ABSTRACT
The greater portion of the non-Arab tribes which stretch from the Gongola Valley to the Shari, and from the Benne to the Tibesti highlands and Wadai, believe that they originally came from a country called Tarn or Yayambal, somewhere to the East of Lake Chad. The idea may be due, in part, to the Muslim influence of Yaman, but its ubiquity and universality seems to point further back than the Muslim era for its origin, and to indicate some language which has long disappeared but was spoken somewhere in the eastern parts of the Sudan or Nile Valley, and possibly beyond.
