History of Darfur

Throughout its history, Darfur has been the home to several cultures and kingdoms, such as the Daju and Tunjur kingdoms. The recorded history of Darfur begins in the seventeenth century, with the foundation of the Fur Sultanate by the Keira dynasty. The Sultanate of Darfur was initially conquered in 1874 by the Khedivate of Egypt. In 1899, the government of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan recognized Ali Dinar as the Sultan of Darfur, in exchange for an annual tribute of 500 pound sterling. This lasted until Darfur was formally annexed in 1916. The region remained underdeveloped through the period of colonial rule and after independence in 1956. The majority of national resources were directed toward the riverine Arabs clustered along the Nile near Khartoum. This pattern of structural inequality and underdevelopment resulted in increasing restiveness among Darfuris. The influence of regional geopolitics and war by proxy, coupled with economic hardship and environmental degradation, from soon after independence led to sporadic armed resistance from the mid-1980s. Violence in Darfur culminated in an armed resistance movement around 2003.

Kingdoms of Darfur

As the region is composed mostly of semi-arid plains it cannot support a dense population. The one exception is the area in and around the Jebal Marra mountains. It was from bases in these mountains that a series of groups expanded to control the region.
The history of the region is extremely poorly documented, especially the earlier periods. Archaeology has hardly made any progress, in part thanks to the continuing state of warfare which hinders research. Documentary history is also rather sparse, Muhammad al-Idrisi, writing in 1154 is the first author to offer information about the region that provides any concrete detail. The Sicilian geographer describes the Tajuwa as pagans inhabiting the region adjacent to the Nile Valley kingdoms, who possessed two towns, the first and capital being Tajuwa and a second town lying six stages away from it called Samna, which was destroyed according to a traveler in the region, by the governor of the Kingdom of Nuba. The bulk of the inhabitants were nomadic with large numbers of cattle and camels, but subject to raiding by their neighbors.

Tora

Oral traditions record a race of white giants called Tora, who allegedly reached Darfur from the north, perhaps indicating a Berber origin. They are credited to have introduced monumental stone architecture and sophisticated agriculture. By the 12th century, the Tora had been succeeded by the Daju.

Daju Period

The Daju – inhabitants of Jebel Marra – appear to have been the dominant group in Darfur in the earliest period recorded. How long they ruled is uncertain with little being known of them save for a list of kings. A. J. Arkell mentions that the Daju are originally meroites who re-established their capital at Jebel Gadir in the Kordofan region. Due to an attack from Nubia about 1100 AD, and for a desire of expansion sultan Ahmed el-Daj relocated his capital to Jebel Marra. He won a battle against the Nubians at Wadi el-Malik and this made him a hero and Emperor for this event the Wadi took his name and his people became known as the Daju. The Nubians attacked the Daju empire again and caused the destruction of the city of Semna east of Al-Fashir. During this period the name of the country was Dardaju. According to tradition the last sultan experienced a coup after his order to relocate Jebel Um-Kardoos and the Daju dynasty migrated westward after the famous Kasifurogei tale about the 15th century, the Tunjur assumed power and the country was renamed Dartunjur. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, writing about 1400, described "Taju" as being a fairly powerful kingdom lying between Kanem and the Nile Valley.

The Tunjur

The Tunjur reached Darfur by way of Bornu and Wadai. The first Tunjur king is said to have been Ahmed el-Makur, who married the daughter of the last Daju monarch. Ahmed reduced many chiefs to submission, and under him the country prospered. His great-grandson, the sultan Dali, a celebrated figure in Darfur histories, was on his mother's side a Fur, and thus brought the dynasty closer to the people it ruled. Dali divided the country into provinces, and established a penal code, which, under the title of Kitab Dali or Dali's Book, is still preserved, and differs in some respects from Sharia law.

Darfur Sultanate

reigned from 1603 to 1637, and was a great warrior and a devote Muslim; he is considered to be the founder of the Keira dynasty and the Sultanate of Darfur. Soleiman's grandson, Ahmad Bakr, made Islam the religion of the state, and increased the prosperity of the country by encouraging immigration from Bornu and Bagirmi. His rule extended east of the Nile as far as the banks of the Atbara. Throughout its history, the sultanate engaged in wars with Sennar, Wadai, Arab tribes and eventually the Egyptians.
In 1856, a Khartoum businessman, Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, began operations in the land south of Darfur and set up a network of trading posts defended by well-armed forces and soon had a sprawling state under his rule. This area known as the Bahr el Ghazal had long been the source of the goods that Darfur would trade to Egypt and North Africa, especially slaves and ivory. The natives of Bahr el Ghazal paid tribute to Darfur, and these were the chief articles of merchandise sold by the Darfurians to the Egyptian traders along the Darb el-Arbaʿīn road to Asyut. Al-Zubayr redirected this flow of goods to Khartoum and the Nile.
Sultan Ibrahim challenged al-Zubayr who allied himself with his former enemies the Egyptians. The following war resulted in the destruction of the sultanate. Ibrahim was slain in battle in the autumn of 1874, and his uncle Hassab Alla, who sought to maintain the independence of his country, was captured in 1875 by the troops of the khedive, and removed to Cairo with his family.

Egyptian rule

The Darfurians were restive under the rule of Egypt, itself under British control since 1882. Various revolts were suppressed, but in 1879 the British Governor-general of Sudan Charles Gordon suggested the reinstatement of the ancient royal family. This was not done, and in 1881 Rudolf Carl von Slatin was made governor of the province.
Slatin defended the province against the forces of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad, who were led by a Rizeigat Sheikh named Madibbo, but surrendered in 1883 and Darfur was incorporated into the Mahdist State. The Darfurians did not support the Mahdi's rule and found themselves in a state of almost constant warfare that ended in the gradual removal of the Mahdi's forces from Darfur.
Ahmad's successor, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, was a Darfuri of the minor Ta’isha tribe of cattle-herders. Abdallahi forced warriors of the Western tribes to move to the capital Omdurman and fight for him, sparking rebellions by the Rizeigat and Kababish nomads.
Following the overthrow of Abdallahi at Omdurman in 1898, In 1899, following Abdallahi defeat at Omdurman a year prior, the government of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan recognized Ali Dinar, a grandson of Mohammed-el-Fadhl, as the Sultan of Darfur, in exchange for an annual tribute of 500 pound sterling. Under Ali Dinar – who during the Mahdi's era had been kept as a prisoner in Omdurman – Darfur enjoyed a period of peace and a de facto return to independence.

British rule

Darfur remained independent until the First World War when the Sultan of Darfur, Ali Dinar, pledged allegiance to the Ottoman Empire. Following this the British invaded, and incorporated the region into Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1916.
Within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the bulk of resources were devoted toward Khartoum and Blue Nile Province, leaving the rest of the country relatively undeveloped. The inhabitants of the river side states, referred to themselves as the awlad al-beled in pride over their primary role and referred to the Westerners as awlad al-gharb, an implicit slur. Meanwhile, the "Africans" were pejoratively known as zurga. Over the course of the Condominium, 56% of all investment occurred in Khartoum, Kassala and Northern Province versus 17% for both Kordofan and Darfur, resulting in about 5-6% in Darfur as Kordofan received the bulk of funds in the West. This was despite the provinces in the Nile Valley having a population of 2.3 million versus 3 million people in the West. Darfur, like the rest of Sudan outside the Nile Valley, remained an undeveloped even as independence was achieved in 1956.

National independence

After independence, it became a major power base for the Umma Party, led by Sadiq al-Mahdi. By the 1960s, some Darfuris were beginning to question the neglect of the region by the Umma, despite their consistent political support. Disillusionment with the religious sect-based parties – Khatmiyya/Democratic Unionist Party in the East and Ansar/Umma in the West – led to a temporary rise of regionally-based parties, including the Darfur Development Front. During the discussions of the proposed Islamic constitution proposed by Hassan al-Turabi, Muslims from Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Red Sea Hills joined the southerners in opposition, perceiving the constitution as a ploy by the center to consolidate their dominance of the marginalized regions. The fracturing of the Umma led to the first political demagoguery attempting to split the "Africans" from the "Arabs" in the 1968 elections, a difficult task as they were substantially intermarried and could not be distinguished by skin tone. Sadiq al-Mahdi, calculating that the Fur and other "African" tribes formed a majority of the electorate, allied with the DDF in blaming "the Arabs" for Darfur's neglect. This left Sadiq's opponent, his uncle Imam Al-Hadi al-Mahdi, courting the Baggara using the rhetoric of "Arabism" to offer hope of somehow being a part of the wealthy center.
Underdevelopment and domestic political tension added to cross-border instability with Chad. Sadiq al-Mahdi allowed FROLINAT – a guerilla movement trying to overthrow President of Chad François Tombalbaye – to establish bases in Darfur in 1969. However, FROLINAT factional infighting killed dozens within Darfur in 1971, leading President of Sudan Gaafar Nimeiry to expel the group. This was further complicated by the interest of new Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the Chadian conflict. Obsessed with the vision of creating a band of Sahelian nations that were both Muslim and culturally Arab, Gaddafi made an offer to Nimeiry to merge their two countries in 1971. However, Gaddafi was disillusioned with Nimeiry's Arab credentials after the Sudanese president signed the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, ending the First Sudanese Civil War with the south. Libya claimed the Aouzou Strip, began supporting the FROLINAT against the black Christian Tombalbaye, and supporting Arab supremacist militants to achieve his goals by force, including the Islamic Legion and Tajammu al-Arabi in Darfur, which claimed the province to have an "Arab" nature. Nimeiry, concerned by the warm welcome Gaddafi had given to al-Mahdi, his exiled opposition, began to encourage the fragile administration of Félix Malloum, the new Chadian president after Tombalbaye's 1975 assassination. In retaliation, Gaddafi sent a 1,200-man force across the desert to assault Khartoum directly. The Libyan force was barely defeated after three days of house to house fighting and Nimeiry chose to support the most anti-Libyan of the various Chadian leaders, Hissène Habré, giving his Armed Forces of the North sanctuary in Darfur. All of these external events buffeted the traditional structure of Darfuri society. Tribes that had seen themselves in local terms were asked to declare if they were "progressive, revolutionary Arabs" or "reactionary, anti-Arab Africans". The Khartoum government, rather than trying to calm these new ethnic tensions, instead exacerbated them when it seemed useful in the Sudan-Libya-Chad struggle.