Trarza Moor of the Senegal
“The nomadic or settled Moors of the western Sahara, extending from Morocco to the Senegal (the Traza, the Brakna, etc.) speak Arabic and “Zenagha,” which is a Berber dialect.” “These are Berbers more or less crossed with Negro blodd. It must further be observed that the name of Moors is very wrongly applied to the Mussulmun inhabitants of the towns of Algeria and Tunis and to the Riffians of Morocco.”” The Fellaheen, Mussulmans (635,600 in 1894) of the lower valley of the Nile (as far as the first cataract), mixed descendants of the ancient Egyptians, must be included among the Arabo-Berbers because they have preserved intact the type of the primitive Egyptians, fundamentally Ethiopian, so well represented on various monuments in the valley of the Nile.”
“The ancient Egyptian language is preserved, however, under the form of the Coptic dialect which, until quite recent times, served as the liturgicial language to the Christian section of the inhabitnts of lower Egypt, known by the name of the Copts (5000,000 in 1894; cephalic index 76, according to Chantre). We must likewise add to the Arabo-Berber group the Barabara (in the singular Berberi) inhabiting to the number of about 180,000 the part of the Nile Valley situated between the first and fourth cataract.”
“The peoples living between the Hausa on the east and the Mandingans on the west are still little known, and seem to be much mixed. Quite to the north, in the bend of the Niger, below Timbuctoo, are found the Songhai or Sonrhays, who speak a language apart, and in the north are mixed with the Ruma “Moors,” emigrants from Morocco, and in the south with the Fulahs.“
“The true zone in which the cowry circulates is, however, tropical Africa; the fact is explained by its rarity, for the shell not being known in the Atlantic, it is only by commercial relations that it could have been propagated from east to west across the continent, from Zanzibar to the Senegal, and these commercial relations must have existed for a long period, for Cadmosto and other Portuguese travellers of the fifteenth century mention the use of the cowry as money among the “Moors” of the Senegal.”
Source: The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography By Joseph Deniker
