¹ In this paper I define official documentation by three main features. First, a ruling elite issued these documents. Second, the documents either perpetuated a political relationship or announced a legal decision involving the kingdom's subjects. And. third, the issuers wrote the documents not only for their recipients but also for a large, public audience. For the purpose of my argument, I do not concern myself either with the possible private letters or religious writings of Muslim clerics in Taqali, or the diplomatic correspondence of the kings. I should note here, however, that I found no examples of even those types of documentation.

² Written versions of oral traditions current in the early nineteenth century refer to clerics visiting Taqali as early as the sixteenth century and more certainly in late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Janet J. Ewald, “Leadership and Social Change on an Islamic Frontier: The Kingdom of Taqali, 1680–1898” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1982), 113–18, 126–28, 247, 259, 274–75, 313–17.

³ For an account of how Taqali people adopted legends and motifs from other parts of the Sudan, see Ewald, J., “Experience and Speculation: History and Founding Stories in the Kingdom of Taqali, 1780–1935,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 18:2 (1985), 265–87. See also Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 125–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 58.

⁵ These six manuscripts probably do not represent all written materials produced in Taqali. Some official documents were probably destroyed; others may still remain unknown to foreign researchers. Yet indications are strong that Taqali people did not make use of writing in their internal affairs. I doubt that any treasure trove of manuscripts remains undiscovered in Taqali. With little reticence, people showed me the jah documents after I had been in Taqali for only a few months. After finding the initial documents, I would have expected other families who held documents to show me their manuscripts. But everyone assured me that no more written records existed. (I have deposited copies of photographs of these documents in the Central Records Office, Khartoum, and with Dr. R. S. O'Fahey at the University of Bergen.) Taqali informants told me about the presence and absence of writing in their kingdom during interviews with Idris al-Zaybeq, 6 March 1977, and with 'Ali Tahir and 'Abd al-Rahman Hajj al-Tahir, 30 September 1978, both in the town of 'Abbasiya.

⁶ The rich corpus of central African epics, myths, and poetry especially intrigued Europeans. See, for example, Biebuyck, Daniel and Mateene, Kahombo C., eds. and trans., The Mwindo Epic (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971Google Scholar); Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (Chicago, 1965Google Scholar), and The Children of Woof. A History of the Kuba Peoples (Madison, 1978), esp. 15–89.Google Scholar

⁷ From January 1977 through March 1979, J interviewed descendants of the Taqali kings, their subjects, and their allies in the town of 'Abbasiya, on surrounding plains and highlands villages, and in Baqqara settlements. The informants represent a diverse group that included local notables and common folk, men and women, winners and losers in the political maneuverings under Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, farmers and herders. Despite this variety, all informants related history in similar ways, by anecdotes and a very few generalized, stereotyped narratives. Even the notables, who glorified the power of the king and the organization of the kingdom, related little systematic information about how the kings administered the kingdom.

⁸ Ewald, “Kingdom of Taqali,” 50–54.

⁹ Clanchy, Michael, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 145.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The term graphocentrism comes from Ong, Walter, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1980).Google Scholar

¹¹ Viewing oral traditions as artifacts, I question some anthropologists who emphasize the homeostatic nature of oral knowledge. I agree that oral traditions do indeed change through time. But I believe that no perfect homeostatis balances contemporary social and political conditions and orally transmitted knowledge. Oral knowledge is not homeostatic because oral societies are not homogeneous. For examples of the scholarly debate about this issue, see Goody, Jack and Watt, Ian, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, Goody, Jack, ed. (Cambridge, 1968), 28–34Google Scholar; MacGaffey, Wyatt, “Oral Tradition in Central Africa,” International Journal of Historical Studies 7:3 (1974), 417–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vansina, Jan, “Comment: Traditions of Origin,” Journal of African History, 15:2 (1974), 317–22, esp. 320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Ranke, Leopold von, selection from Preface to Histories of the Latin and Germanic Nations, 1494–1514, in The Varieties of History, Stern, Fritz, ed. and trans. (Cleveland, 1956), 56Google Scholar. For Ranke's intellectual background, particularly as it relates to historicism, and his own scholarly development, see Iggers, Georg, The German Conception of History (Middletown, Connecticut, 1968), esp. 4–43Google Scholar, 63–81; White, Hayden, Metahiswry (Baltimore, 1973), 65Google Scholar, 172–173; Gay, Peter, Style in History (New York, 1974), 4, 20–21.Google Scholar

Thompson describes both how European historians before Ranke used “living documents”—oral sources—and how documents became authoritative sources with the rise of trained, professional historians. Thompson, Paul, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford, 1978), 40–41, 46–48.Google Scholar

¹³ For the relationship between social evolutionary theory, positivism, and historicism, see Burrow, T. W.. Evolution and Societv (Cambridge, 1966), esp. xv, 143Google Scholar; Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald and Burrow, John, The Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge, 1983), 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 213, 214, 218, 223; Kuper, Adam, “Lineage Theory; A Critical Retrospect,” in Annual Review of Anthropology, 11 (1982):72–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Basso, Keith, “The Ethnography of Writing,” in Explorations in the Ethnography of Writing, Baumann, Richard and Sherzer, Joel, eds. (Cambridge, 1974), 425.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Stocking, George W., Jr., Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork (Madison, 1983)Google Scholar; Clifford, James, “On Ethnographic Authority,” Representations, no. 2 (Spring 1983), 118–46.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The titles of some of these anthropological works reveal their focus: for example, Fallers, Lloyd, Bantu Bureaucracy (London, 1956)Google Scholar; Nadel, S. F., Black Byzantium (Oxford, 1942)Google Scholar; Smith, M. G., Government in Zazzau (London, 1960Google Scholar). Two particularly outstanding, comprehensive examples of African political histories are O'Fahey's work. State and Society in Dar Fur (London, 1980)Google Scholar, and Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge, 1975).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Fahey, O. State and Society in Dar Fur, vii, 46, 113Google Scholar; Wilks, , Asante in the Nineteenth Century, 204Google Scholar, 346, 353, 372. See also Fahey, O' and Salim, Abu, Land in Dar Fur: Charters and Related Documents from the Dar Fur Sultanate (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Vansina's major works in English on oral methodology now span twenty years: Oral Traditions: A Study in Historical Methodology (Chicago, 1965Google Scholar) and Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985Google Scholar). See also Henige, David, Oral Historiography (Longman, 1982Google Scholar), and The African Past Speaks: Essays in Oral Tradition and History, Miller, Joseph C., ed. (Hamden, Conn., 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Writing, for example, supposedly represents “sheer magic” or a “new orthodoxy accompanied by stark evidence of its efficacy.” Henige, , Oral Historiography, 81–87Google Scholar; and The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera (Oxford, 1974), 97–103. Certainly, as Henige shows, when presented with literacy some people quickly adopt it. often for their own political advantage. But Henige is too sweeping. Only some people revere literacy, some of the time. As I show in this article, other people mistrust or avoid it. The broader question is not how literacy influences oral traditions, but why people choose writing or face-to-face communication.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Parry, Milman, L'Epithete traditionelle dans Homere (Paris, 1928Google Scholar); English edition, The Making ofHomeric Verse: The Collected Papers ofMilman Parry, Perry, A., ed. (Oxford, 1971Google Scholar). Albert Bates Lord applied Parry's work to Serbo-Croatian epic poetry in Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960Google Scholar). For recent work and debates about the formula in oral literature, see Foley, John, Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1985Google Scholar), andn Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bales Lord, Foley, John, ed. (Columbus, Ohio, 1981).Google Scholar

Eric Havelock argued that the Greeks created their classic forms of artistic, intellectual, and political life in an oral culture. See Havelock, Eric, The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton, 1982), 5Google Scholar, 42–44, 116–19, and Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 27–31, 42–43, 93–94, 106, 137.Google Scholar

²⁰ Havelock, , Preface to Plato, 107–108Google Scholar, 126–27. Even a scholar less committed to the argument that Greece was an oral culture stresses the face-to-face communication of the polis. M. I. Finley, “Introduction” and “Politics” in The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal, Finley, M. I., ed. (Oxford, 1981), 12, 16–17, 22, 27. Havelock views the post-Mycenaean Greek diaspora and the formation of dispersed poleis as fundamental to the development of an oral style. Thus in Greece—as in Taqali and medieval England—political relations and mode of communication were closely linked. Preface to Plato, 118–119, and Literate Revolution, 104.Google Scholar

²¹ Havelock's, Preface to Plato appeared in 1963Google Scholar, immediately preceded and followed by McLuhan's, MarshallThe Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto, 1962Google Scholar) and Understanding Media (New York, 1964Google Scholar). Anthropologist Dell Hyms proposed a new area of research in “The Ethnography of Speaking,” in Anthropology and Human Behavior, Gladwin, T. and Sturtevant, W. C., eds. (Washington, D.C., 1962CrossRefGoogle Scholar). His colleagues in the discipline, Goody, Jack and Watt, Ian, focused not on speech but on writing in their article, “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5:3 (1963), 304–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article eventually grew into the theoretical framework for Goody's edited collection, Literacy in Traditional Societies. In 1965, Walter Ong considered “Oral Residue in Tudor Prose Style,” Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 80(1965Google Scholar). Ong later considered orality and literacy in greater length in his book Orality and Literacy. Although the seminal pieces cluster in the early 1960s, the work of seems, H. A. Innis to presage them: Empire and Communications (Oxford, 1950Google Scholar) and Minerva's Owl: The Bias of Communication (Toronto, 1951). Both at Toronto, Innis exerted a direct influence on McLuhan.Google Scholar

²² Ong, , Literacy and Orality, 8, 28, 34, 38–39, 42–45, 49.Google Scholar

²³ Havelock, , Preface to Plato, 44–45, 151–53.Google Scholar

²⁴ See, for example, Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies, especially his Introduction, and Goody and Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy.”

²⁵ Intriguing but fragmentary evidence indicates that other African kingdoms also preferred to use the spoken word in political life, or that other historians have found documents to be of limited historical value. The sultans of Dar Masalit, for example, wrote copious letters to outside powers, but Lidwien Kapteijn's extremely thorough research in Dar Masalit revealed no charters such as those that granted landed estates in Dar Fur. Estates existed, but the sultans apparently granted them in face-to-face communication. Likewise, the sworn statements of old men rather than documents acted as evidence in legal disputes involving land. Kapteijns reconstructs a rich description of the landed estates through oral evidence. Lidwien Kapteijns, “Mahdist Faith and Sudanic Tradition: History of Dar Masalit, 1870–1930” (Ph.D. diss., University of Amsterdam, 1982), esp. 166–74, 350.

In his sensitive analysis of Liptako oral traditions, Paul Invin remarks that manuscripts pertaining to Liptako were not very illuminating. Like me in Taqali, Irwin arrived in Liptako “hoping to unearth rich libraries of Arabic documents.” And like me, he was disappointed. He found only recently transcribed versions of oral traditions and—significantly—a few precolonial pieces of diplomatic correspondence. Again, Liptako's rulers sometimes wrote to other rulers, but they apparently did not deal with their subjects in writing. Irwin, Paul, Liptako Speaks: History from Oral Tradition in Africa (Princeton, 1981), xx, 203–204. Comparative analysis of Masalit, Liptako, and Taqali might reveal common political dynamics that contributed to the preference for face-to-face communication.Google Scholar

²⁶ Clancy, , Memory to Written Record, 18–20, 50, 74, 125, 147, 260.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid., 233.

²⁸ Seeking to destroy manorial records, the peasants expressed both their hostility to official documentation and their recognition that such documents were important. Their evaluation of documents likewise appears when they asked for charters of freedom or written agreements restricting seigneurial rights. In one case, beleaguered officials wrote charters of freedom as a ruse to deflect the peasants' wrath. Hilton, Rodney, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London, 1973), 139, 140, 156.Google Scholar

²⁹ Like that of some African communities, Tunica County (Mississippi) Afro-American oral tradition contains a narrative attributing white dominance to their discovery of the tools of oppression: pencils, paper, and account books. Sydney Nathans, “Gotta Mind to Move, A Mind to Settle Down,” in A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald, Cooper, William J., Holt, Michael F., McCardel, John, eds. (Baton Rouge, 1986), 215. I am grateful to Professor Nathans for sharing his information before it appeared in published form.Google Scholar

³⁰ Clancy, , From Memory to Written Record, 27.Google Scholar

³¹ For a detailed study of the kingdom, see Ewald, “The Taqali Kingdom.”

³² The Nuba hills displayed enormous linguistic, social, and political variety. Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 57–64, 71, 79–92.

³³ Interview with 'Ali Inqliz, 4 August 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

³⁴ O'Fahey, R. S. and Spaulding, Jay, Kingdoms of the Sudan (London, 1974), 78–104Google Scholar, and “Hashim and the Musaba'at,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 35:2 (1972), 316–33.Google Scholar

³⁵ Indirect but strong evidence indicates that Taqali enjoyed relatively high agricultural yields within the hills. Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 64–65, 71–73, 76–77.

I learned about Isma'il's defense and mediation in interviews with 'AH Ingliz, 25 July and 4 August 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

³⁶ I strongly agree with Carol Smith when she asserts that we must understand how people on the peripheries of expanding capitalist systems “make their own history—how people form local-level institutions that are often opposed to the interests of capitalism.” Smith, , “Local History in a Global Context,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26:2 (1984), 194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ For a description of one annual slave raid, see Pallme, Ignatius, Travels in Kordofan (London, 1884), 305–44.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 218–20, 232, 241–47.

³⁹ Pallme, , Travels, 16Google Scholar; Kotschy, T., “Reise von Chartumnach Kordofan, 1838,” Petermanns Mitteilungen, erganzung II (1862), 12.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Commander in Kordofan to Musa Pasha, 19 Dhu al-Hijji, 1280 (1863), Central Records Office (CRO), Khartoum, Miscellaneous 1/89/1428.

⁴¹ Mansfield Parkyns, “Notes on Tagulla, the Noubas, Dowleeb.” manuscript, n.d., photocopy in Sudan Collection, University of Khartoum Library.

⁴² Pallme, , Travels, 171Google Scholar–72; Ruppell, E., Reisen, in Nubien, Kordofan, und dem Petraischen Arabien (Frankfurt, 1829), 144Google Scholar, 151, 175; Russegger, J., Reisen in Europa, Asien, und Afrika: Part 2, Reise in Egypten, Nubien, und Ost Sudan (Stuttgart, 1843), 195.Google Scholar

⁴³ Cuny, Charles, Journal de Voyage de Siout à el-Obeid, 1857–1858(Paris, 1863), 163; Ruppell, Reisen, 144; interview with Miriam Sukin, 4 March 1979, in 'Abbasiya.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Contrary to the image of a territorially based state forming over a lineage society, lineagelike organizations began to develop in Taqali as a result of political processes of a state. Ewald, “The Taqali Kingdom,” 132, 137–50.

⁴⁵ Villagers today stress the importance of the shaykh al-tin, the local territorial authority, visà- vis the king. Narratives about the king also reveal the local leaders' continued authority over land and labor. Interview with Muahmmad wad al-Hasayn, 29 August and 3 September 1977, in Orokundo; 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

⁴⁶ Interviews with Idris al-Zaybeq, 6 March 1977, 'Ali Tahir and 'Abd al-Rahman Hajj alTahir, 30 September 1978, both in 'Abbasiya.

⁴⁷ al-Rahim, Muhammad 'Abd, Al-Nida ft Difa al-lfitra (Cairo, n.d.). p. 127: Tutschek. “Ethnologische Skizzen aus Tumale,” Das Ausland, 274 (16 November 1847), 1098–1099; interviews with Miriam Sukin, 4 March 1978, and Hajji Shawl Bitt Kinani, 4 May 1978, both in 'Abbasiya; Isma'il wad al-Makk 'Ali, 12 May 1978, in Moreib; Muhammad wad al-Hasayn, 3 August 1977, Orokundo.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The themes of prayer and sacrifices—especially petitions for rain—and possession of ecstasy recur in both Islam and hill religion. In addition both clerics and local religious experts protected the country from invasion by outsiders. Interviews with Muhammad wad al-Hasayn, 20 June 1977, in Orokundo, and Isma'il wad al-Makk 'Ali, 12 May 1978, in Moreib; Tutschek, “Ethnologische Skizzen,” 274 (16 November 1847), 1089, 1098–1099, 1103, and Das Ausland, n.s. 81 (4 April 1853), 33.

⁴⁹ Interviews with Mansur Jayli, 15 June 1977, and 8 and 16 September 1978. 'Ali Inqliz, 23 September 1978, all in 'Abbasiya.

⁵⁰ Taqali people point out the remains of a mosque in the ruins of the old royal compound. They remember certain nineteenth-century clerics as having been imams of the mosque, or directors of the Qura'nic school. 'Ali Inqliz, 18 March 1979, in Kiraya, and 30 September 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

⁵¹ Taqali people, for example, insisted on customary law for murder cases and land disputes. Interviews with Mansur Jayli, 20 August 1977, Hajj Ahmad al-Fiki, 17 August 1977, Juma'Effendi, 26 April 1978, 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, all in 'Abbasiya.

⁵² Havelock, , Literate Revolution, 139.Google Scholar

⁵³ Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Skakir, 18 July 1978, Mansur Jayli, 8 September 1978, 'Alui Inqliz, 16 and 23 September 1978, 'Aba al-Qadir Muhammad and Muhammad 'Abd al-Qadir, 8 October 1978, all in 'Abbasiya.

⁵⁴ Interviews with 'Abd ak-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, Mensur Jayli, 28 July 1978, 'Ali Inqliz, 25 July and 8 September 1978, Hajj Ahmad al-Fiki, 17 August 1978, 'Abd al-Qadir Muhammed and Muhammad 'Abd al-Qadir, 1 September and 8 October 1978, all in 'Abbasiya; 'Abd al-Qadir Muhammad, 6 December 1978, in Kamroqia.

⁵⁵ Interviews with Mansur Jayli, 5 April 1978, 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, 'Ali Inqliz, 25 July 1978, Muhammad 'Abd al-Qadir, 8 October 1978, Muhammad 'Abd al-Qadir and 'Abd al-Qadir Muhammad, 11 October 1978, all in 'Abbasiya; 'Abd al-Qadir Muhammad, 17 October 1978, Kamroqia.

⁵⁶ Merchants, clerics, and probably the army deserters to whom the king gave houses—lived in villages clustered immediately around the compound. Interview with Mansur Jayli, 15 January 1977, 'Ali Inqliz, 4 October 1978, both in 'Abbasiya; 'Ali Inqliz, 18 March 1979, Kiraya.

⁵⁷ Interview with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

⁵⁸ Mauss, M., The Gift, Ian Cunnison, trans. (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Levi-Strauss, C., “Reciprocity: The Essence of Family Life,” in The Family: Its Structure and Function, Coser, R. L., ed. (New York, 1964Google Scholar); Taussig, M., The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Hill, 1980), 193–95.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Interview with 'Ali Inqliz, 23 September 1978.

⁶⁰ Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr and Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, and Hajj Ahmad al-Fiki,17 August 1978, both in 'Abbasiya.

⁶¹ Interview with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shkir, 18 July 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

⁶² In his critique of literacy, Plato expressed his fear that writing would turn knowledge itself into a commodity to be bought and sold in the market place. Goody and Watt, “Consequences of Literacy,” 49.

⁶³ “ … to give something is to give a part of oneself,” Mauss, , The Gift, 10.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See, for example, Taussig, , The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, 25, 28, 30–36, and passim.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ This is because performing is not merely a recitation, but a “moment of creation,” Lord, Singer of Tales, 14,27–29.

⁶⁶ Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, and 'Ali Inqliz, 13 March 1979, both in 'Abbasiya; Babikr Kakum, 23 May 1978, in Moreib.

⁶⁷ Interview with Mansur Jayli, 20 August 1977, in 'Abbasiya.

⁶⁸ Interview with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, and 'Ali Inqliz, 25 July 1978, both in 'Abbasiya.

⁶⁹ Interview with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

⁷⁰ Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 27 April 1977, and 'Ali Inqliz, 25 July 1978, both in 'Abbasiya.

⁷¹ Mercer, Patricia, “Shilluk Trade and Politics from the Mid-Seventeenth Century to 1861,” Journal of African History, 12:3 (1971), 407–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellefonds, Linant de, “Journal of a Voyage on the Bacher el Abiad,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 2 (1832): 184—86Google Scholar; Rollet, J. Brun, Le Nil Blanc et le Sudan (Paris, 1953), 94–95.Google Scholar

⁷² Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 224–29.

⁷³ Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July and 28 August 1978, 'Ali Inqliz, 30 August and 8 September 1978, and 13 March 1979, all in 'Abbasiya.

⁷⁴ Ewald, “The Kingdom of Taqali,” 230.

⁷⁵ Brun-Rollet, , Le Nil Blanc, 94; J. Petherick, "Report on the Slave Trade in the Sudan," 5 November 1861. Great Britain, F. O. Series 84, vol. 1144.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Parkyns, “Notes on Tagulla.”

⁷⁷ Interview with 'Ali Inqliz, 13 March 1979, in 'Abbasiya.

⁷⁸ Petherick, “Report on the Slave Trade,” J. and K. Petherick, Travels, 1, 21. Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 10 May 1977, Hajji Shawl bitt Kinani, 2 January 1979, 'Ali Inqliz, 13 March 1979, all in 'Abbasiya.

⁷⁹ 1 would like to thank Dr. R. S. O'Fahey for providing me with information on the Dar Fur and Kordofan charters.

⁸⁰ Interview with 'Ali Inqliz, 13 March 1979 in 'Abbasiya. Another informant offered a different story of the origins of the strife between the Kinana shaykh and the king; Mansur Jayli, 26 December 1978, in 'Abbasiya.

⁸¹ Interviews with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, and 'Ali Inqiiz, 8 September 1978, both in 'Abbasiya.

⁸² Interview with Muhammad 'Abd al-Qadir and 'Abd al-Qadir Muhammad, 18 October 1978, in ' Abbasiya.

⁸³ Interview with 'Abd al-Khayr Ahmad Shakir, 18 July 1978, in 'Abbasiya.