The Funj
The Funj were a strange and mysterious people. They were neither Arabs nor Muslims, and their homeland was probably on the upper Blue Nile in the borderlands between Ethiopia and the Sudan. Under their leader ʿAmārah Dūnqas, the Funj founded their capital at Sennar and throughout the 16th century struggled for control of the Al-Jazīrah (Gezira) region against the Arab tribes who had settled around the confluence of the Blue and the White Niles. The Funj appear to have firmly established their supremacy by 1607–08.
By the mid-17th century the Funj dynasty had reached its golden age under one of its greatest kings, Bādī II Abū Daqn (reigned 1644/45–80), who extended Funj authority across the White Nile into Kordofan and reduced the tribal chieftaincies scattered northward along the main Nile to tribute-paying feudatories. But as Bādī II expanded Funj power, he also planted the seeds of its decline. During his conquests, slaves were captured and taken to Sennar, where, as they grew in numbers and influence, they formed a military caste. Loyal to the monarch alone, the slaves soon came to compete with the Funj aristocracy for control of the offices of state. Intrigue and hostility between these two rival groups soon led to open rebellion that undermined the position of the traditional ruling class.
Under Bādī IV Abū Shulūkh (reigned 1724–62), the ruling aristocracy was finally broken, and the king assumed arbitrary power, supported by his slave troops. So long as Bādī IV could command the loyalty of his army, his position was secure and the kingdom enjoyed respite from internal strife, but at the end of his long reign he could no longer control the army. Under the leadership of his viceroy in Kordofan, Abū Likaylik, the military turned against the king and exiled him to Sūbah. Abū Likaylik probably represented a resurgence of older indigenous elements who had been Arabized and Islamized but were neither Arab nor Funj. Thenceforward the Funj kings were but puppets of their viziers (chief ministers), whose struggles to win and to keep control precipitated the kingdom’s steady decline, interrupted by only infrequent periods of peace and stability established by a strong vizier who was able to overcome his rivals. During its last half century the Funj kingdom was a spent state, kept intact only through want of a rival but gradually disintegrating through wars, intrigue, and conspiracy, until the Egyptians advanced on Sennar in 1821 and pushed the Funj dynasty into oblivion.