ABSTRACT
We know far more about Keira institutions than those of Sinnar, and the following description is necessarily selective. There is, however, a danger of presenting both too static a picture and one that is too Islamically biased. The first because our earliest contemporary information comes at the end of the century from Browne (1793-6) and al-Tunisx (1803-11), the second because what they observed they saw through Muslim eyes and were not aware or able to record much of the Fur dimension of the state. Unlike Sinnar, the Keira state had a firmly-based ethnic identity, although it was not simply a Fur state; unfortunately contemporary observers, with the exception of Nachtigal, saw Fur customs as quaint or barbaric deviations from the Islamic norm and many aspects of the Fur dimension are now beyond recovery.
