History Of The Funj Sultanate

Funj Sultanate: From around 1500 to 1821, the Sinnar sultanate ruled over part of Sudan’s northern Nile Valley, the last in a long line of precolonial kingdoms that form one of the world’s most ancient and persistent civilized statecraft traditions. The sultanate’s largest area stretched from the Ottoman Egyptian border at the Third Cataract southward to the Ethiopian highlands and the Sobat River, and from the Red Sea westward across the Nile to cover the Nuba Mountains and Kordofan. 

The sultanate emerged from the ashes of the medieval Nubian kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia, during which Egyptian conquerors introduced Islam and Arabic. RED Major trade routes. Selima Oasis DARFUR Kobbai BERBERISTAN Second cataract Third cataract. Old Dongola BEJA Fourth cataract FUNJ SULTANATE, 6th cataract Qarri SEA, 5th cataract Shendi Arbaji El-Obeid 0 0 100 miles, 200 kilometers TAQALI Sennar Funj sultanate, 16th–17th centuries. Funj sultanate, 16th–17th centuries. 

Suakin ETHIOPIA addressed the Nubian world, and as a result, the kings of Sinnar accepted Islam as the state religion and Arabic as the administrative language, reestablishing their realm on traditional African foundations. In addition to having a northern and central core of Nubian speakers, the sultanate expanded to include extensive eastern, western, and southern borders of ethnically diverse subject peoples. The Funj, Sinnar’s hereditary ruling class, descended from a remote mythical ancestor’s female line. A royal court of titled high officials chose the king among the sons of Funj noblewomen by previous rulers. 

Unless a noble man acquired the hand of a princess, his position perished with him; hence, the pursuit and bestowal of noble Funj spouses served as a key element of statecraft. A hierarchy of noble status and governmental positions emerged, with each successful lord owing political responsibilities to the superior from whom he got a Funj wife, as well as his title and office, while staying socially subservient to his maternal uncle indefinitely. 

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For example, if the royal court rejected and removed the monarch, his maternal uncle would be responsible for his execution. Subordinate lords, in turn, gave their superiors female relatives of Funj lineage as wives; thus, the monarch had approximately 600 noble wives, a senior nobleman about 200, and a lesser lord about 30. Sinnar was primarily an agricultural civilization, where the king, theoretically, derived the majority of its income from land.

The Funj nobility’s kinship pyramid also helped to organize the realm’s territorial division into major provinces and subordinate district governates. The monarch, after reserving some estates as personal demesnes, assigned the majority of the realm to a number of his kinsmen as provincial governates; they, in turn, reserved demesnes and split their provinces as district governates among their kinsmen. 

Lesser lords not only obeyed and served their superiors politically but also paid homage to them with high-quality commodities from their estates, such as cloth, tobacco, gold, ivory, horses, medicines, spices, and perfumes. Superior noblemen redistributed exotic types of wealth acquired through activities monopolized by the central government, most notably slaves abducted by legal procedure or combat, as well as foreign luxury commodities imported from overseas by royal trading expeditions. 

Legally, subjects supported their lord’s estate by paying substantial levies on grain production and animal husbandry, along with a wide range of fees and responsibilities, either in kind or through labor services. Strict sumptuary rules maintained a social distance between noblemen and subjects, and serious kinds of transgression, such as leaving one’s estate without permission or bearing the progeny of an illicit mixed union, were punishable by servitude. 

The Sinnar sultanate had peaceful ties with its neighbors for the majority of its existence, but a record of significant events must necessarily highlight the outliers. Sinnar tried to restrict the Ottoman Empire’s advances in the sixteenth century, both along the Nile in the north and, with imperial Ethiopia’s help, on the Red Sea coast. 

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As the Funj pushed southward up the Blue Nile to conquer the gold-producing area of Fazughli in the seventeenth century, their ties with Ethiopia deteriorated; significant Ethiopian expeditions faced significant setbacks in 1618–1619 and 1744. During the eighteenth century, Sinnar and her fur-speaking western neighbors engaged in an increasingly fierce war over the huge gold-producing territory of Kordofan, which lay between the two kingdoms’ heartlands.

The Musabba’at, a defeated and exiled section of the Dar Fur royal line, first established itself in Kordofan and used it as a base for an attempt to re-conquer their homeland; after 1785, the Dar Fur sultans struck eastward to impose their rule at the expense of both Funj Sultanate and Musabba’at. Sinnar was demonstrating signs of internal weakness in the early nineteenth century, which drew increased acquisitive attention from Egypt’s Turkish rulers. 

The Funj Sultanate kingdom reached its pinnacle during the reigns of the powerful seventeenth-century monarchs Rubat I, Badi II, and Unsa II, who established diplomatic and commercial relations with the Islamic heartlands, established Sinnar as the first fixed urban capital for their previously agrarian realm, and transformed this new city into a large and cosmopolitan metropolis by dispatching royal caravans to attract foreigners with valuable goods and skills. 

However, these more personal contacts with the outside world could not fail to reveal aspects of Funj Sultanate culture, particularly noble Matrilin earity and royal rule over foreign business, that would undoubtedly be controversial from a Middle Eastern cultural standpoint. As the eighteenth century progressed, invasive alien ideals found ever-larger native constituencies: demographically insignificant male Funj princes, persons aspiring to Islamic piety and erudition, governors barred from royal trade, and would-be merchants themselves. 

Cultural dissidence manifested itself in the rise of towns, which increased from one in 1700 to about thirty by 1821, as well as escalating political chaos; royal matrilinearity was abolished in 1719, a military strongman reduced the king to a puppet in 1762, and by 1800, the urbanized fragments of the old agrarian realm had devolved into an indefinite civil war. 

Many dissidents cheered on the Turkish invaders from Egypt who took over the kingdom in 1820–1821, leaving the last defenders of the old order easily defeated.

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Egypt Under Ottoman Rule

Egypt Under Ottoman Rule: As soon as the Ottomans took over Egypt in 1517, they were in the middle of trade lines from Africa to India and the Mediterranean. Sulayman Pasha, who was viceroy of Egypt, sent the Ottoman ships from Suez to Aden in 1538 to govern trade in the Indian Ocean. 

But the Portuguese beat the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean. After that, the Ottomans’ position in the Red Sea was mostly important for trade with Yemen and Africa. The Ottomans could do business with the African state of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) via the port of Massawa on the Red Sea. When the Ottomans took over Nubia after 1538, they set up a border with Funj on the Nile. 

Through Funj and Darfur, trade with Africa was by far the most important. In the early 1600s, the leading families of these states converted to Islam, most likely so they could trade more with Ottoman Egypt. The Forty Days’ Road, also known as Darb al-Arba’in, was the main trade road from Sudan to Egypt. It went around the troubled areas of Nubia. This is the path that wagons from Darfur took from Qubayh to Asyut in Upper Egypt. 

Funj caravans took different ways from Qarri or Shandi to Ibrim. They met up and formed a single caravan, which continued to Isna in Upper Egypt. This line, which crosses the Nile at al-Damir, could also link to the Darb al-Arba’in at Salima. At Asyut and Isna, the Egyptian government imposed taxes on the caravans and sold some of their goods. The merchants proceeded to Cairo, where they once again taxed and sold the remaining goods in the markets.

The wagon traders stayed in Cairo for six to eight months, buying goods to send to Sudanese Africa. The next group of Sudanese caravans completed the circle. In Libya, Cyrenaica was another way to get to Egypt. Caravans coming from Darfur also used this path. Additionally, there were lines that stretched from the east to the west. The lines extended from Funj’s Shandi to Suakin on the Red Sea, and from Shandi and Sennar to Darfur in the west.

The success of the caravan trade required a high level of organization among the participants. The Darfur caravan had at least 5,000 people and animals. As a result, the Darfur parade is established each year as a state-run enterprise. This allowed the sultans to collect taxes, buy slaves for their troops, and give luxury goods to those who followed them as a reward.

The government appears to have exerted less control over the Sennar caravans, as various caravans established themselves independently. But the Funj sultans also relied on customs duties to make money, as well as slaves for their armies. Traders acted as go-betweens for the sultans of Sudan and the viceroys of Egypt. Along with the Darfur caravan, there were 500 traders known as jallaba. They were a mixed-race group whose main members were from the Upper Nile Valley. 

There were a lot of people who came from Arab and Nubian families, like the Ja’ali, the Juhayna, and the Abdallabi. The jallaba paid for the caravans and the customs fees that the government wanted them to pay. Sennar, Funj’s capital, and many other Sudanese cities served as commercial hubs, trading goods and collecting customs. Smaller towns, such as Qarri and Shandi, allowed business.

The sultans lived in al-Fashir, which was the capital of Darfur. The jallaba, on the other hand, probably built a city that was successful at business. This was Qubayh, a town just north of the capital. The nomads in the Sahara and Nile Valley, who controlled the desert routes, also had to work with the trans-Saharan caravans. The nomads wanted customs duty because they protected the caravans, drove camels, and acted as guides. 

The ‘Ababda watched over the Funj caravans that went to Upper Egypt. Each slave was worth three gold pieces, and each camel was worth one and a half. This happened in 1798. People believed that caravans traversing nomadic lands deserved protection. As a result, anyone could steal from a caravan that lacked the supervision of its designated guardians. Trade with Africa necessitated collaboration between merchants, state representatives in the north and south, and people on its edges.

Without a doubt, the slave trade was the most important. It’s possible that as many as 6,000 slaves passed through Darfur every year, and Funj delivered about 550 of them. It was okay to trade slaves. Capturing non-Muslim Africans, which is legal in Islam, provided the nomadic pastoralists with a valuable commodity to trade, enabling them to access markets. Slaves were typically non-Muslims who lived on Sudan’s southern borders. The Bar al-Ghazal area, the Nuba mountains, and the Shilluk and Dinka people were home to Darfur’s slaves.

In Funj, Abyssinia provided a large number of slaves. The Abyssinian slaves were mainly women. They sold for as much as sixty gold pieces in 1798. On average, slaves sold for thirty-five gold pieces in the Cairo markets in 1798, although eunuchs, aged between eight and ten years, sold for double or triple that amount. In the Darfur caravan, nearly four-fifths of the slaves sold were women. 

Cairo merchants and slave merchants in Istanbul purchased slaves, but the mamluk households of Cairo purchased many of them. In Isna and Asyut, the Egyptian rulers imposed a tax of four gold pieces on each imported slave. In Cairo, there were further taxes amounting to one and a half gold pieces. As with Darfur and Funj, the slave trade was a major source of income for Ottoman Egypt. 

Besides slaves, the caravans provided camels, gold, senna or cassia, tamarinds, gum, natron, alum, ebony, ostrich plumes, elephant tusks, tiger skins, and hippopotamus whips (kurbaj). As European demand grew in the eighteenth century, ivory and ostrich plumes became increasingly profitable. In 1798, the Egyptian authorities’ standard tax on a camel load was two gold pieces, but for camels carrying ostrich plumes, the rate was five and a half gold pieces.

In exchange, the southbound caravans carried Indian muslins, Syrian and Egyptian silks and cottons, and, in later times, inexpensive European cottons. European guns and swords, lead, gunpowder, and copper were all considered to be luxury goods. So were rice, sugar, perfumes, spices, horses, glass, silk, writing paper, coffee, and more. Cairo was the primary hub for selling African goods.

As tax farms, the Janissaries ran the Cairo customs houses in Old Cairo and Bulaq, which let them keep two-thirds of the money for themselves. Alexandria was the way that goods from Africa and Egypt got to Europe. Rosseta and Damietta sent ships to Asia Minor and Syria. The janissaries ran all of these establishments and kept most of the incoming money.

Europe sold ivory, ostrich feathers, gum, tamarind, senna, and gold. Istanbul received shipments of animal skins, gum, tamarinds, senna, and African slaves. Conversely, North Africa primarily traded slaves, making them the most valuable commodity. The Hijaz, an Ottoman region in the Arabian Peninsula, served as another marketplace for African goods.

In this case, the yearly journey correlated with the trade. Every year, the African sultans send a payment to Mecca. The Darfur-based payment caravan met up with the main Egyptian convoy in Cairo. As the Sudanic Sultanates grew, so did the number of visitors. The pilgrims, like people from the Maghrib and West Africa, traded with others along the way.

Travelers followed the caravans to Egypt, but Suakin also provided a different way for travelers from Sudan and West Africa to get there. So, Ottoman trade with Africa followed a trend set during the Islamic conquest of Africa, when trade with Africa helped to convert African societies to Islam.

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Cushite Era

Australopithecus Afarensis, better known as “Lucy,” is the earliest known ancestor of humans. She lived in the Horn of Africa more than a million years ago, according to fossil studies. So, Northeast Africa, which includes the Horn of Africa, may have been the first place where people lived (Brandt 1992). Hominids may have been pushed out of the Horn of Africa around 125,000 years ago by early Homo humans. 

In northern Somalia, near the city of Hargeisa, a specific type of Stone Age industry with blades and flint tools began to form many years later, approximately 25,000 years ago (Brandt 1992, p. 29). However, the identity of the people who made these tools remains unknown. The people who lived in the Horn during the Stone Age, even in the later Stone Age, about 12,000 years ago, are also unknown. 

So, in its early stages, digging doesn’t tell us anything about specific racial groups. To summarize, we can only talk about early human groups in the area right now. We haven’t talked about Cushitic or Semitic groups yet. In the 20th century, a few searches in the north turned up information on “everything from Acheulian sites to Neolithic rock art.” 

According to radiocarbon dates from 18,000 to 40,000 years ago, some of the sites showed that the same people lived there over and over again (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, pp. 7–15). However, there is still less searching there than in West Africa and the Nile Valley. In the north, between Erigavo in the mountains and Las Koreh on the Gulf of Aden, there are hills and valleys. In 1980, a small-scale archaeological survey found “a series of caves and rock-shelters, many of which revealed surface scatters of Middle to Late Stone Age artifacts and fossilized bone” (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, p. 8). 

Rock shelters at Karin Hagin, a natural mountain pass about 70 kilometers southwest of Bosaso, have detailed rock paintings (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, p. 16). A type of cattle known as jamuusa, no longer found in Somalia but found in Egypt, is the most intriguing feature. There are also goats in the drawings. The style of these drawings is a lot like the rock art of Ethiopia and northeastern Africa in general, which is interesting. 

People who live in Northeast Africa and can now be found as far south as past the Equator in East Africa are called Cushites. In the past, they were mostly called Hamites. The words “Cushite” and “Hamite” come from the Christian Bible. However, the term “Hamite” has become less common. In their efforts to create a wide range of African races and subraces, European anthropologists have long fought about where the Cushites came from and have sometimes seen them as a mix of Caucasoid (white) immigrants from outside of Africa and dark-skinned (Nigeria) Africans. 

We have seen Cushites referred to as Black Caucasoids or Europoids, which is not appropriate (Seligman 1930). In the human range, it is not straightforward to tell where one person ends and another begins. Picking any number of traits to create human typologies means ignoring others. Also, these kinds of meanings are based on the personal preferences of the people who are making the lists. They also contradict the notion that all human groups have always interacted, beginning with those in close proximity and progressing to groups of varying sizes. In other words, every group of people is a mix of people.

Also, these kinds of groups don’t help us learn more about how people moved around in general, and they’ve led us to make wrong assumptions about where the Cushitic peoples of Africa and the greatest ancient civilization that grew out of Northeast Africa (ancient Egypt) came from. Since history books began keeping records of the area, which could be as early as 7,000 years ago, in the late Stone Age, the Cushites have lived in Northeast Africa. 
Still, not much is known about their past. Experts and archaeologists may have concentrated most of their work on ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley, failing to gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire region and its inhabitants.

Linguistics reveals potential connections between the languages spoken by the Cushites and other languages. Therefore, we now understand that the Cushites’ languages share similarities with the Ancient Egyptian, Semitic, Chadic, and Berber languages, collectively referred to as the Afroasiatic “superfamily” of languages. Out of these, only the Semitic group has some native speakers in Asia. These people moved there from the African side of the Red Sea. 

Therefore, it’s likely that the ancestors of people who speak Afroasiatic languages first lived in northeastern Africa, mostly on the coasts of the Red Sea. They then spread out, with some Chadic groups heading into Western Sudan and some Semitic groups crossing the Bab el Mandab Straits into the Arabian Peninsula. After the Stone Age, around 6,000 years ago, people who lived in the lowlands of the Horn near the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden relied on keeping domesticated animals as their main source of income. 

In those early days, it rained more in the mountains and along the coast, which made raising animals easier (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, p. 10). New studies from northeastern and eastern Africa suggest that southern Egypt was raising and cultivating cattle, wheat, and barley more than 8,000 years ago. People first tamed sheep and goats about 7,500 years ago (Brandt 1992, p. 30).

People from different parts of the area learned from each other. For example, people who lived in the Nile Valley learned how to farm and handle cattle, while individuals who lived in the drier areas learned how to raise small animals like goats and sheep. At about the same time, groups living in the mountains or plateaus, like those in Ethiopia, started farming. From Egypt to Cape Guardui in what is now Somalia and up to the coast of the Red Sea during the time of the Egyptian culture, people lived in northeastern Africa. 

People generally say that the early Cushites were mostly herders, but it’s more likely that their jobs depended on the weather. If the area had a lot of water, they farmed, but if it was mostly dry, they raised sheep and goats as herders. Early Cushite societies also established castes, limiting their roles to specific tasks. For instance, only specific groups had permission to handle metal and leather.

For example, the warrior class was in charge of war, while the priest class was in charge of faith. This set of deals has been around for a long time. The early Cushites left behind remnants that warrant further study and research. Huge shrines in the Horn of Africa, for instance, serve as an ideal location for such research. The most famous of these are the huge graves and raised cairns in northern Somalia that stretch all the way to the Dawa River in southern Ethiopia, where the Oromo people’s ancestors lived. 

We haven’t found these massive graves in locations unrelated to early Cushitic settlements. The construction of these massive tombs implies a complex religion with numerous rituals and structures. This is even more true because we know that the Cushites believed in only one sky god, Waaq, prior to Islam and Christianity. The ahan ceremony, which involves creating and burying a grave, required a significant amount of labor from the people. Muslims still do this today.

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