The Daju of Darfur

Who rules

Title

King of the Daju (the royal title was probably bugur)

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

The Daju traditions give a king list without dates: the first king Gitar or Kosbur, a later 'Umar Kassifuroge, and the last, Ahmad al-Daj, a tyrant who fled to Dar Sila when the Tunjur took power (late fifteenth century in Balfour Paul's view, early eighteenth in the Dar Sila tradition). Arkell put a move of the Daju capital from Jebel Gadir in Kordofan to Jebel Marra about 1100, after a Nubian attack; that date is his guess. No king can be placed on 1 January 1200.

Overlord

None in 1200. Ibn Sa'id, writing in the thirteenth century, says the Daju had become partly Muslim and vassals of Kanem; that belongs to the reign of Dunama Dabbalemi of Kanem (1210-1248 in Lange's chronology, 1221-1259 in Palmer's and Barth's), after 1200.

What the realm holds

• The southern Jebel Marra and its foothills
• The plains to the south and south-east (round later Nyala)
• Tribute from neighbouring peoples (tradition)
• Tajuwa, the capital of al-Idrisi (site not known)

How it was acquired

The Daju followed an earlier people the traditions call the Tora by the twelfth century (History of Darfur, after the traditions).

Allies and rivals

The Nubian kingdoms: a Nubian governor destroyed Samna before 1154, and tradition remembers a Daju victory over the Nubians at the Wadi al-Milk; the Zaghawa nomads to the north; the Fur of the Jebel Marra massif; Kanem far to the west, not yet their overlord.

The realm that morning

Probably reigning in the southern Jebel Marra; nothing is dated to 1199-1200. West of about 21-22 E lie the peoples of the Ouaddai and Kanem's sphere (West Africa sheet).

Wealth

Cattle and camels, millet and sorghum of the Jebel Marra terraces and the plains, tribute from neighbours; the slave trade to Nubia and Egypt.

Military

Not known; al-Idrisi says the Tajuwa were raided by their neighbours. Tradition makes the Daju strong enough to beat a Nubian force at the Wadi al-Milk.

Threats

• Kanem's expansion under Dunama Dabbalemi (later)
• Nubian raids, as in the twelfth century

Places of note

• Deriba crater lakes: Summit of Jebel Marra; royal burials perhaps near here (tradition)

Where the sources disagree

• The regional brief dates the Daju kingdom by tradition to the twelfth or thirteenth century; al-Idrisi's Tajuwa (1154) supports a Daju power in the twelfth century, but the identification is not certain.
• Ain Farah has been claimed for the Christian Nubian period, for the Tunjur and for earlier builders; it is not a Daju seat on present evidence.
• The traditions disagree: one version (Arkell, as summarised in Wikipedia's History of Darfur) has Ahmad al-Daj move the capital to Jebel Marra about 1100 and beat the Nubians at the Wadi al-Milk, while the Daju king list makes Ahmad al-Daj the last king, overthrown by the Tunjur.

Evidence: One twelfth-century description (al-Idrisi), later Arabic notices and oral traditions written down in the twentieth century.

On the map: The outline follows the tradition that the kingdom lay in the southern Jebel Marra; its limits in 1200 are unknown.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online