Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology of Events
- Maps
- 1 The “Abode of the Blacks”
- 2 Lords of Mountain and Savanna
- 3 The Ends of the Turkish World
- 4 Darfur at the End of Time
- 5 Between an Anvil and a Hammer
- 6 “Closed District”
- 7 Unequal Struggles, 1939–1955
- 8 Colonial Legacies and Sudanese Rule, 1956–1969
- 9 Darfur and “The May Regime,” 1969–1985
- 10 Third Time Unlucky
- 11 The State of Jihad
- 12 The Destruction of Darfur
- Glossary
- Abbreviations in the Bibliography and Notes
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Lords of Mountain and Savanna
The Origins and History of the Fur State to 1874
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology of Events
- Maps
- 1 The “Abode of the Blacks”
- 2 Lords of Mountain and Savanna
- 3 The Ends of the Turkish World
- 4 Darfur at the End of Time
- 5 Between an Anvil and a Hammer
- 6 “Closed District”
- 7 Unequal Struggles, 1939–1955
- 8 Colonial Legacies and Sudanese Rule, 1956–1969
- 9 Darfur and “The May Regime,” 1969–1985
- 10 Third Time Unlucky
- 11 The State of Jihad
- 12 The Destruction of Darfur
- Glossary
- Abbreviations in the Bibliography and Notes
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Study of Darfur before the nineteenth century is hampered by a paucity of sources and the difficult nature of those that are available. Since the Sudan's independence in 1956, however, great strides have been made in locating, collecting, describing, and interpreting documentary sources. The work of several Sudanese and European institutions and scholars has been particularly important. In some cases that work has had the effect of pointing out the vast amount of further research, not least in archeology, that could, with the requisite interest and finance, be undertaken. Nevertheless, the study of Darfur's history would have been set back immeasurably had not the process of identification and collection taken place before the upheavals of the early twenty-first century.
Through the collection and analysis of oral traditions, critical examination of the few and relatively late Arab and European travelers' accounts, and, most recently, the detailed study of documents from the Fur sultanate, historians have been able to provide at least a plausible picture, in broad strokes, of the Fur sultanate's early history and a more detailed description of certain aspects of its administration. More can be deduced through reasonable comparative analysis of Darfur and other Muslim states of the Sudanic belt and, indeed, through what is known of long-distance trade (and the products it carried and left behind). Still, it remains the case that much of what has been written about the history of the region before the eighteenth century is based on conjecture, however well informed, and lies open to revision.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Darfur's SorrowThe Forgotten History of a Humanitarian Disaster, pp. 15 - 38Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010