Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/118

72 is "a well known town in El Maghrib, and a race located between El Zanj—Zanzibar and the Negrotic coast—and El Habash : they are descended from the Himyar chiefs Sanháj (Sinhagia) and Sumámah, and they arrived at the epoch of the conquest of Africa by the king Afríkús (Scipio Africanus?)." A few details upon the subjects of mutilation and excision prove these to have been the progenitors of the Somal, who are nothing but a slice of the great Gala nation Islamized and Semiticized by repeated immigrations from Arabia. In the Kamus we also read that Samal is the name of the father of a tribe, so called because he thrust out (, samala) his brother's eye. The Shaykh Jami, a celebrated genealogist, informed me that in 666 = A.D. 1266–7, the Sayyid Yusuf al-Baghdadi visited the port of Siyaro near Berberah, then occupied by an infidel magician, who passed through mountains by the power of his gramarye: the saint summoned to his aid Mohammed bin Yunis al-Siddiki, of Bayt al-Fakih in Arabia, and by their united prayers a hill closed upon