[14] According to Nicholls, at the start of the 20th century, the tribe nobles denied having Arab origins and said that they were indigenous to Sudan and that they have always inhabited the same territory as today.

[15] Although speaking Sudanese Arabic today, the Shaigiya have formerly spoken a Nubian language as late as the 19th century.

[7] The historian Jay Spaulding analyzed several Arabic Shaiqi documents from the mid-19th century and found a widespread use of objective suffix particles which, he believes, had their root in Nobiin.

He concludes that the pre-Arabic language of the Shaiqiya, which he calls Old Shaiqi, was closely related to Nobiin if not identical.

[17] The archaeologist Ali Osman, too, claimed that the Nubian words that survive in the Shaiqi dialect are of Nobiin origin.

[22] The Shaigiya are first mentioned in 1529,[23] when an Italian visitor to Upper Egypt remarked that pyramids could be found in the country of the "Xiogeia".

[24] From the sixteenth century until colonization, the Shaigiya had many prominent Islamic schools which attracted students from all over Sudan.

Still the best early description came from an adventurer and historian John Lewis Burckhardt, who, mesmerized by the Shaigiya, spent some time with the tribe.

The predatory character of the tribe speaks of change from Bruce's time, "My guide, in constant dread of the Shaiqiya would not allow me to light a fire although the nights were getting very cold".

Military training of the Shaiqiya youth was brutal, and at very early age they were capable of launching spears from a horseback by astonishing precision.

They attacked villages and caravans as far as Wadi Halfa in the north, and Shendi in the south forcing some families of the neighbouring tribes to emigrate westwards (Danagla).

Constantly attacking the town of Shendi and killing some of local Mac Nimr's uncles forced the Ja'Alin to seek help from the king of Funj, who at his political decline was too weakened and unable to help.

Their learned men are held in great respect by them; they have schools, wherein all the sciences are taught, which form the course of the Mohammedan study, Mathematics and Astronomy excepted.

[27] Roused by Mihera Bint Abboud, they resisted the Turkish/Egyptian invasion in 1820, at the battle of Korti after refusing to submit and were defeated due to the use of fire-arms and cannons and retreated southwards.

[27] In the Mahdist War of 1884/85, General Gordon's first fight was to rescue a few Shaiqiya, still serving with the invader and besieged in a fort at Al Halfaya,[27] just north of Khartoum.

Numbers of Shaigiya continued in the service of General Gordon, and this led to the proscription of the tribe by the Mahdi.

General Ibrahim Abboud, decorated with the MBE for his valour at Keren in 1941, was a Shaiqi from the Onia section and later President of the Sudan in 1964.

"[citation needed] Freedom-loving and hospitable, they had schools in which all Muslim science was taught, and were rich in corn and cattle.

[citation needed] There is a special instrument that can be heard in Shaigi tribal music: the tambour, or tanbūra, a kind of lyre.

The Shaigiya used to make their homes from bricks made of mud and cow dung, as other North African and Arab ethnic groups had done.

It is quite common that multiple generations will stay in one house (mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, children, aunts, uncles, cousins).

Religion is considered important, and for this, many children attend traditional religious schools, called khalwa in Sudan.

Children in the Shaigiya tribe like to play a kind of game called Seega, which is similar to tic-tac-toe.

When there is a wedding, the groom applies henna, a kind of black decoration that people usually put on their hands and feet.

Henna is applied as a paste made of dried and powdered Lawsonia leaves, with added oil and water.