Sudanese Monarchs
A history of Sudanese monarchs.
Contents
Daju Kingdom
The Daju nation migrated to Jebel Marra (Marra Mountains) sometime by the 12th century. Their society was thoroughly decentralized, and most records come from the period of Islamicization.
Tunjur Kingdom
The Tunjur nation migrated to Jebel Marra in the 15th century and quickly displaced the Daju in power. They were not an Islamic people, but the ruling dynasty institutionalized Islam. Not much else is known.
The Tunjur Empire, which seems to have stretched over a large portion of sub-Saharan Africa towards Lake Chad, institutionalized forced labor in service of the state. The ruling class became wealthy thanks to a boom in Sahel trade.
Sultanate of Darfur
The Tunjur people fell from power suddenly in the 17th century, with the Keira and Wadai sultanates both claiming legitimate descent. The former is better known as the sultanate of Darfur. The Keira dynasty was ethnically Fur, an agricultural nation that may have emerged from the Tunjur. Darfur literally means 'home of the Fur'.
The Keira fynasty largely was a continuation of the local Tunjur kingdom. One notable innovation was a semi-feudal economic system; hawakir (land charters; singular hakura) were granted by the sultan, effectively creating a class of nobility.
The kingdom was briefly interrupted by conquest under Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, a warlord who was effectively an Egyptian vassal.
Mahdist State
In 1881, about at the same time as the Urabi revolution to the north, Muhammad Ahmad launched a jihad against all foreign powers. Khartoum was captured in 1885 following a long seige, leaving the rebels in complete control.
Ahmad died shortly after; he was succeeded by Abdallahi ibn Muhammad who took the name Khalifah al-Mahdi and established a centralized and theocreatic Mahdist State. (Ahmad claimed to be a Mahdi, a messiah.) The capital was established in Omdurman.
British-Egyptian Occupation
The British conquered Sudan in 1898, establishing a British-Egyptian condominium. Ali Dinar was stood up as a vassalized Keira sultan.
In 1915, Ali Dinar declared support for the Ottomans. The British invaded the next year, and in the process he was killed. The kingdom was permanently ended by asserting the singular authority of the English-British condominium.
Shortly after George unilaterally recognized Egypt as independent in early 1922, they asserted complete control over Sudan and effectively divided the region into a Muslim north and a Christian and Animist south. This continued until the Juba Conference in 1947; by 1955 the united Sudanese had self-rule.