Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/575

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NORTH-EAST AFRICA.

APPENDIX U. 471 Imhbhmmi-Modoii Oudahirn GadoAtirti jMlbakantu MijjertkaiH Dtbtut AmU Aua-Jmara Sidi-Uabura GaleUu . Khimir . Ajfau Agaumedtr t'alaaha . BomaLI. Between Zeilah, Horrar, and Bcrbora. Uplands Mulh of Ucrbera. East of Borben to tho Indiau Ocean. CiNTiuL Ethiopian BaAMCR. ArAH (AoAL oa Danaxil). ' C«>astlaods but ween Abyssinia and the Bed Sea, from Zola Bay to Strait of r ol-Mandeb.» Bab* Lasta district Uuara uistrict Gondar district Abyssinia. &aho, or Shoho . Collective name of numerous communities scattered over Abyss'nia; claim Jewish descent, and are often callc-d the " Jews of Abyssinia," but are probably of Aguu stock. The Kura, Kudra, or Huaraza, as their languige is diversely called, also resembles the A^tu. The term FalathOy which in Suuth Abyrsinia take:) the form of Fetija, in explained to metn " Exd'-u," and lends a colouring to the national tradition th it they dc8Condi.-d from a certain Meuelt-k, son of Solomon and the Queen of SLeba. North-east frontier, Ab) ssiuiu. NoHTHEKN EtHIMPIN BoAXCH (BeJA Di VISION'). Of the northern group of Ethiopian Ilamites by far the most important are the Beja, or Bishari, who have all the greater claim to the consideration of the ethnologist, that their ethnical status has hitlierto been pereistently ignored alike by British Cabinet Ministers, officials, and newspaper corresjwndenta. They are the unfortunate people, many of whoso tribes have recently come into collision with the British forces in the Suakin district, but who continue to be spoken of as '* Arabs" by those states- men who are unable to recognise more than two races in Egj-ptian Sudan, that is, the Negro and Arab. Thus, on February 27th of the year 1884, the Marquis of Hartington telegraphs to General Graham: "Toll them we are not at war with the Arab$, but must disperse force threatening Suakin." And General Graham himself sends a letter " written in Arabic" to tho chiefs of the tribes about Trinkitat and Tokar, in which they are again assumed to be ** Arabs," We all remember the ignominious fate of that now historical document, which was set up as a target and riddled by bullets, as some dangerous fetish, by those Ilamitic followers of Muhammad Osman Dakanah, whose own languag*^, the To-Bedawieh, differs almost as much from Arabic as does that of the British troops itself. All this imrae<liately preoetled the sanguinary engagement of El Teb, and it may be assorted with Sir Stafford Northcote, though for reasons different from those implied by him, that " if the position of England had been such as it ought to have been, wo should have had none of the slaughter which then took place." In fact, hud a mo<lorate amount of attention been paid by our Foreign Office to the true ethnical cf>nditi«)ns in Egyptian Su lin, most of the complications might probably have been avoided that have since arisen in that distracted region. But the necessity for a systematic study of ethnology has not yet made itself apparent to the rulers of the

  • Afar appears to bo tho most general national nunie, Adal that of the dominant tribe : Danakil

(plural Da'ikali and Danakli) ia tho name by which t 'cy are known to their Arab and Ilamite neigh- bours. Chiarini [loc. eit ) recognises the close relationship uf Somali and Qalla, but asserts that the Afar Lmguage " ha ben poco di commune coUa galla."