Sultanate of Sennar (the Funj) — the First Islamic State in the Land of Sudan
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, after the fall of Soba, capital of the Christian Kingdom of Alodia, a new state arose in the south of the land of Nubia: the Sultanate of Sennar. It was founded in 1504 CE as a result of the alliance of the Funj tribes led by Amara Dunqas and the Abdallab tribes led by Abdallah Jamma, and Amara Dunqas made his capital the city of Sennar on the Blue Nile. The state was also known by the names the "Blue Sultanate" and the "Sennar State."
The Sultanate of Sennar is considered the first Arab Islamic state to arise in the land of Sudan after the spread of Islam and the Arabic language in it, as a result of the growing Arab presence and intermarriage between Arabs and Nubians in the north. The Funj sultans adopted the Arabic language as the language of the state, administration and learning, and their subjects were known by the title "al-Sananir." As for the ethnic origin of the Funj, it remains a subject of genuine dispute among historians: between oral accounts that trace them to the Umayyads, and those who trace them to the Nubians or the Shilluk — the truth being that the state arose as an entity uniting multiple peoples.
The kings of Sennar took a documented interest in learning and religion: they established the "Riwaq al-Sinariyya" at al-Azhar in Cairo to accommodate the students of their kingdom sent there, and encouraged the migration of religious scholars to Sudan for preaching and spreading knowledge. Sultan Badi al-Ahmar established an endowment in Medina to receive visitors from his kingdom when visiting the holy lands, and some traces of those endowments still stand today. Throughout the kingdom, "khalwas" — Quranic schools — spread for memorizing the Holy Quran and studying jurisprudence, Arabic language sciences and arithmetic.
Contemporaries testified to the greatness of the state early on: the traveler David Reubeni visited it in 1523 CE and described Amara Dunqas as "ruling the blacks and the whites," his authority extending from the confluence of the two Niles in the south to Dongola in the north, leading armies of horsemen and owning huge herds of cattle. In 1525 CE, the Ottoman admiral Salman Reis mentioned Amara Dunqas and his kingdom in an official report.
The Sultanate of Sennar lasted about three centuries, from 1504 CE until 1821 CE, when the forces of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Wali of Egypt, led by Ismail Pasha, entered Sennar and brought down the state — thus closing the longest pages of independent national rule in Sudan's modern history, and beginning the era of Turco-Egyptian rule.
📚 Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica — entry "Funj dynasty, 1504–1821" (National Library document); Study "Sudan of the Three Niles: The Funj Chronicle 910–1288 / 1504–1871" (Brill, 1999); Encyclopedia of Tribes and Genealogies in Sudan — Awn al-Sharif Qasim — Editorial Team