The Sultanate of Darfur — the Keira State in Western Sudan (1603–1916)
"Darfur" means the home of the Fur, after the Fur people centred around volcanic Jebel Marra in the middle of the region. Before the Keira sultanate arose, two historically documented powers succeeded one another in the area: the Daju, who founded the first known kingdom there by the twelfth century AD, then the Tunjur, who succeeded them in the fourteenth century; the Tunjur intermarried with the Fur, paving the way for the later dynasty.
Suleiman Solong is regarded as the founder of the Keira dynasty and the Sultanate of Darfur; the sultan lists place his reign between 1603 and 1637, though sources differ on pinning down the exact start years. Among his forebears mentioned in historical traditions is Sultan Dali, who divided the country into provinces and laid down a penal code known as the "Book of Dali", which is still preserved and differs in some of its rulings from conventional jurisprudence. In the seventeenth century, the Keira sultans introduced the "hakura" system for granting and organizing land.
The sultanate reached its strength under Ahmad Bakr (about 1682–1722), Suleiman's grandson, who made Islam the state religion and encouraged migration to it from Bornu and Bagirmi; in his era Darfur's influence extended east to the banks of the Atbara River. The capital later settled in El Fasher after about 1790, and the sultanate was a major power in the Sahel region, entering repeated wars with Sennar and Wadai, and maintaining a wide trade network with Egypt and North Africa.
The sultanate's economy partly relied on the "Darb al-Arba'in" (Forty Days' Road) desert route, which set out from Kobbei, north of El Fasher, and headed north through the oases to Asyut in Egypt; it was so named because caravans took about forty days to cross it. Through this route Darfur exported ivory and other goods to Egypt, and controlling it required understandings with the tribes whose lands the caravans crossed.
The sultanate fell the first time in the war with the forces of Turco-Egyptian rule and their ally Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur: Sultan Ibrahim was killed in the autumn of 1874, the title of sultan was abolished, and Darfur came under Egyptian rule, then later fell under the Mahdist state. In 1898 Ali Dinar, a descendant of the sultans, restored the sultanate, and the Anglo-Egyptian government of Sudan recognized him in 1899 in return for an annual tribute; he ruled Darfur effectively independently until Anglo-Egyptian forces invaded it in 1916 and he was killed on November 6 of that year; Darfur was then formally annexed to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan on January 1, 1917.
📚 Sources: P. M. Holt & M. W. Daly, A History of the Sudan: From the Coming of Islam to the Present Day; R. S. O'Fahey, State and Society in Dār Fūr; John Stewart, African States and Rulers (lists of the Sultans of Darfur); Sudan Notes and Records studies on the 1916 invasion of Darfur. — Editorial Team
