No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Funj: a reconsideration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Extract
Three lines of evidence regarding the Funj prior to the rise of the Sinnār Sultanate about 1500 have been considered. Shilluk tradition remembers the Funj as the previous inhabitants of the present Shilluk homeland, while many of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century visitors to Sinnār were told that the Funj came from the White Nile. While neither set of traditions should be accepted without question, the fact that they tend to confirm each other lends weight to both.
In the Shilluk country, the early Funj seem to have lived on elevated settlement mounds, and perhaps the putative Funj homeland should be extended to include the region in which these mounds are found. That would suggest that the Funj culture centred primarily along the White Nile approximately between Renk and Malakal, but the possibility of a homeland even more broadly defined need not be excluded.
Archaeological evidence derived from pottery finds on the White Nile mounds may be interpreted to imply that the Funj were a southern Nubian people, an hypothesis that must be weighed against alternatives that would suggest an unknown or even Meroitic cultural identity. The presence of red brick structures along the White Nile south of the generally accepted borders of the Sultanate, as well as in the capital itself, tends to support the ‘Nubian’ hypothesis. Further research concerning the Funj language and the archaeological cultures south of the latitude of Sinnār should help resolve these ambiguities; many aspects of government and society in the Sinnār Sultanate are clarified by considering the era a Nubian Renaissance.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972
References
1 Holt, P. M., ‘Funj Origins: A Critique and New Evidence’, J. Afr. Hist. iv, 1 (1963), 39–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Hartmann, R., ‘Die Stellung der Funge in der Afrikanischen Ethnologie, vom geschichtlichen Standpunkt aus betracht’, Zeitschrjft für Ethnologie, iv (1869), 293.Google Scholar
3 A more complete discussion may be found in the author's unpublished doctoral dissertation, ‘Kings of Sun and Shadow: A History of the ʽAbdallāb Provinces of the Northern Sinnār Sultanate, 1500–1800 A.D.’, Columbia University, June 1971.
4 Shinnie, P. L., Sudan Antiquities Service Occasional Papers, No. 3: Excavations at Soba (Khartoum, 1961), 76.Google Scholar
5 Al-Ḥarrānī, , Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegyptii, ed. Kamal, Prince Youssouf (Leiden, 1926–1953), iv, Fasc. 1.Google Scholar
6 al-Dīn, Muḥyī b. ʽAbd al-Ẓāhir, Tashrīf al-ayyām wa'l-'uṣūr fi sīrat al-malik al-manṣur (Cairo, 1961), 144–5.Google Scholar
7 Alvarez, Father Francisco, The Prester John of the Indies…being the narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia in 1520, ed. Beckingham, C. F. and Hunting-ford, G. W. B. (Cambridge, 1961), ii, 461.Google Scholar
8 It would thus seem that the fragmentation of southern Nubia took place before the penetration of significant numbers of nomadic Arabs into the region, a process that began with the fourteenth-century wars between Mamlūk Egypt and the kingdom of Muqurra. For a different viewpoint see Ḥasan, Yūsuf Faḍl, The Arabs and the Sudan from the seventh to the early sixteenth century (Edinburgh, 1967), 90.Google Scholar Dr Yūsuf's argument is based primarily on the account of Ibn Khaldūn, who described the destructive activities of the Arabs in Nubia. (See The Arabs and the Sudan, 127−8.) The present author feels that Ibn Khaldūn's discussion of Nubia is best viewed as a supportive example to his general theory of the role of nomads in the rise and fall of civilizations. This use of theoretical generalization is a tribute to the innovative intellect of Ibn Khaldūn, but in the absence of confirmatory evidence, it tends to disqualify him as an historian of the Sudan. Ibn Khaldūn's evaluation of the role of nomads in his own homeland has also required revision; see Poncet, J., ‘Le mythe de la catastrophe hilalienne’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, xxii (1967), 1099–1120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 For the career of ʽAbdallāh Jammā’, see Ḥasan, Yūsuf Faḍl, The Arabs and the Sudan, 132–3;Google ScholarPenn, A. E. D., ‘Traditional Stories of the Abdullab Tribe’, SNR, xvii, 1 (1934), 59–82,Google Scholar and Naṣr, Aḥmad 'Abd al-Raḥīm, ed., Ta'rīkh al-'abdallāb, min khilāl ruwāyāti him al-simā'īyya (Khartoum, 1969), 10–22.Google Scholar
10 al-‘Umarī, Shihāb al-Dīn, (Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. Faḍl Allāh al-‘Umarī), Masālik El Abṣār fi Mamālik El Amṣār ed. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, , Bibliothèque des Géographes Arabes II, Al-‘Omarī (Paris, 1927), i, 16.Google Scholar The jīm in ‘Funj’ is optional in Sudanese colloquial pronunciation; conventional literary usage with jīm will be observed in this study.
11 Lewis, Bernard, The Arabs in History, 2nd Harper ed. (New York, 1967), 157.Google Scholar
12 al-Jalīl, Al-Shāṭir Buṣaylī ʽAbd, ed., Makhṭūṭa kātib al-shūna fī ta'rikh al-sulṭāna al-sinnārīyya wa'l-idāra al-misrīyya (Cairo, 1961) 4.Google Scholar This document will thereafter be designated ‘Funj Chronicle (B)’.
13 Ogot, Bethwell, ‘The Impact of the Nilotes, The Middle Age of African History, ed. Oliver, Roland (London, 1967), 50.Google Scholar
14 Hofmayr, Wilhelm, Die Schilluk: Geschichte, Religion und Leben eines Nilotenstammes (Wien, 1925),Google Scholar and Crazzolara, J. P., The Lwoo. Part I, Lwoo Migrations, Museum Cornbonianum, no. 3 (Verona, 1950).Google Scholar
15 Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 18–21;Google ScholarCrazzolara, , The Lwoo, 40–3.Google Scholar
16 For Apfuny and Opfuni, see Crazzolara, , The Lwoo, 42–3:Google Scholar for ya puny, bung and bony, see Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 8.Google Scholar
17 Crazzolara, , The Lwoo, 42 (obwonyo)Google Scholar; Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 8 (bony).Google Scholar
18 Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 8.Google Scholar G. Lejean stated that the Shilluk used the word ‘Fougn’ (Funj) to mean the northern Sudanese. ‘Note sur les Fougn et leur idiome’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographic de Paris, 5e série, ix (1865), 239.Google Scholar
19 Crawford, O. G. S., The Fung Kingdom of Sennar, with a Geographical Account of the Middle Nile Region (Gloucester, 1951), 159.Google Scholar
20 A list of these thirty sites may be found in Crazzolara, , The Lwoo, 42.Google Scholar See also Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 19–21.Google Scholar
21 Crazzolara, , The Lwoo, 42–3;Google ScholarHofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 18–21.Google Scholar
22 Crazzolara, , The Lwoo, 43.Google Scholar
23 See Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 21.Google Scholar
24 Bruce, James, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile… 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 1805), vi, 270.Google Scholar
25 Lejean, G., Voyage aux deux Nils (Nubie, Kordofan, Soudan Oriental), exécuté de 1860 à 1864 par ordre de l'empereur (Paris, 1865), 117.Google Scholar
26 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘Ethnological Observations in Dar Fung’, SNR, xv, 1 (1932), 55.Google Scholar
27 Arkell, A. J., ‘Fung Origins’, SNR, xv, 2 (1932), 229–30.Google Scholar
28 Evans-Pritchard, , ‘Ethnological Observations’, 59.Google Scholar
29 Crawford, , Fung Kingdom, 159–60.Google Scholar
30 Crawford, , Fang Kingdom, 159–60,Google Scholar and ‘People without a History’, Antiquity, no. 85 (March 1948), 8–12. The finds were made at Dabbit al-Rashidi (Khartoum Museum n. 5355), Dabbit al-Fukhkhar (no. 5380) and Ngaje (no. 4686). In the last case excavations were carried out to a depth of four feet. Most of the finds were made by A. J. Arkell.
31 Arkell, A. J., A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821, 2nd ed. (London, 1961), 209.Google Scholar
32 Adams, W. Y., ‘An Introductory Classification of Meroitic Pottery’, Kush, xii (1964), 126–73;Google Scholar‘An Introductory Classification of Christian Nubian Pottery’, Kush, x (1962), 245–88.Google Scholar
33 Adams, , ‘Meroitic Pottery’, 169.Google Scholar
34 Ibid. 172.
35 Hofmayr, like Hartmann, believed that the Funj were Nubian in culture, but his evidence, based on the Shiluk use of the term dongo (‘Dongolawī’) to mean northern Sudanese, is scarcely convincing. Probably the use of this term was an innovation of the nineteenth century, when numbers of Danāgla were active in the southern Sudan. Hofmayr, , Die Schilluk, 4.Google Scholar
36 Adams, , ‘Meroitic Pottery’, 172.Google Scholar
37 Shinnie, P. L., Sudan Antiquities Service Museum Pamphlet No. 2: Medieval Nubia (Khartoum, 1954), 13.Google Scholar
38 Adams, , ‘Meroitic Pottery’, 172–3.Google Scholar
39 Brun-Rollet, M., Le Nil Blanc et Le Soudan: Moeurs et Coutumes des Sauvages (Paris, 1855), 51.Google Scholar
40 Shinnie, , Medieval Nubia, 10.Google Scholar
41 Lepsius observed that the ruins of the Funj royal palace complex at Sinnār consisted of heaps of red bricks; possibly the Funj continued to build certain important structures in the Nubian style until a late date. Lepsius, R., Briefe aus Aegypten, Aethiopien, und der Halbinsel des Sinai… (Berlin, 1852), 175.Google Scholar
42 Holt, , ‘Funj Origins’, 43–4.Google Scholar
43 Murray, Alexander, Account of the Life and Writings of James Bruce of Kinnaird (Edinburgh, 1808), Appendix XLV‘, Part ‘‘‘, 408–28.Google Scholar
44 Ibid. 420.
45 Ibid., 416.
46 Ibid. 420–1.
47 Ibid. 423.
48 Bruce, , Travels, vi, 372.Google Scholar
49 Cailliaud, Frédéric, Voyage à Méroé…fait dans les années 1819, 1820, 1821 et 1882 (Paris, 1826), ii, 254.Google Scholar
50 Brocchi, G. B., Giornale delle osservazioni fatte ne'viaggi in Egitto, nella Siria e nella Nubia (Bassano, 1843), v, 331–3.Google Scholar
51 Ibid. 434–5.
52 Ibid. 360.
53 Hartmann, R., ‘Die Stellung der Funge’, 298–9.Google Scholar
54 Hartmann, R., Reise des Freiherrn Adalbert von Barnim durch Nord-Ost-Afrika in den Jahren 1859 und 1860 (Berlin, 1863), 299.Google Scholar
55 Lejean, , ‘Note sur les Fougn’, 239.Google Scholar
56 Ibid. 238.
57 Brun-Rollet, M., ‘Notes sur l'état present du Sennâr, sur son avenir et son influence sur l'avenir de l'Égypte’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, 4e série, ix (1855), 370.Google Scholar
58 Hoskins, G. A., Travels in Ethiopia above the second cataract of the Nile…and illustrating the antiquities, arts and history of the ancient kingdom of Meroé (London, 1835 ), 201.Google Scholar
59 It was in response to such pejorative references, it would seem, that a Funj authority in Sinnār sent a letter for public proclamation in Dongola regarding the ancestry of his kinsmen in the north. The Funj, he wrote, were not only Muslims but Arabs, and not merely Arabs but Umayyads. ‘And so you have seen the facts’, he concluded. ‘The tongues are silent, and the slave ‘Azīz may see the excellence of the observance of discretion in regard to injurious speech!’ (Al-Shāţir Buşayli ʽAbd al-Jalīl [Chater Bosayley A. Galli], Ma ‘ālim ta’rīkh sūdān wādī al-nīl [Cairo, 1955], 270–1.) Holt tentatively dates the letter to the late seventeenth century (‘Funj Origins’, 40), but an eighteenth-century date would also seem possible.
60 The name of the king appears on a drum believed to be part of the royal regalia (A. E. R., ‘The Fung Drum or Nehas’, SNR, iv [1921], 211–12), and is confirmed by Bruce (Travels, vi, 370–2), who also stated that he was the first king to rule east of the White Nile.
61 Vienna manuscript in Holt, , ‘Funj Origins’, 50.Google Scholar
62 Hilielson, S., ‘David Reubeni, An Early Visitor to Sennar’, SNR, xvi (1935), 57.Google Scholar
63 A. E. R., , ‘The Fung Drum’, 211–12;Google ScholarHolt, , ‘Funj Origins’, 44.Google Scholar
64 Hillelson, , ‘David Reubeni’, 57, 59.Google Scholar
65 Holt, , ‘Funj Origins’, 44.Google Scholar
66 Hoskins, , Travels in Ethiopia, 45.Google Scholar
67 For a different interpretation, see Holt, , ‘Funj Origins’, 52.Google Scholar
68 Bruce, , Travels, vi, 370–2.Google Scholar
69 Crazzolara, , The Lwoo, 43.Google Scholar
70 Hillelson, , ‘David Reubeni’, 57.Google Scholar
71 Holt, , ‘Funj Origins’, 50.Google Scholar
72 Ibid. 44.
73 Al-Ḥarrānī, , Monumenta Cartographica, iv, Fasc. 1.Google Scholar
74 Penn, , ‘Traditional Stories’, 60.Google Scholar
75 Funj Chronicle (B), 4.