Note 200 — The Tarik É Soudan

"Like Homer, Abderrahman sometimes wanders astray," says DuBois, "pen in hand. Side by side with the gravest events he mentions that 'a white crow appeared from the 22nd of Rebia to the 28th of Djoumada, on which day the children caught and killed it.' Elsewhere in the narratives of his voyage to Massina, one of his hosts gave him his daughter in marriage. He was fifty years of age at the time, and in possession of several other wives. Not content with imparting the event to posterity, he adds, 'My union with Fatima was concluded on the twelfth day of Moharrem, 1645, but the marriage was not consummated until Friday the sixteenth.' I believe he would have given us his washing-bills if the use of body linen had been familiar to the Sudanese. In referring to this tendency of the annalist, DuBois does not mean to say anything which might be taken as an undervaluation of this work. He aims to show how the Tarik reminds the reader of works of some of the leading writers of the most civilized countries." See DuBois, "Timbuctoo the Mysterious," p. 316.