Note 200 — Chapter III
Reading edition
H. A. MacMichael has investigated the value of these racial claims in the case of the Kababish and indicates the probable admixture of Negro, Mediterranean, Hamite and other strains in the Sudanese Arabs. He says, "Among the more settled tribes any important sheikh or faki can produce a table of his ancestors (i.e. a nisba) in support of his asseverations.... I asked a village sheikh if he could show me his pedigree, as I did not know from which of the exalted sources his particular tribe claimed descent. He replied that he did not know yet, but that his village had subscribed 60 piastres the month before to hire a faki to compose a nisba for them, and that he would show me the result when it was finished." "The Kababish: Some Remarks on the Ethnology of a Sudan Arab Tribe," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XL. 1910, p. 216.