ABSTRACT
After the disappearance of the medieval Nubian kingdoms, the following 500 years saw new kingdoms arise across the region, the most important of which were the Funj Sultanate of Sinnar and the Sultanate of Darfur (Figure 9.1). Between and around these, other smaller polities were developing, for example in parts of Kordofan, as well as in parts of southern Sudan. Within many riverine areas, even if nominally controlled by the Funj, local leadership was commonly in the hands of ‘tribal’ leaders, often known as meks. As elsewhere within Sudanic Africa, these kingdoms often had wide horizons, they and their peripheries were increasingly tied into large-scale trading networks while also sharing wideranging cultural ties forged through the spread of Islam. In 1820, Muhammed Ali, the new ruler of Egypt, was to conquer the central Sudan, annexing the territories of Sinnar, then Kordofan and Darfur, bringing a sixty-year period of colonial rule, generally known as the ‘Turkiyya’. This period saw the creation of much of the framework of what has become the Sudan of today.
