Note 5 — GHÁNAH — Aúdaghost — Aúlíl.

Chénier (Recherches sur les Maures, tom. III. pp. 16 and 79) was the first to pronounce, Walckenaer (Recherches sur l’Afrique Septentrionale, 1822, p. 285) the first to prove, the identity of Sijilmésah سجلماسه with Táfílélt تافيلالت. The arguments of the latter amount to demonstration, and need no reinforcement. Yet we may be permitted to add, that all the Arab writers, without exception, make Sijilmésah contiguous to Darʿah درعه; and that the uncritical Marmol, although he subjoins to his description of Sijilmésah (vol. III. fol. 8) an account also of Táfílélt, denuded of every circumstance which could help to determine its geographical position, yet in copying Leo’s list of the provinces of Numidia, omits Sijilmésah, and substitutes for it Táfílélt (Leo Africanus, pt. I. c. 5. in Ramusio, 1554, vol. I. fol. 1 V, Marmol, I. fol. 12). The name Táfílélt seems to have come into use with the rise of the dynasty of the Fílélí sherífs. The tribe, ennobled by events, gave its name to the country in which it was established. M. Gråberg af Hemsö, therefore (Specchio di Marocco, 1834, p. 65), who refuses his assent to M. Walckenaer’s conclusions, and separates Táfílélt from Sijilmésah for reasons of comparatively little weight, cannot certainly vindicate his mode of using the former of these names, by showing that it occurs in the pages of any historian, native or foreign, anterior to the sixteenth century. The Fílélí tribe or family are however of ancient standing, for Ibn Baṭúṭah informs us that at Kaúkaú, in Negroland, in A.D. 1353, he became acquainted with the faḳíh or doctor, Mohammed the Fílélí الفيلالي.