Chapter XIV: History

European travellers. — Early inhabitants. — Delil or Dali. — Intestine wars. — Sulieman Solon. — Meissa. — Achmet Bokr. — Mohommed Dowra. — Omar Leyle. — Aboo-el-Ghassam. — Mohommed Tirab. — Abd-er-Rhannem el Rasheed. — El Fasher made the capital. — Mohommed-el-Fadl. — Loss of Khordofan. — Mohommed Hassim. — Brahim. — Annexation to Egypt. — Maps. — Geography. — Products.

PREVIOUS to our visit to Darfoor only three European travellers had visited the country; Browne in 1795, Dr. Cuny, a Frenchman, in 1850, and Dr. Nachtigal in 1874.

Browne travelled from the north by the desert route from Siout on the Nile, two hundred and ten miles above Cairo, and restricted his exploration to El Fasher and Kobbe, a town about thirty miles distant to the north-west. He had but limited opportunity of seeing much of the country, and did not acquire much knowledge of the customs of the people. Dr. Cuny died in the country, not unsuspected of having poisoned himself. His effects and papers were packed and sealed by the generally honest Sultan Mohommed Hassim, but when they came to be sought for, in order to be sent to Egypt, the cases were found broken open and the contents scattered and lost. Dr. Nachtigal, shortly after his return, contributed, in 1875, a paper, accompanied by a map, to the German Geographical Institute, to which paper I am indebted for the historical information contained in this chapter.

Although the boundaries of Darfoor have never been ascertained with precision, the country may be considered as lying within and nearly filling the area bounded by the parallels 9° and 16° north latitude and the degrees 22° and 28° east longitude. In shape it is a more or less regular parallelogram, measuring about five hundred miles from north to south and four hundred miles from east to west. In the centre stands Gebel Marra, a range of mountains a hundred miles from north to south and sixty miles from east to west, and varying in height from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet above the general level of the surrounding country. This mountain system is the cradle of the Foorawee people; here they originally dwelt with the Dadyos, a people far less numerous and important. On the arrival (when is not recorded) of the Arabs, of whom the Tunyoor were the principal tribe, the Dadyos, recognising their superior civilisation and moral codes, lived with them in common, and finally became completely subject to them. The gain was, however, not altogether on the side of the Tunyoor: in course of time they not only forgot their origin but lost all recollection of the Mohommedan religion, if, indeed, they had ever been acquainted with it. About four hundred years ago, after a long series of troubles, they allied themselves by marriage with the Foorawee, and in turn became a subject race.

The first ruler sprung from this union, King Delil, generally known by the people as Dali, was the true founder of the kingdom of Darfoor. Although his dominion scarcely reached beyond the limits of the Gebel Marra he subdivided his country and established the basis of regular government. The fixed “laws of justice,” afterwards reduced to writing, and generally known by the name of “Dali’s Book,” prove incontestably that in his time Islamism was not known, or that it had, at least, passed into nearly complete oblivion; they deviate throughout from the principles which the Koran inculcates.

The reign of King Delil was followed, for a long number of years, by struggles for the throne, and general intestine war. This period is veiled in nearly impenetrable darkness; the chief occurrence was the separation from the main body of one portion of the Foorawees, and its expulsion from the central mountain home. This unhappy state of affairs was for a long time continued by a war of succession carried on between Tonsam and Koro, two grandsons of King Delil. At first Tonsam, the elder, was, it seems, victorious, for we find Sulieman, called Solon, son of Koro, fleeing to the Massabât, in the east of Darfoor, to which tribe his mother belonged. Arrived at man’s estate, Solon elected to try the fortune of war with his uncle; the warlike young man was victorious, and by degrees drove Tonsam from the Gebel Marra. From this time dates the separation, from the Foorawee stem, of the Massabât, who had lost their native language and had adopted the manners and customs of the Arabs. They gave the followers of Sulieman Solon considerable trouble, and appear to have become at one time so powerful, that in some of the lists of the kings of Darfoor the names of their chiefs or kings are found intermingled with those of the legitimate rulers.

With the reign of Sulieman Solon (“Solon” in the Foorawee language signifies “the red-skinned man of the Arabs”) the history of the country becomes clearer. He firmly established the unity of the government, carried on wars with success, and extended the area of his power. He died after reigning forty-one years from 1596 to 1637. He introduced Mohommedanism into his own family and the districts near, but the people of the provinces looked upon this faith with very little favour.

The reign of his son Meissa was less illustrious; he reigned for forty- five years till 1682, and was succeeded by his son Achmet Bokr, who shares with Delil and Sulieman Solon the fame of a founder of the state. Under him Mohommedanism became the universal religion. With the object of civilising his country he offered inducements to foreigners to settle, and from his time dates the arrival of the Fellâta, of the Bornoos, and of the various tribes from Wadâi at present found in Darfoor. He reigned for forty years till 1722 with undisputed sway, and extended his empire as far as the Nile and even beyond to the banks of the Atbâra.

After him came his son Mohommed Dowra, or Harot, a blood-thirsty tyrant, who, on his accession, caused seventy-two of his relatives, most of them his brothers, to be put to death. He, fortunately, only reigned ten years.

In the time of his successors occurred the long wars between Darfoor and Wadâi which had, however, been commenced in the glorious reign of Achmet Bokr. They were now carried on with less good fortune. Omar Leyle, the son and successor of Dowra, was taken prisoner in 1739, and was succeeded by Aboo-el-Ghassam, his uncle, a son of Achmet Bokr. He also was vanquished in battle and died of his wounds. He was followed by his brother Mohommed Tirâb, who came to the throne in 1752. After a reign, not undistinguished by certain success in war, he was killed in 1785, after reigning thirty-three years, in a war-like expedition he was carrying on against Khordofân. His brother, Abd-er-Rhannam, called El Rasheed, was proclaimed king in the field by the military chiefs, although his son, Ishâga, had been left behind as Sultan during Tirâb’s absence. Tirâb, although he had some brilliant qualities, remarkable learning, dexterity with his pen, and a knightly spirit, exhausted the country by his extravagance and love of display, and his son, Ishâga, promised to walk in the footsteps of his father. Abd-er-Rhannam, a poor priest almost without descendants, was, on the other hand, a very plain, learned, and upright man; but avaricious, suspicious, intriguing, and vindictive. He it was who fixed Tendelti, or El Fasher, as the capital, and in whose reign the Englishman Browne visited Darfoor. In civil war he conquered and slew Ishaga, and died, after a reign of fourteen years, in 1799.

His son Mohommed-el-Fadl, a minor, in whose time the famous Tunisian shiekh, Sheriff Mohommed, lived in Darfoor, reigned at first under the guardianship of the energetic eunuch Mohommed Korra, whose rank was that of “Aboo shiekh,” or “Father of the shiekhs,” and who had been formerly governor of Khordofân. As Mohommed-el-Fadl grew to manhood the grasping ambition of the Aboo shiekh grew more and more evident; envy, mistrust, and jealousy sprang up between them ultimately resulting in open war in which, only by a combination of fortunate circumstances, Mohommed-el- Fadl was victorious, and Mohommed Korra lost his life. From this time Mohommed-el-Fadl ruled undisturbed till the year 1839, in all thirty- nine years. In youth, although a high-spirited, thoughtless, and violent man, he was mostly accessible to proper influences; in later years he became a tyrannical, unjust, and blood-thirsty ruler. Like Mohommed Dowra, he died of leprosy. In this reign took place the loss of Khordofân, the inglorious victory over Wadâi, and the almost complete extermination of the Arab tribe of Eregât. Of Mohommed-el-Fadl’s numerous sons the third, Mohommed Hassim, succeeded his father, and, after reigning thirty-five years, died blind in 1874 while Dr. Nachtigal was in Wadai. He was an intelligent and well-intentioned man, prone to peace, but paltry and covetous, and generally placed his private advantage above that of the State. His wars were mostly waged against the Ritsegât, in the south-east of Darfoor, against whom he equipped fourteen different expeditions, with the only result that the few last years of his life were passed in tolerably good relationship with this restless and warlike Arab tribe. He was succeeded by his third and youngest son, Brahim, on the whole a sensible and well-intentioned man, who was, however, not equal to dealing with the complications which arose with the Egyptian Government. He was misled, and allowed himself to be persuaded into making an open attack on Zobaire Pacha, thus provoking Egypt to war. He died in battle in the autumn of 1874 at Menowâtshi.

After his death, his uncle, Prince Hassaballah, placed himself at the head of such forces as he could collect, and withdrew into the fastnesses of the Gebel Marra, mountains which had never hitherto been successfully invaded from the plains, and which were looked upon as inaccessible and impregnable.

While, however, Ismail Pacha Ayoob was fast succeeding, by peaceful measures, in reconciling the inhabitants of the eastern provinces, and of El Fasher, the bold adventurer Zobaire, penetrated, without delay, into the mountains and established his head-quarters at Torra. The elder brother of the late king, Abd-er-Rhannem Shatool, shortly after tendered his submission, and in the spring of 1875 the news reached Cairo that Prince Hassaballah, the last defender of the independence of Darfoor, had voluntarily placed himself in the power of the conquerors, and that Darfoor, the notoriously evil home of fanaticism, had been finally pacified and annexed to the dominions of the Viceroy.

A work on Darfoor, with a map, was published in Cairo by Shiekh Mohommed, the Tunisian, a learned Mohommedan, referred to above, who resided for many years in the country in the reign of Mohommed-el-Fadl. Although his pictures of the life and customs of the people are faithful and graphic, his map is so confused and distorted as to be utterly valueless. Another map was made by the, so-called, Sultan Tayima, the Foorawee governor of Khordofân, previous to the conquest of the latter dependency by Egypt, and all our hitherto published maps of Darfoor are based upon it. The latitude and longitude of El Fasher, 13° 54′ N. and 28° 15′ E., given in this map, and copied in our atlases, place that town nearly one hundred and eighty miles away from its true position, and an estimate of its value may be formed from this circumstance.

Dr. Nachtigal himself places it a few minutes east of 26° E. longitude from Greenwich, and 13° 45′ N. latitude, but adds that his calculations can only be looked upon as preliminary, and that further examination must modify them.[14] Our own calculations, the mean of nearly one hundred astronomical observations, checked by the through chainage and triangulation both from Wady Halfa and Khartoom, fix the town some forty-five miles west by south of this position.

As the Gebel Marra has formed the political centre of the country’s history, so it forms the centre whence all the rivers flow which water Darfoor.

The greater proportion and the largest of these, such as the Sonot, the Bargo, Baray, the Gheldâma, and, above all, the Adsom, with its many affluents, flow towards the west and south-west. The smallest of these are from two hundred to three hundred yards across; in the rainy season they are perfect torrents, and, although their beds are dry soon after the cessation of the rains, water is always to be found in abundance at a depth of five or six feet. Two considerable streams, the Ghendi and the Boolbul, flow towards the south, and uniting about a hundred miles from the mountains, are said, in seasons of excessive rainfall, to reach the Bahr el Arab, a perennial river flowing eastward between 9° and 10° N. latitude into the Bahr el Gazâl, a large tributary of the White Nile. Like all the other streams in Darfoor, these are dry in the dry season. On the eastern side of the mountains rise the Wady el Kho, and the Wady Amoor; the fall of the ground eastward towards the Nile being only very gradual, their course is almost due south. Neither of them reach the Bahr el Arab, but are finally lost in the sand about two hundred miles to the south of El Fasher.

The goal of our own journey into Darfoor was the last-named town, and of the country west of the mountains I am not able to speak from experience. All the natives of whom I inquired, agreed in saying that it is by far the richer and more densely populated half of the country; that this should be so is easily conceivable. Every day of our journey south-west from Old Dongola brought us perceptibly further away from the utter desolation of the desert skirting the cultivated land on the banks of the Nile. At Bagghareeyeh the ground in the low valleys is cultivable in the rainy season, but is only capable of yielding “duchn” in limited quantity, and of very inferior quality. In the neighbourhood of Om-Badr the clearings are of greater extent. No grain had been sown in 1875 at either of these places, but the short stubble remaining showed that in more favourable years crops are raised. At Om-Badr the “Adansonia digitata,” monkey-bread tree, or “gangaloos,” as the natives call it, first grows, as also the “ziraffa,” or giraffe tree. These trees, as well as numerous varieties of the sycamore, became plentiful on nearing Karnac and Boota. In Ergoodt and El Fasher “duchn” is plentiful and good, but I saw no signs of “doura.” Cotton, onions, garlic, senna, hasheesh, melons, tomatos, lettuces, rice, and tobacco are produced near El Fasher, but are of very inferior description. No perishable fruits or vegetables are obtainable for any length of time after the rains. All these products are credibly said to be yielded in much greater profusion, and of much better quality, in the south and west of the country; there “doura” is cultivated; the plane-tree is found, but is scarce; and the “gangaloos” attains to a greater height and diameter than it does in the north and east. The fruit of this tree, called monkey-bread, is a yellowish-white pod, some five inches long by two and a half inches or three inches wide, filled with large white seeds. The outer part only is eaten; it is very hard, crisp, and dry, with a slight acid taste not unpleasant, but it certainly cannot be considered a delicacy. From the circumstance of the trunk of the tree forming a reservoir, which retains considerable quantities of water after the rains, it is highly valued by the natives, who are thus saved the trouble of drawing what they require from the wells.

Dr. Nachtigal, in the pamphlet alluded to, states that wheat is grown in Gebel Marra, and mentions it as a remarkable and, perhaps, isolated instance of its cultivation in Central Africa.

Of that portion of Darfoor through which I have travelled, namely, from Om-Badr to El Fasher, I estimate one-sixth part only to be cultivable, of which sixth part, perhaps, one-hundredth part is cultivated. No system of irrigation exists, and for the eight or nine dry months of the year the ground is incapable of producing anything at all.

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