Sudanese Encyclopedia of Tribes and Genealogies (Arabic: موسوعة القبائل والأنساب في السودان; transliterated: Mawsu'at al-qaba`il wa'l-ansab fi 'l-Sudan) by Awn Alsharif Qasim, printed in Khartoum by Maktabat Afiruqraf (Afro-Graph) in 1996.
[2] Qasim's encyclopaedia had its origins in the mid-1980s when he was collecting material for two of his other contributions, Halfayat al-Muluk, which is a regional biographical dictionary of the Halfaya region north of Khartoum, and Qamus al-lahja al-'ammiya fil-Sudan, 'A Dictionary of Sudanese Arabic'.
As Heather J. Sharkey points out, Richard Leslie Hill felt this problem a long time ago, when he said in the preface to the second edition of his Biographical dictionary of the Sudan, "Little books are born in the Sudan by the dozen, without imprints without date, even without title page.
"[citation needed] Qasim states in his introduction that his original intention was to follow the method used in his first encyclopaedia by including the major ethnic groups, important place names and noteworthy individuals deceased before the present day.
Internal cross-references also appear frequently within entries, where they are identified by the Arabic letter mīm to denote 'see' or 'see also'.