but there are reasons for believing that
this was a latter-day flight of the imagination. I have not seen the kukur
of a Fung mek or mangil, and according to the Fung Mek Hasan Adlan of
Singa, the only one which survives to-day is the one that is kept in a
cave at Keili in the south of the Fung Province and which was used in
the recent ceremony at Gule {see page 2 3 1 ) .
There are, however, several kukurs preserved as signs of their authority
by the various Ya'qubab khalifas in Sennar district to-day, who all admit
that their ancestors copied them from the Fung meks, whose ceremonial
they aped. These are all wooden stools, between 18 inches and two feet
high, with typical slightly curved seats.
The oldest is probably that now kept by Mohammed Tom Zobeir, the
present Omda of Sabil, with other ancient relics (see Plate IV, Fig. 2), as the
insignia that show that he is the khalifa of Musa Abu Qussa wad Ya'qub,
the eponymous ancestor of the Ya'qubab, and disciple of the famous
1
loc. cit.. p. 9511.
228 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

Tajeldin el Bahari {floruit c. 1530), who is said to have made this kukur,
which is certainly very old. It has been damaged by white ants and
repaired with tin. In Plate IV, Fig. 2 the two middle legs are not shown,
as they had fallen off. It has really six legs (Plate V, Fig. i ) , and is about
18 inches high.
The next oldest Ya'qubab kukur is probably that of Sheikh Hamdan
Abdelgadir, the khalifa of Sheikh Marzuq (the brother of Musa Abu Qussa),
by whom it is said to have been made (i.e., c. 1640). This one is about
two feet high and has only four legs. (Plate V, Fig. 2.)
A third kukur is that now kept by Zein el Abdin Hajju, and is said
to have been made by Sheikh Mohamed Tom wad Bannaga (c. 1 7 8 0 -
1820), who converted the Ya'qubab to the Sammania tariqa. This one
has six legs (Plate V I , Fig 1 ) . Three other kukurs, each with six legs, and
similar to that of Mohamed Tom Bannaga, were made by the late Sheikh
Hajju Abdelgadir el Masi', and are now kept by his son and khalifa
Sheikh Ya'qub (Plate V I , Fig. 2).
The design of these kukurs is distinctly reminiscent of the ancient
1
Egyptian stool depicted by Breasted. Three stools of the same design
(Nos. 2472-4 in the catalogue) are on view in the British Museum and
come from Thebes, the home of Ammon. Presumably lack of skill in
carpentry omitted the struts to support the legs and added the third
pair of legs instead.
The general nature of the Ya'qubab kukurs should convince us
that the Fung kukur was a similar low stool.
Mek Hasan, indeed, states that the kukur of the Fung meks of Sennar
was just like the kukurs of Sheikh Hajju (Plate V I , Fig. 2), and that these
were copied by Sheikh Hajju from the kukur that was kept by Mek Tajeldin,
who was killed by the dervishes at the fall of Sennar, when his kukur
was taken to Omdurman, where it disappeared. According to Mek
Hasan, the Keili kukur is also very similar, being about the same size
and also having six legs. He says it was originally made at Sennar
and presented by the mek to the mek of Keili. It is said now to be
damaged by white ants and generally dilapidated.
2
Among the Shilluk, according to Westermann , the only stool is the
" place of authority " on which the Shilluk king is seated at his installation,
1
loc. cit., fig. 1 3 4 .
1
loc. cit.. p. xxxiii.
SUDAN NOTES A N O RECORDS. PLATE VII.

-EST'

FIG I.
The kukurs shown in Plate V I , Fig. 2, and other relics at prayers held at Kurban Bairam
by Sheikh Ya'qub wad Hajju Adbelgadir, near the gubba of Sheikh MohammedTom Bannaga.
This gubba was rebuilt at Sheikh Hajju's expense since the reoccupation, incidentally
by the man who built the Mahdi's tomb at Omdurman. Sheikh Hajju himself is now-
buried in it.

FIG. 2 .
A CLOSER V I E W O F THE RELICS SHOWN I N PLATE V I I , F I G . I .
(Note the iron " shaibas.")
 FUNG ORIGINS 229

the people having no chairs or stools in common use. Major G. W.

Titherington, D.C. Kodok, however, informs me that there is an ordinary
Shilluk stool called kwom, which is about 18 inches long by 12 inches
high and carved out of one piece of wood ; and I am further indebted
to Dr. A. N. Tucker for the information that the kwom is confined to the
households of chiefs or influential men. Dr. Tucker describes it exactly
1
as the picture of a Shilluk stool given by Petherick , which the latter
states was only used by the king " on judgment or reception days."
So that it would appear probable that the stool (kwom), while originally
a prerogative of the ret alone, has recently come to be used in the houses
of chiefs and other important people.
The following account of the Shilluk king's installation is given by
2
Seligman : " There was an interregnum after the Shilluk king's death.
An effigy of Nyakang was then brought to Fashoda from a shrine at
Akurwa near the northern limit of the Shilluk country. The messengers
also brought with them a four-legged stool, said to have belonged to
Nyakang, and the central act of the installation of the new king was the
placing of the effigy of Nyakang upon the stool for a short time, the king
seating himself in its place immediately the effigy was withdrawn. It
would seem that this part of the ceremony can have no other purpose
than the transmission of the spirit of Nyakang to the new king."
3
Mr. P. Munro , in another account of the installation of the Shilluk
king, describes the stool as a squat one with four squat legs, which is
just how one might describe the Ya'qubab kukur, which, we have seen,
the Fung kukur is said exactly to have resembled.
There being thus every indication that the Fung kukur and the
Shilluk stool were exactly similar, may there not be some significance in
the fact that, in reply to a request for a description of Nyikang's stool.
Major Titherington said that he could only say that it was said to have
a head and eyes and to be larger than the ordinary kwom. The present
ret told him he had never seen it ! but that two such stools had been
lost by the Shilluk. One called Nyakukko was stolen from Wau (twenty
1
Travels in Central Africa, Vol. I I , p. 4. T w o other similar stools are shown in Plate
I X , Fig. i, of this article : right, a stool made at Jebel Moya by a wandering Homrawi from
S.W. Kordofan : and left, a Fertit Banda stool from Kafia Kingi. See also Seligman's
article on Shilluk in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. I I , p. 458.
1
Races of Africa (Home University Series), p. 179. Apparently quoting from
Hofmayr. Die Shilluk.
* Sudan Xoies and Records, Vol. I, p. 145.
 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

miles north of Malakal) by a Fung, before the Shilluk finally drove them
out, and the other, called Jalli, was captured from Fanikang by one Keili
who fought the Shilluk in the time of the Fung sultanate. It is suggestive
that the first stool should be said to have been stolen by a Fung, " before
the Shilluk finally drove them out," and that Keili should be where
the last Fung kukur is to be found to-day. In fact, I suggest that just
as it was profane in the days of Herodotus to speak of the mysteries of
Osiris, so it is among the Shilluk still, and that the Shilluk ret, while
refusing to speak of the stool of Nyikang, was being as obliging as possible,
and at the same time putting his questioner off on to the Fung kukurs
of Keili and presumably of Sennar, by pretending that they were the
original stools of Nyikang that had been stolen. Nya, meaning
" daughter " in Shilluk, is there possibly some connection with kukur
in the name Nyakukko ? Could Jalli be the same as Jaali, and so Hamaj,
the Hamaj being the nâs el 'âda at Keili, and so keepers of the kukur
there ? If there is anything in this suggestion, we have the Shilluk king
himself as a witness of a connection between his people and the Fung.
In any case, I suggest that possibly that curious Fung official, the Sid el
qöm, may have been originally the " Sid el kwom," the keeper of the
kwotti or throne on which the king was installed, which was also called
the kukur or place of authority. Bruce described the Sid el qöm as
1
follows : " It is one of the singularities which obtains among this brutish
people that the king ascends his throne under an admission that he
may be lawfully put to death by his own subjects or slaves, upon a
council being held by the great officers, if they decree that it is not for the
advantage of the state that he be suffered to reign any longer. There
is one officer of his own family, who alone can be the instrument of
shedding his sovereign and kinsman's blood. This officer is called
Sid el coom, master of the king's household, or servants, but has no
vote in deposing him, nor is any guilt imputed to him, however many of
his sovereigns he thus regularly murders."

As the Fung gave up speaking Shilluk and took to Arabic (to which
one could find a parallel in our own history), the Arabic word qöm would
naturally replace the Shilluk word kwom, and thus the title would come
to be explained as " master of the household," though it would appear
that this is not exactly what the Sid el qöm was.
* Vol. V I , p. 372.
 F U N G ORIGINS 231

If he were, however, the keeper of the stool, and so presumably

an important functionary in the installation ceremony, he might quite
naturally become the official regicide, who would be instrumental in
removing the ageing monarch, and so make way for the next occupant
of the stool.
If the founders of the Fung kingdom w*ere Shilluk, as the evidence
seems to indicate, it is easy to see how they might have imported
with them the idea of the sacred stool on which the king was installed.
When they adopted Islam, the image of Nyikang (or some earlier
god—I suggest Osiris) would have had to go, but nothing is more
natural than that the stool, inoffensive in itself to Islam, should have
been retained.
I see no reason to doubt Bruce's assertion that the Fung king ascended
the throne on the admission that he might be lawfully put to death by
his people. Such had been the custom at Meroe till Ergamenes had been
strong enough to put an end to it. It is unlikely that it was practised
in Christian Aloa ; but it continued to be the custom among the Shilluk
until at any rate last century. So that it would not be surprising if
this custom or traditions of it were brought to Sennar by the Shilluk.
It is not a valid reason for doubting the truth of Bruce's assertion, that
no Fung kings were actually put to death under these circumstances, for
naturally after the Fung had adopted Islam, one would not expect to
find such a glaringly pagan custom continued, although the threat of
it, the reminder at his installation that he could lawfully be put to death
by his subjects, might have been preserved as a constitutional check on
1
the king.
Mek Hasan Adlan gave me the following account of the ceremony
(el 'âda) which took place at Gule recently on the installation of
Mohammed wad Idris wad Regab as niangil of the Hamaj in his father's
stead.
Soon after sunrise all the chiefs of the Hamaj and members of the
tnangiïs family stood in a line before the kukur, which had been specially
brought from Keili, and among them was the mangiMect, in no way
1
I am indebted to Mr. A. W. M. Disney, till recently A . D . C . Kurmuk. for pointing
out that the custom did continue until recently in the Fung kingdom of Fazogli. See
Fraser's Golden Bough {abridged edition), p. 266 : " In some tribes of Fazoql the
king had to administer justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness or any other
cause he was unable to discharge this duty for three whole days he was hanged on the tree.
 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

1
distinguished from the others by dress or other position. Then came
the nâs el 'âda (whom one might apparently describe as the hereditary
guardians of the mysteries), and taking the mangiMect, they seated him
on the kukur.
The näs el 'âda at Gule live at Hillet el Mek, and had a kukur of
their own until it was destroyed in the Mahdia by Ahmed Fadîl. They
seem to be representatives of an older line of Hamaj than are the present
mangiFs family.
When the mangil-e\ect was seated on the kukur, all the men present,
including the Fung mek, girded themselves in Fung fashion (as shown in
Plate I, Fig. i ) . The Fung mek alone retained his head-dress. All the other
men bared their heads and, led by the mek, they came forward and each
in turn addressed the seated man as mangil. Anyone whose loyalty was
in doubt was at the same time sworn on the Koran as sämi' wa tâbi'.
After the men, all the women came forward, relatives first, and likewise
bareheaded, and each in turn they greeted the mangil as sidy.
The new mangil remained seated on the kukur all day, without
any food, while this went on, and his subjects gave displays on horse or
camel, and firearms were repeatedly discharged. Then, in the late
afternoon, just before sunset (the exact moment is apparently easily
recognisable—is it when the sun's disc touches the horizon ?) the nos el
'âda rushed forward and lifted the mangil off the kukur. The first of them
to touch him receives a wagia of gold. They then carried him to a new
hut which had been specially built. This hut is divided into two partitions
by a grass mat. In the inner room there was already awaiting him a
nubile slave girl, who must be a virgin. With her was a young slave
boy, who had not yet reached puberty, whose duty is that of attendant.
Having placed the mangil in the outer room the nâs el *âda retired.

To this hut the new mangil was now confined for forty days " as in
the Sudanese wedding." He is, however, allowed to come out and speak
to his friends after sunset, provided any star at all is visible. The girl
may only go out of the hut to relieve nature, and then only at night.
During the day the slave boy fetches their food for them. This may only
1
Compare Moret : The Nile and Egyptian Civilization, p. 343 ; " Nowhere did the
oracle oí Ammon take paît in the acts oí Government more regularly than at Napa ta,
with these Ethiopian kings. The choice of the king was determined, not by heredity,
1
but by the intervention of the jointed statue of Ammon, who ' apprehended among the
' Royal brothers ' marching past him the candidate preferred by the priests.'
SUDAN NOTES AND RECORDS. PLATE VIII.

Sheikh Ya'qub wad Hajju Abdelgadir el Masi', wearing the insignia of Sheikh
Mohammed Tom wad Bannaga. Note the taqia, wooden shoes, large seal ring, large rosary,
and the kukur in the background.
 F U N G ORIGINS 233

be cooked by the mangi?s mother or sister. During his confinement

the mangil is said to get very fat, for a sheep is slaughtered for them
every day.
At the end of the forty days there was another parade and ceremony,
but the kukur was no longer in evidence. The mangil reclined on an angarib
outside the hut and received the congratulations of his people. He was now
regarded as fully mangil, and was conducted to his proper residence.
If the girl is found to be with child at the end of the forty days she is
the mangi?s concubine for life. If she is not with child, and she has found
his favour, she may still remain his concubine. Otherwise, she is given by
the mangil in marriage to one of the chiefs, but she is no longer a slave.
Mek Hasan stated that the ceremony at the appointment of the
Fung mek was exactly the same, except that it was performed by all the
nâs el 'âda of the kingdom, those from Abu Geili, Guie, and Keili, who
were all originally Hamaj, and who all came to Sennar for the purpose.
The mek kept his own kukur at Sennar.
He said that king Dakin wad Nail, the grandson of Amara Dunkas,
was known as Sähib el 'âda because it was he who first introduced the
custom. If he is right, this would appear to mean that although among
their own tribe on the White Nile, the Shilluk kings were appointed with
similar rites (that I shall try to show have an Osirian origin), and thus
the three first successors of Amara Dunkas were presumably appointed
by the Shilluk invaders themselves, Dakln was the first of the Fung kings
to obtain the co-operation of the indigenous Hamaj guardians of similar
rites. By Dakïn's time, any original enthusiasm there may have been for
Islam would have had time to cool, and to the primitive minds of the
Shilluk in their new kingdom on the Blue Nile, their kingship would
be all the more surely established if, as it were, the blessing of the genius
of the land were obtained by the rites of installation being performed
by the native guardians of the mysteries, that had presumably been
inherited from ancient Egypt by the Hamaj as well as by the Shilluk.

The fact that the first mangil was appointed by Amara Dunkas,
while the Hamaj do not appear to have taken part in the installation
ceremonies until king Dakîn, would appear to be an argument against
the Fung having adopted the institution of the mangil from the Hamaj.
Incidentally, the fact that the Fung mek was thus consecrated by
the Hamaj ancestral religious rites is sufficient to explain the retention
6
234 SUDAN NOTES A N D R E C O R D S

of the Fung mek as a figure-head by the Hamaj Mohammed Abu Likeilik

when he became the virtual ruler of the Fung kingdom.
For if Hamaj and Shilluk alike had long held the same Osirian doctrine
of the divinity of the king, who incorporated the fertility and well-being
of his people in a magic way, superstition would have prevented them
from acting contrary to their innate fear of the old rites, although
nominally they had become Mohammedans. Incidentally, too, this Fung
view of the nature of their king is, as Nalder recognises, an argument
against the Omaiyad theory, being very foreign to all Arab conceptions.
We have noticed indications that many of the customs of the kingdom
of Aloa were inherited from ancient Egypt, and that a good reason for
doubting the assertion of the late and consequently unreliable Fung
Chronicle, that the pre-Fung inhabitants of the Gezira were extirpated,
is the fact that it would have been contrary to their well-known liberality
to conquered races, which, too, was a lesson in statecraft that had been
learnt from ancient Egypt. " Under Thotmes I I I (1447 B.C.) the city
kings were allowed to rule their little states with great freedom, as long
as they paid the annual tribute with promptness and regularity . . .
a system of foreign government as yet in its infancy." 1
The tradition widely held in the Gezira to-day that the Fung were an
army that brought no women with them, but took wives from the people
of the country, provides further support for this view.
Palmer 2 has shown reason for believing that the Anaj were the
earlier Hamitic stratum throughout the Sahara and eastern half of the
Sudan who called themselves An (Am) or Ana (Ama). It seems to me
probable that Hamaj is in origin the same name as that of the Anaj,
by whom it was bequeathed to the races that arose from their fusion
with the pre-Hamitic negroes ; and so the name came later to be used
in a general way (comparable to the use of the term " Fellata " to-day)
to indicate the various mixed natives of the Gezira before the coming
of the Arabs and Fung. 3
1
Breasted, loc. cit., p. 3 2 3 .
» Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. I X , p. 71.
* Such a use oí the term Hamaj by the Arabs of Borau and Chad to indicate the
indigenous Kanembu is quoted by MacMİchael (Vol. I, p. 275) from Carbon. In a similar
way the Birgid (who are undoubtedly of Nubian and so presumably Anaj origin) are
classified by their neighbours near El Obeid with the Tomam and Tumbab, who are negroid
tribes with pretensions to a Nubian-jaali connection, as of " Hamaj or N u b a " descent.
(MacMichael Vol. I, p. 78.)
 F U N G ORIGINS 235

In any case, whatever its origin, Hamaj (or Nuba) was undoubtedly
the term used by the Fung for the races they found in the Gezira.
The account of the installation of the mangil given by Mek Hasan
appears not only to demand as a corollary that the Hamaj were not
extirpated by the Fung, but that they found them using customs which
we have seen were not only very similar to those in vogue among the
Shilluk, but which Mek Hasan himself compared to the Sudanese
1
wedding, the rites at which have been shown by Crowfoot to have
their origin in the rites of Osiris.
There are various other Fung institutions, such as the horned head-
dress, the custom of cultivation by the king in person, and the royal
salutation, which can be traced back to ancient Egypt, and so, because
they are not to be found among the Shilluk of the upper White Nile,
were presumably adopted by them from Aloa, thus further corroborating
the theory that the inhabitants of the Gezira were not extirpated, but
absorbed.
Nalder, in his Fung Province Notes records that the Fung brand
was the noggära wa asaiya % which was put on their slaves' shoulders
as well as their beasts.
There would appear, however, to be little doubt that this brand
is really in origin the hieroglyphic ankh Ç. the sign of life, which is always
depicted in the hands of gods and kings in ancient Egypt, and which
was later adopted by the Christian Church as the crux ansata. The
explanation noggära wa asaiya would be a typically Arab one introduced
after the adoption of Islam. The Fung Mek Hasan Adlan of Singa,
however, uses the brand Ol which he calls the noggära wa asaiya, and he
says that + is the mark still rarely used on their shoulders by certain
of the Hamaj of Keili. If he is correct, it would be comparable to the
mark used by the Fung Kira of Sennar district {see Plate IV, Fig. 1 ) , who
probably were not really Fung but pre-Fung, for they were wazirs, and
there are traces of a tradition that the Fung mek's wazir had always to
be one of the pre-Fung natives of the country.
It would seem that these two marks are of hieroglyphic origin and
survivals from ancient Egypt.
The Fung documents, by which the wazir conferred a gift of land
(usually on a holy man, for, as in Egypt, the common people owned no
* Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V, pp. 1 - 2 8 .
6A
236 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

land, but it was all the property of the king), and the mek confirmed the
gift, had their counterpart in Egypt, where all lands presented by the
Pharaoh were conveyed by royal decree, recorded " in the king's writings "
1
at the vizier's office. The actual forms of the Fung and ancient Egyptian
decrees are strikingly similar, and the similarity must be due to more
than a mere coincidence. Compare Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians,
Vol. I, pp. 3 1 2 to 3 1 4 , with the translation of the pair of Fung documents
given as an appendix to this article.
The two following customs appear to connect the Fung definitely
with the Shilluk as well as with Aloa and Egypt.
2 3
Jackson quotes from Naoum B e y that the mangil when visiting
the mek would use the salutation " Tawîl el 'umr if he was an Arab, and
adds that a non-Arab mangil would use the salutation " Gar mol."
His explanation of this phrase is unlikely, but Westermann's Shilluk
vocabulary gives ga — "a number," gir = " many," and mol = " morning,"
so that it would appear that ga(r) mol = " many mornings " might be
the Shilluk counterpart of the Arabic " Tawîl el 'umr" which was itself
the equivalent of " life, health and prosperity," the usual salutation for
the Pharaoh in ancient E g y p t .
4
MacMichael has pointed out that the Fung custom recorded by
Bruce of the king himself cultivating personally had its counterpart in
5
ancient Egypt. The actual quotation from Bruce is : " Once in his
reign the king is obliged, with his own hand, to plough and sow a piece
of land. From this operation he is called Baady, the countryman or
peasant ; it is a name common to the whole race of kings . . .
though they have generally another name peculiar to each person, and
this, not attended to, has occasioned confusion in the narrative given
by strangers writing concerning them." Bruce may be wrong in thinking
B a d y was a title, for his own king list gives but three kings called by
that name, and none of them by any other personal name ; but the
derivation given of this favourite Fung royal name seems to be the
correct one, for if we turn again to Westermann's Shilluk vocabulary,
1
Breasted, loc. cit., p. 82.
1
Tooth of Fire, pp. 9 2 - 3 .
• Ancient History of the Sudan, p. 100.
4
loc. cit.. Vol. I , p. 117.
» loc. cit.. Vol. VI, p. 381-
SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS. PLATE IX.

FIG. 2.
Ya'qubab Shrine at Humr in Sennar district, in which are buried Sheikh Ya'qub wad
Bannaga el Darir (c. A . D . 1560-1600), and his sons. Musa Abu Qussa and Marzuq.

FIG. 3 .
Gubba of the Ya'qubab Sheikh Hajju Abu Gerin (e. A . D . 1 6 1 0 - 1 6 5 0 ) , grandson of
Bannaga el Darir.
 FUNG ORIGINS 237

remembering that " b " and " f " are interchangeable in that language,
1
we find " feido, to plant, raise, grow, educate."
If further evidence still is required, I think it may be found to-day
preserved by religious conservatism in practices of the peculiarly religious-
minded Ya'qubab of Sennar district, who, there is every reason to believe,
are descendants of the mixed dark race who have inhabited the Gezira
since the days of Napata at least. Call them Hamaj, or Jaaliin, if you
prefer, for they use the Jaaliin face cuts, but I have no doubt that those
who derive the name Jaaliin from ju'al, the black .beetle (see MacMichael
D6), are nearer the mark than those who would have them descended from
the Beni Qoreish, unless it be the same section of that tribe that sired the
royal family of Masalit !
The Ya'qubab owe their unity to their allegiance to a line of holy men
who are sprung from Bannaga el Darir (c. 1 5 0 0 - 1 5 7 0 ) , the son of Musa
Abu Dign, who is said to have been one of the first Mohammedan holy men
who came from Dongola preaching Islam in this part of the world at
the beginning of the 16th century ; although they take their name from
Bannaga's eldest son, Y a ' q u b .
The Ya'qubab seem to be peculiarly closely connected with the
Fung. There is a tradition related in the Tabaqat wad Deifallah that
the mother of Bannaga el Darir, their founder, was a Sudanese woman,
2
who also bore Sandal el ' A ä j , a great man among the Fung, and that
Bannaga himself was, before his conversion by Tajeldin el Bahari, an
official (okaz) of Mek Nail wad Amara Dunkas. From this tradition it
would appear probable that the Ya'qubab are really natives of the
district, who were first converted by Tajeldin el Bahäri or, possibly,
Musa Abu Dign before him.
The appearance of the Ya'qubab on the scene of history was thus
8
practically contemporary with the rise of the Fung kingdom. The
1
While on the subject of F a n g kings' names. I may mention that another favourite
name, Ounsa (cp. Ounsab above) seems to be an Egyptian name. See Breasted, p. 1 2 8 .
As early as the fifth dynasty there was a Pharaoh called Unis, who was interested in the
South, for his name is inscribed at the frontier of the first cataract with the epithet " lord
of countries."
» See D 2 , where Sandal el 'Aäj is said to be the king whose daughter was married
by Sul im an Abdelmalik of the Beni Omaiya, who thus is supposed to have founded the royal
line of the Fung.
s
There are still three Fung villages in the Ya'qubab area in Sennar district, and until
1 9 2 7 one of the two omdas in this area was a Kira Fung. The late Sheikh Hajju Abdel
Gadir el Masi' was related to this omda through his mother, who on her mother's side was
a granddaughter of Mek Tabi II ; he was also married to a sister of the omda.
238 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

Ya'qubab fikis were undoubtedly the foremost exponents of Islam in

1
the kingdom of Sennar. Their superior knowledge of the new and
intolerant religion would compel the Fung king to respect them, and
they, to their own ends, did not hesitate to ape the pomp and ceremony
of the court at Sennar. The Tabaqat wad Deifallah* contains several
examples of similar behaviour by other holy men, of whom, far excellence,
was Hasan wad Hasüna, who wore the horned cap and kept a mounted
force of 500 slaves with officers called Sid el qom, Gindi, and Okaz. So,
as we have seen, did the Ya'qubab fikis adopt the horned cap, the kukur,
and the Fung ceremonial " girding."
We have seen from Ibn Selim that about A . D . 980 the tribes of the
Gezira mostly worshipped God in the form of the sun, moon, or stars,
while others knew not God, and worshipped the sun, or fire, or trees, or
animals ; and we have quoted Crowfoot in support of a similar view.
There is no reason to think that the beliefs and superstitions of the
country people in the Gezira had altered at all by the time the Mohammedan
holy men came among them preaching Islam, unless the people themselves
were extirpated and replaced by a different race at the time of the Fung
conquest ; and we have seen that there is no reason to think that they were.
It is certain that in the fifteen centuries or so that elapsed between
the establishment of Napata and the conversion of the Sudan to a form
of Christianity, there was ample time for some of the beliefs and super-
stitions of ancient Egypt to become firmly established among the people
of the Gezira, who appear to have during that time passed through an
8
era of prosperity never equalled since. Crowfoot has indicated several
survivals, such as the Osirification of the bridegroom at the Sudanese
wedding.
It is well known that in ancient Egypt the worship of Osiris appealed
to the common people more than did the various state cults. In the
Sudan, before the coming of Christianity, the state cult was that of
Ammon, but it is certain that belief in Osiris must have been widespread
among all but the least civilised tribes. It is only possible just to mention
here that besides personifying the grain, which is unfruitful except it
fall into the ground and die, Osiris was also the sungod who descended
1
This is how branches of them came to be established as far south as Weirket and
Carabin and Beni Shangul.
1
See Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V I , p. 229.
3
Christian Nubia, loc. cit., and Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V, pp. 1 - 2 8 .
 FUNG ORIGINS 239
1
into his grave in the west every night, and his worship no doubt aimed
2
at helping the sun through the perils and dangers of the night to a
successful birth next morning as Horns, the son of the dead sun.
Of course, as a god, Osiris was a king, and with him there came
naturally always to be associated his sister-wife Isis, without whom the
son Horus could not be produced.
Thus by an obvious association of ideas, the individual at death
became identified with Osiris, who became the King of the Dead who
3
lived in the west beyond the sunset.
Naturally, the grave of Osiris, or the shrine where he was alleged
to have been buried (for he was believed once to have been a king on
earth), and so by association the graves of any great men who, by reason
of their power or sanctity, might be believed to have attained identification
with Osiris, were greatly revered, and became goals of pilgrimage.
It will be of interest to try to indicate traces of Osiris worship among
the Ya'qubab to-day (since they were closely associated with the Fung),
and also among the Shilluk, as, if I succeed, it should help to show that
the Shilluk theory of Fung origins is to that extent the less inherently
improbable.
Human nature is neither infallible nor proof against flattery. One
can, therefore, easily understand how the first lone Moslem holy men
coming and settling among the country people of the Gezira, most of
whom would at first be incapable of understanding the new doctrine,
set up as workers of miracles, and stopped at nothing to increase
4
their own influence, though Mr. Hillelson has pointed out that, on the
whole, they used that influence for good. If then a fiki's disciples began
to attribute to him the old ideas with which they were acquainted, and
at his death buried him in a kind of Osiris shrine to which they had been
accustomed, need we be surprised at his son and successor failing to
correct them, for he would find that the greater his people's reverence
for his dead father, the greater his own influence over them. Hence,
all the possible outward forms of Osiris worship would be adopted to
1
Compare Arabic asr for " late afternoon."
* Herodotus I I , c. 62, gives a description of one form of this worship, when all through
E g y p t on the night of the Feast of Lamps, the people kept lamps burning in the open air.
' This must be why the corpses in pre-Christian burials in the Northern Sudan, as in
pre-dynastic Egypt, were usually buried facing west. Compare Chataway. Sudan Notes
and Records, Vol. X I I I , pp. 259 and 260.
4
Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V I , p. 207.
 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

the service of Islam, as no doubt they had been to the service of Chris-
tianity centuries before ; and I suggest that in their gubbas (see Plate I X ,
Figs. 2 and 3, and Plate X, Figs. 1 and 2), their very large rakübas as
mosques (see Plate X I , Figs. 1 and 2), and possibly in the fact that they
make a special point of praying at fixed hours all through the night,
we see the outward forms of the old Osiris worship preserved by the
Ya'qubab to-day.
The burial places of the leading Ya'qubab holy men have, from the
sixteenth century to the present day, been shrines to which the greatest
reverence is paid and pilgrimage made. There are many such shrines
scattered throughout the Ya'qubab and surrounding country. A typical
shrine consists of a conical red-brick gubba, or a tukl, raised over the
dead man's grave ; very often the gubba contains the grave of one or
more of the dead man's successors (khalifa) as well. An area round the
gubba is always railed off by a wooden fence (ker).
In the large raküba, with its sixteen or more shaibas for pillars, that
forms the invariable Ya'qubab mosque, we have, no doubt, a case of
reversion to ancestral type. As the magnificent Egyptian temple in
stone evolved from the raküba, so when the imported civilisation
degenerated, stone was given up, and the raküba appeared again ; but
the lofty Ya'qubab rakuba is no ordinary raküba. Its height and its
many pillars and its three or four flag staves at the east end unmistakably
recall the Egyptian temple.
The sacred fire (tugaba), not peculiar to the Ya'qubab, that is seen
in the foreground in Plate X I , Fig. 1, and now has to be kept burning from
sunset to salai el 'isha, may once have had to be kept burning all night.
It is now, no doubt, explained as symbolic of keeping alight the flame
of religion, though it has the material uses of providing light and warmth
for the disciples at their nightly study ; but it has almost certainly an
older origin, and I see no reason why it should not be connected with
the idea of helping Osiris, as the set sun, by sympathetic magic to regain
his light next morning, as in the Feast of Lamps,* and as is still done in
the Sudan at an eclipse. Such, too, is perhaps the original object of
the custom of holding services at fixed hours throughout the night.
Osiris was nearly always represented enthroned, and the stool (kukur)
is in origin the throne. The khalifa or earthly representative of a holy
man is not himself a saint by virtue of his office or descent, but only
a
* See Note on p. 2 3 9 .
 FIG. I.
A Ya'qubabi muqaddam, one of the followers of Sheikh Ya'qub
wad Hajju Abdelgadir el Masi', wearing the taqia urn qerein, and
girded for appearing in the presence of the Khalifa (Sheikh Ya'qub),
according to the custom said to have been adopted from the Fung.
S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS. PLATE X.

FIG. I.
Gubba of the Ya'qubab Sheikh Abdclgadir, son of Sheikh Hajju Abu Gerin
(see Plate I X , Fig. 3) at Um Gizaza.

FTG. 2 .
Ya'qubab Shrine at Jebel Moya, in which is buried Sheikh Marzuq wad Zein, great
grandson of Sheikh Hajju Abu Gerin, and his son Zein.
 FUNG ORIGINS 24I
the carrier of a tradition, and the virtue and power inherent in him are
1
those of the dead saint. A Ya'qubabimay still, however, to-day, become
in his own* lifetime a saint, as did the late Sheikh Hajju Abdel Gadir el
Masi', who died last year. Thus, he made a kukur of his own (Plate V I .
Fig. 2). The kukur is the chief outward sign of the khalifa's authority,
and the main feature of the ceremony of his appointment is his being
seated on the kukur of the holy man whose khalifa he is to become. The
khalifa afterwards keeps the kukur and other insignia of his khalifaship.
These insignia vary, but they usually include iron spears, the origin and
object of which are unknown to present-day Ya'qubab, but which are
probably in some way associated with Osiris. Iron was originally asso-
2
ciated with Set, the mortal enemy of Osiris, but at the ceremony of the
" opening of the mouth," the mouth of the deceased was touched by two
iron instruments, one of which was made of the iron which came forth
from Set (this transferred to the deceased the power of the E y e of Horus),
and the other gave the deceased power to overthrow all his enemies
3
and evil.
Probably the iron shaibas or sceptres (Plate V, Fig. 3., Plate V I I ,
Fig. 2, and Plate X I I ) , which are also Ya'qubab insignia, have a
similar origin.
The insignia of Musa Abu Qussa (Plate IV, Fig 2) include two of
these iron spears, one of which is like an ordinary spear, and the other is of
the pointed type designed for piercing chain armour and is very similar
4
to one used in Northern Darfur in connection with rain rites. On the
5
four faces of this Ya'qubab spear, which has a square cross-section, is
the " seal of Solomon," and also on two of the faces is a sword with a
pronounced handguard, making it reminiscent of a cross, and on the
third face is t *, which is undoubtedly the hieroglyphic ka* (a
pair of upraised arms). The ka in ancient Egypt was a mysterious
conception, approximating to the mana of uncivilized man, a concentration
of life, strength, nourishment, intelligence and magic. Separated from
1
Hillelson in Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V I , p. 2 1 8 .
1
Hence, probably, the reason why iron workers are so despised in the Sudan.
* Budge, Osiris, Vol. I, p. 1 6 2 . See also Tabaqat wad Deifallah, where Khogali ibn
Abdelrahman is said to have miraculously removed a sandbank with a rod of iron.
4
See Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V I I . pp. 1 3 8 - 9 .
8
Compare Tabaqat wad Deifallah, where Dafallah wad Mohamed Abu Idris was brought
by Mohammed wad Daud el Agharr the stools and flags and the jibba and kufiya of Habi-
ballah el Agami, also the spear of Abdallah el Araki. called Umm Kraysha, on which were
engraved the names, and which had been deposited with him by Daiallah's fathers.
6
See, for example, Moret : The Nile and Egyptian Civilisation, pp. 3 5 7 - 3 6 0 .
 SUDAN NOTES AND RECORDS

the ka, the body was liable to destruction and death. The king only,
1
as a god, possessed his ka on earth and was " the ka among m e n . "
The " seal of Solomon " was worn on the head-dress of the eparch
of Nubia (see above), and was probably the distinguishing " Christian "
2
mark on the head-dress that was otherwise that of A m m o n .
I have no first-hand knowledge of the Shilluk, but in reading the
accounts of them already referred to, I have been frequently struck by
the existence of m a n y ideas in their culture that also existed in ancient
E g y p t . We h a v e seen that there is some reason for believing that the
authority of N a p a t a extended as far as the Sudd. So that it will not
be surprising if there are traces of Osiris worship to be found among the
Shilluk, and other ideas of similar origin, which we have seen reason for
believing they would have found also among the people of Aloa.
I know that it is unfashionable nowadays to attribute similar customs
when found in different parts of the world to cultural inheritance or any-
thing but parallel evolution, but, despite the experts, I suggest that the
stool of the Shilluk king is the throne of Osiris. When it is remembered
that north of the S u d d there is no geographical obstacle to the spread
of the influence of E g y p t up the White Nile, I think this is a more likely
explanation than that the one stool found among the Shilluk people
should h a v e happened both to be invented by them and to h a v e been the
centre of ceremonies which I hope to show are too similar to those of
Osiris for the coincidence to be purely fortuitous. A n d if the experts
hold that the basis of Osiris worship is a common African religion of much
greater age than the first dynasties of E g y p t , I am not in a position to
argue with them, and their thesis is good enough for my present theory,
which is that the Shilluk would have found m a n y customs and institutions
1
Hence, perhaps, the origin of horns as the emblem of r o y a l t y , for the hieroglyph
in some degree resembles a pair of horns, and with a suitable determinative, the phallus,
Ka writes the name of the B u l l , which symbolises " generation " ; and hence the favourite
title of the Pharaoh. " Mighty Bull." This, if the Shilluk origin of the F u n g is correct,
m a y possibly be the explanation of the second name (? a title) of A m a r a Dunkas, for, from
Wcstermann's vocabulary in Shilluk " dean kech " would mean " Mighty C o w . " There
is, however, another possible explanation. Dankûj is the name for small Shilluk settle-
ments on the White Nile. D a n k ü j m a y have been the name of the first Fung king. This
would have been v e r y naturally translated into Arabic by El Samarqandi as A m a r a .
It is, in a n y case, easy to see how the hieroglyph Ka naturally became adopted as the
royal brand. Compare the kayra, I J, the similar brand oí the Sultans of Darfur.
for which see MacMichael, Vol. I, p. 9 5 , the name for which, I suggest, either means the
Ka of Ra, or is connected with the root kur mentioned above.
• Compare Hasan the Geographer (ed. Robert Brown. London. 1896. Vol. I I I . p. 836) :
" Nubia . . . having lost the light of the gospel, they had embraced a corrupt form
of J u d a i s m and Islam, and their spiritual condition w a s most wretched."
 F U N G ORIGINS 243

in the kingdom of Aloa that would not have been so strange to them as
might be imagined.
Note, for instance, the representation of the erection of the Zed
1
at the Sed feast by king Amenophis I I I given by Moret and his
description : " The king himself, aided by a few officers of his court,
pulls at the ropes to set up the Zed, which, we must suppose, previously
lay on its side like dead Osiris. The scene takes place in the presence
of the queen, the royal daughters, and the women of the harem of Ammon.
Underneath the royal personages are gesticulating figures, described as
the inhabitants of Pe and the inhabitants of Dep—that is, the people of
Buto, the old capital of Horus. All these people are fighting and
belabouring each other with fists and sticks. Some fly routed, others
come to grips ; some are shouting ' I have taken Horus Kha-m-maat '
1
(Amenophis I I I ) , and others answer Hold him fast ' or ' Don't resist.' "
Note also the people in the picture apparently dancing and the bulls being
driven up for sacrifice.
8
See also in Budge the description of the Osiris play that was performed
annually at Abydos. The central act was the "coming forth" of Osiris
from the temple after his death and the departure of his body to the
tomb. " Many of the men in the crowd were armed with sticks and
staves, and some of them pressed forward towards the procession with
a view to helping the god, whilst others strove to prevent them. Thus
a sham fight took place . . . This fight was, of course, intended to
represent the great battle which took place in prehistoric times between
Set and Osiris, when Osiris was killed."
Then turn to Mr. Munro's account of the installation of the king
8
of the Shilluk. " A large company could be seen with Nyakang and Dag
aloft in the centre . . . the warriors and maidens could be seen
dancing . . . appeared the ret's army, a great crowd of warriors
. . . Nyakang accepts one cow, one bull, and five spears from the
ret's party . . . some seventy or eighty of the ret's wives came
dancing towards Nyakang's army . . . The two armies then meet.
Nyakang and his followers immediately put to flight the ret's army
4
with whips, and the ret is captured by Nyakang . . . the ret is
» loc. cit., p. 1 3 3 .
* Osiris, Vol. I I , p. 6.
* Sudan Notes ana Records, Vol. I, p. 1 4 5 .
* For the association between Osiris and the whip, see Crowfoot, Sudan Notes and
Records, Vol. V, p. 2 7 .
244 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

enthroned on the stool . . . Three days later the ret leaves the palace
with a large crowd . . . Nyakang also left his shrine accompanied with
a great company of people. Then there occurred the mock battle with
dura stalks . . . The ret's people ran away."
1
A slightly different account is given by Seligman : " These two or
three chiefs go and fetch Nyakang and the sacred stool from Akurwa.
There is a shallow khor, which is the scene of a sham fight between the
Akurwa men bringing the effigy and the folk waiting with the newly
elected ret, in which the former are victorious. No reason could be given
for this ' old custom.* The ret then proceeds at once to Kodok and is
2
installed on the sacred stool. Near him stand two of his paternal aunts
and two of his sisters."
That the otherwise unaccountably common elements in these
ceremonies have one and the same origin seems highly probable. It
must be remembered that the Shilluk king was being installed at the
beginning of his reign, and that by Shilluk custom he would be killed
ceremonially when he began to show signs of lacking virility ; while
in ancient Egypt the Sed festival or jubilee, with its repetition of the
coronation rites, was no doubt a ceremony intended magically to renew
the virility of the king, a substitute for the barbarous custom of the
ritual murder of the ageing sovereign, which presumably was the fate
of the kings in early Egypt, as it was of the kings of Meroe, up till the
reign of Ergamenes, the contemporary of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
In the Sed festival the king was identified with Osiris ; he was magically
rejuvenated, as Osiris the dead king had been reanimated and possessed
of sufficient virility to beget Horas. Similarly, at the installation of the
ret, Nyikang is Osiris, coming forth from his tomb to reign, and the ret who
takes Nyikang's place on the stool, by that symbolical act, becomes Osiris
the King, and thus the fertility of the crops naturally depend on him, for
Osiris is the corn god, and if he shows lack of virility, obviously he is ceasing
to be possessed by Osiris, and he must be removed and a substitute found.
If one reads the account by Seligman of the royal Shilluk graves that
3
become shrines, one cannot fail to notice the striking similarity between
these shrines and those of the Ya'qubab already described.
1
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, A r t . " Shilluk."
2
Compare any representation of Osiris seated on his throne with Isis (and sometimes
Nepthys) standing behind.
• Fourth Report of the Wellcome Tropical Laboratory, Vol. B, p. 2 1 6 ,
SUDAN N O T E S AND RECORDS. PIATE Xi.

FIG. I.
Ya'qubab Mosque at Amarai Sheikh Hajju in Sennar district, showing in the foreground
the mound of ashes from the tugaba, or fire kept burning at night by the pupils of the
local fiki. The view is taken looking south-east.

FIG. 2 .
Ya'qubab Mosque at Hujjaj in Sennar district during a " zikr " held at Kurban Bairam.
The relics that are brought out and placed in the mosque during festivals are shown in
Plate V, Fig. 3. Note the flags at the East end of the mosque.
 F U N G ORIGINS 245

A typical Shilluk shrine is said to consist of two tukls, especially

neatly thatched, with a good fence round them. Sometimes a shrine
consists of only one tukl, which may stand apart from a village (as in
usual Ya'qubab practice). These graves are known by the special name
of kengo. The contents of the kengo vary, but they always contain
certain sacred spears. The Akurwa shrine contains the stool of Nyakang.
At a rain-making ceremony a bullock is slain with one of the sacred
1
spears, the king praying for rain, and holding the spear pointed upwards.
It also occurs to me as not unlikely that the Shilluk titles ret and
ororo have their connection with ancient Egypt. Ret (which Westermann
considers connected with the Nuer " arti " = " G o d ") would appear
possibly to be the same as Re or Ra, the sun god with whom the Pharaoh
2
had been identified up to about 1600 B.C., when it became rather a fusion
of Ammon-Ra, with Ammon as the predominant partner. If so, this might
perhaps point to the Shilluk having come into contact with the culture
of ancient Egypt before 1600 B.C.
3
As to the ororo, I suggest that they, a mysterious Shilluk class,
who apparently played a leading part in killing the Shilluk king and
setting his successor on the stool, and who are said to be descendants
of the brother of Oshalo, the third Shilluk king, who once might have
become king himself, are possibly connected with the ancient Egyptian
"ur" (plural "uru" or "urau")="nobleman," "chief," or "great one."
If it is agreed that some Shilluk customs may have their origin in
Osiris worship, it may be of interest to point out the following similarities
which may be more than coincidences.
Osiris was a corn god, and I have shown why I think the Shilluk
and Ya'qubab shrines are connected with Osiris. At the Shilluk harvest
festival, ears of ripening dura are brought and thrust into the thatch of
the shrine tukl, then later ground and made into porridge and poured
on the threshold of Nyikang*s special hut. Till then the new crop may
not be eaten.*
See above. Compare Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. V I I . pp. 1 3 8 - 9 .
* Compare Budge, History of Ethiopia, Vol. I, p. 626 : " Heremheb, last king
of the 18th Dynasty was addressed as ' Ra of the nine nations who fight with the bow.
T h y name is mighty in the land of Kesh. thy bellowings are in their houses.' "
* See Munro, Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. I, p. 1 5 0 , and Seligman, " T h e Cult of
Nyakang," in the Fourth Report of the Wellcome Tropical Laboratory, Vol. B, p. 2 1 6 .
4
Seligman, " Cult of Nyakang," loc. cit.
 SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

Can the Shilluk names of dura, wajal fa dimo and wajal ttenaro be
connected with Osiris ? Are Wajal, Wishal, Oshalo, Osiris all the same
name ?
King Wishal was, by one old Kawahla tradition, said to be connected
with Eilafun, the king of the Sudan who was defeated and slain by the
first Kawahla to reach the Nile. Is this an allegorical account of the
defeat of people holding Osirian beliefs by Moslems ? This king Wishal
looks as if he might be the king Teoghawal, given in one account as the
king of the Sudan whose daughter was married by Suliman Abdelmalik
1
of the Beni Omaiya and who thus became the ancestor of the Fung.
Oshalo is the third legendary Shilluk king, who was credited with
semi-divine powers as was Nyikang, the first king. But he may easily
be older than Nyikang.
Omaro Wakolo, the second Shilluk, is said to have lived long before
Nyikang. In one account he is given as the son of the first Shilluk
man Kola (O-Kola), a literal explanation, though one would have expected
the first Shilluk to have been called Shola or Chola, and not Kola. Is
Omaro the same as Oshalo ?
Note also the section of the Shilluk known as the K w a Okel, who are
said to be the original inhabitants of the country before the coming of
Nyikang. They build the house of Nyikang for the installation of the
Shilluk king (compare the Hamaj mangiTs hut—both examples of the
Osirian shrine ?), and they give the king at his coronation a small girl,
2
called nya kwer (the girl of the authorities). This girl remains with
the king throughout the installation ceremony, and possibly originally
represented Isis, the king at this ceremony magically becoming Osiris.
She is, anyhow, comparable to the girl with whom the new mangil is
confined, at his installation.
In conclusion, it may be of interest to summarise the implications
involved by this interpretation of the Fung origins.
The Fung were not a tribe, but some adventurous invaders, the
northern-most wave of a great Shilluk upheaval on the White Nile, that
reached the Blue Nile, just when the Arabs were beginning to overrun
the kingdom of Aloa, of which the sphere of influence stretched at least
as far south as Roseires. These Shilluk provided a new dynasty for
1
Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. X I I I , p. 257,
' Munro, Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. I, p. 149-
 F U N G ORIGINS 247

Aloa, and having much in common with its inhabitants, due to a common
inheritance from ancient Egypt, they led them against the Arabs, whom
they defeated in battle and forced to pay tribute. Since it was a time
when Islam was in the ascendant, and possibly owing to threat of invasion
by Selim, they then became Moslems and so, naturally, invented a pedigree
claiming descent from the Prophet, and pretended that their ancestor
had come from the Hejaz via Abyssinia. Being in a minority, and
perhaps bringing no women with them, they soon forgot the Shilluk
language and adopted Arabic, which was, no doubt, already beginning
to spread among their subjects.
It is uncertain who destroyed the town of Soba, perhaps it was the
Arabs, perhaps it was the Shilluk, and perhaps it just fell into ruin from
neglect. Amara may have found that Soba was not sufficiently central ;
he may have found he was unpleasantly close to his powerful " slave,"
the Abdallabi at Gerri ; it may have been fear of Selim I and his
Bosnian mercenaries ; or it may have been that the Shilluk, being pastoral
cattle owners from the south, found the barren country round Soba
uncongenial. What is certain is that headquarters were moved with
no great delay to Sennar. It is unlikely that an invading force taking
over and absorbing an old-established kingdom would have set to and
built a new town, and the name Sennar itself appears to indicate otherwise.
Excavation, however, alone will decide, if too much of the old site has not
already been eaten away by the river.
After consolidating the kingdom from Sennar, with a relative
established.at Laich (El Ais = Kawa) as governor of their Shilluk relatives
on the lower White Nile, the Fung kings seem gradually to have extended
their dominion south up the Blue Nile as far as the Abyssinian highlands
1
beyond Beni Shangul and Fadasi, and, later, east, to include the Beni
Amer, and west as far as the Nuba Mountains and the frontiers of Darfur.
1
Mr. Chataway (loc. cit.) has shown how the headquarters oí the Fung mek of Keili
were gradually moved south from Disa, where it was first established, to Ragreig, and finally
to Keili ; whereas, we should have expected a move in the opposite direction, if they had
come from Abyssinia.
248 S U D A N N O T E S A N D RECORDS

APPENDIX.
A pair of documents from the reign of King Bady wad Noi, granting
an area of land in the region of Hujjaj in Sennar district to the Ya'qubabi
sheikh Ya'qub wad Mohamed Zein.
Document I.
Has no seal, but at the top the edge is frayed and there is the mark

edge of document.

which apparently was :

(Translation.)
A Deed of Gift
and royal covenant of Sennar the well guarded (el Mahrusa) and populous
—May God increase her glory for her rulers.
The ruler to-day is the chief of the knights, the bravest of the brave,
the preserver of peace (sanduq el aman), he who is well known for wealth
and generosity, and who has a covenant with the Almighty, Sheikh
Rahma son of the late Sheikh Yunis, Amin el Sultan, God be with him
and protect him wherever he goes, and may all the chapters and verses
of the Koran do likewise. Amen.
Whereas Sheikh Rahma son of Sheikh Yunis has approved to Sheikh
Ya'qub a dar in the land of Um Marahik, as a gift before God, seeking
His blessing for the next world, for the day in which neither wealth nor
children will profit, but only the pure heart with which a man approaches
God.
The boundaries on the four sides are :
On the East, the tundub tree and Hantola hafir.
On the South, Azaz Garura and Wad Belial hafir
On the West, Urn Marahik,
going North to the Um Talha path, and turning East, returning
to the tundub tree, and coming to an end on the land of Sheikh Ya'qub
which he bought.
SUDAN NOTES AND RECORDS. PLATE XII.
 FUNG ORIGINS

A messenger of Sheikh Rahma son of Yunis (marked out the dar)

without anyone resisting him or saying him nay, and Hamad wad Kheiyar,
overseer of the dar, was present.
His brother Beshir was present as witness
and Kitfawi his brother
and Want „
and Harun ,,
and Nasr „
and Mansur
and the Arbab Masud
and Ali Nueir
and the Arbab Mohamed wad Mohamed Duweiw
and Ali his son
and Medowi, Mugaddam of the Escort
and Tahir el Ghadawi
and Hasan, Escort of the Sheikh (Rahma)
and Sheikh Zaid of the guard (el harrâs)
and Mustafa Sudani
and Said el Maragna
and Ismail brother of Sheikh Rahma
and Angata his brother
and Shawal his brother
and Ramadan
and Ali his son
and Sabun
and Kow(k)ab
and Abdel Ati
and el Arbab Ibrahim wad Bedowi,
and he who wrote these letters was Mohamed son of fiki Ahmed,
clerk and witness.
The morning of Thursday, the 23rd of Dhu el Hijja, 1 1 4 6 A . H .
Document II.
Is headed by the seal of " Melik Bady wad Melik Noi."
(Translation.)
Sultanic deed and royal covenant from his presence, the sultan of
Islam and of every word of peace, destroyer of all evil people and thieves,
king of the kings of land and sea, ruler of the affairs of all mankind,
builder of many guest houses, suppressor of thefts and oppression,
victorious in all he undertakes, granting to Moslems all his protection

7
2ü
5
SUDAN NOTES A N D RECORDS

and bounty, chosen by Allah to rule over mankind, the protected of God,
our governor, the sultan the son of the sultan, the brave king, the warrior,
sultan Bady son of late sultan Noi, may God increase the days of his
justice and prolong the days of his happiness, through our Prophet and
his companions. Amen.
To all who see this covenant, and who understand its contents,
Whereas the sultan, the victorious one, has completed and signed
the deed of Sheikh Rahma the son of Sheikh Yunis, as to the gift to
Sheikh Ya'qub the son of Sheikh Mohamed Zein of an estate (dar) in the
land of Urn Marahik, a gift before God, and in the hope of salvation on
the day of Resurrection,
Be it known that the boundaries in the covenant of Sheikh Rahma
on the four sides are :
On the East, the tundub tree and Hantola hafir.
On the South, Azaz Garura and wad Belial hafir.
On the West, Urn Marahik,
the boundary going North to the Urn Talha path, and then East to
the tundub tree, coming to an end on the land of Sheikh Ya'qub, which
he bought.
Let no one approach this land, or resist him, or oppose him in the
way, and let no one pick up any rope lying on it, and let no one drink
water from it.
It shall be free of all other claims and complaints.
Beware, beware of all disobedience (to this order). He who disobeys
will have only himself to blame.
There were present as witnesses
Sheikh Rahma the son of Sheikh Yunis
The Gindi Yunis
Sheikh Ismail, maternal uncle of the king (Melik)
The Arbab Aidu, grandfather of the king
Sheikh Sha el din Derwish, Sheikh el Bahr
Sheikh Hamad, sheikh of Garabin
Sheikh Mohamed, Groom of the Carpet (muqaddam el sigada)
The Kadi Ibrahim
El Katib Abdellatif
and Amar Abu Nega
and this deed was drawn up by Mohammed Abdel Ghani.
The first of el Muharram, 1 1 4 7 A . H .
 FUNG ORIGINS 207

honourable maintenance : a custom always observed in such cases

in the East by princes towards their unfortunate neighbours.
" Baady son of Abd-el-cader, an active and violent young prince,
although he deposed his uncle Adelan, took this protection of his
father in bad part. It was likewise suggested to him that the
present sent by Socinios, a nagareet or kettledrum, imported that
Socinios considered him as his vassal, the drum being the sign of
investiture sent by the king to anyone of his subjects whom he
appoints to govern a province, and that the return of the falcon was
likely to be considered as the acknowledgment of a vassal to his
superior. Baady, upon his succession to the throne, was resolved
to rectify this too great respect shown on the part of his father by an
affront he resolved to offer. With this view he sent to Socinios two
old blind and lame horses."
It would seem rather that the Fung were only regarded as tributary
to Abyssinia in the vainglorious imagination of certain Abyssinian
monarchs. Neither does it seem certain that the Fung custom of
girding, to which Nalder appeals, is the same as the Abyssinian
one. The latter is undoubtedly exactly as described by Nalder
(see Bruce, Vol. V, p. 1 6 1 , " uncovered to the waist, in token of humility " ) ,
but was this the Fung custom ? The Ya'qubab also have a custom of
girding in the presence of a superior (see Plate I, Fig. 1) in which only the
left shoulder is exposed and over the other the tob is passed from back to
front before being tucked into that part which is tied round the waist.
As Nalder notes, the Ya'qubab definitely copied this from the Fung,
as they did the kukur and tagia um gerein ; and I am informed by the
Fung mek Hasan Adlan of Singa that, as far as he knows, the Fung
method was the same as the Ya'qubab method and not as the Abyssinian.
There is also a similar custom of girding in the presence of a superior
in Northern Darfur, but I forget the details. But even if the Fung and
Abyssinian methods of girding were exactly similar, why should not the
custom have come to both peoples from some common source such as
ancient E g y p t ?
Nalder also mentions the use of the title Arbab in Abyssinia as well
as among the Fung. I am informed by Mr. Hillelson that this title
is an Arabic one, the plural of rabb, comparable to the Central Arabian
use of shuyukh for " great sheikh," although previously I had thought
 S U D A N NOTES A N D RECORDS

it might be connected with the ancient Egyptian erpa ("prince ") with
which it seems exactly to correspond, for among the Fung and their
14
subjects Arbab did mean prince,*' being properly applied only to the
relatives of the mek and, by extension, to the relatives of the mangils.
But in any case, its existence in Abyssinia should not carry much
weight in our present argument, for it may easily have come to both
Abyssinia and the Fung from a common source.
It would seem that the main evidence in support of the theory
of an Abyssinian or Upper Blue Nile origin of the Fung is their own
tradition that they are related to the Prophet through an Omaiyad,
who came to the Sudan via Abyssinia, and marrying the daughter of a
Sudanese king founded the Une from which, about 800 years later, sprang
Amara Dunkas and his descendants.
But if during the last four centuries the origin of Amara Dunkas
should have been so lost in oblivion that it is open to argument whether
he came to Sennar from the north or from the south, from the Upper
Blue Nile or the White Nile, can much reliance be placed on the tradition
of the same people as to an event which is supposed to have happened
twice as long a time before Amara Dunkas as has elapsed since his
date ?
The traditions, moreover, of all non-Arab Moslems are notably
unreliable, because on becoming Moslem they immediately claim Arab
descent, in view of the importance attributed by that religion to relation-
ship to the Prophet. As a good example, I might quote the present
sultan of Dar Masalit, who can have no Arab blood in him, and yet
who seriously claims that he is descended from the Beni Qoreish and
produces a complete genealogy in support of his claim.
There is, I maintain, no external evidence to support the Omaiyad
tradition ; and here the question of the alliance between Amara Dunkas
and Abdallah Gamma' is of great importance, as Nalder points out. Of
course, the Arabs in the sixteenth century were no more tolerant in their
attitude to 'abîd than they are to-day, and the fact that the Fung dynasty
was known all over the Sudan as the sultana zerqa seems to render it
unlikely at the start that any Arab blood was recognised in their veins
when they acquired that name. In fact, far from that alliance proving
that the Fung royal family must have had an Arab ancestor in their dim
past, and so probably have entered the Sudan via Abyssinia, I do not