ABSTRACT
The period 1898–1916 was a period of dramatic political change in the Wadai-Dār Fūr region. The present chapter attempts to tell this complicated story from a regional perspective but with special reference to the Masālīt Sultanate. The first section gives an analysis of the relations between the frontier states and the head of the restored Dār Fūr Sultanate, ‛Alī Dīnār (1898–1916). The story of the interaction between the French colonialists (who came upon the scene in 1909), ‛Alī Dīnār and the frontier states is the subject of the second section. The Masālīt were conquered militarily and lost part of their territory to the French. They did not, however, pass under French colonial administration, because it was internationally agreed in 1921 that they fell into the British sphere of influence. The political events of the period intensified certain structural features of the Masālīt state and reactivated the Mahdist faith of its subjects, which became the ideology of popular revolt against the royal family of the Gernyeng and their informal French overlords. These internal developments in Dār Masālīt are analyzed in the third section of this chapter, ‘Factionalism and popular revolt’.
