Islamic Nubian Kingdoms

Abstract

The 15th century in Nubia witnessed the passage between medieval Christian culture and the Islamic kingdoms of the early modern era. While the transitional age itself generated few historical sources, the course of events may be inferred through examination of the 16th-century consequences. An Islamic political and cultural movement grounded in the Nubian tradition and centered in Kordofan swept eastward to the Red Sea and westward into central Chad. It ended a period of alien intrusions from Egypt and the Red Sea and gave rise to two new political traditions—the Funj kingdom of Sinnar in the Nile valley and the realm of the Tunjur centered in the western highlands. Both kingdoms practiced a distinctly Nubian idiom of Islamic culture that left them vulnerable to critique from more conventional interpretations. The Funj kingdom prospered for most of three centuries, while the realm of the Tunjur gave way to the non-Nubian successor states of Darfur and Wadai in the mid-17th century.