Tunjur

The Tunjur, or Tungur, are a Muslim people estimated around 176.000 people, living in central Darfur, a province of Sudan. They are mainly farmers, and closely associated with the Fur, even if differently from these they have been fully Arabised. As the Fur and the Zaghawa, since the start of the Darfur conflict in February 2003 many Tunjur have been displaced and some killed. A number of Tunjur has taken part to the fight against the Sudanese government fighting under the banners of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).

Fragments of a history

Historically, the Tunjur were one of the ruling dynasties of Darfur, ca. 1200-1600 AD. Little is known about them, or about their predecessors (the Daju) or their successors (the Keira), beyond the fact that they were probably centralised, slave-based polities sharing a fondness for stone walling, and the timing of Islamisation is unclear.

It is not known why the Tunjur dynasty collapsed, apparently in the late sixteenth century; oral tradition suggests that the last Tunjur ruler Shau Dorshid was “driven out by his own subjects because of his dispiriting habit of making them cut the tops off mountains for him to build palaces on” (Balfour Paul, 1955, 13). His capital is said to have been the site of Ain Farah, which lies in the Furnung Hills some 130 kilometres north-west of El Fasher and comprises large-scale stone and brick walling. It has an enduring appeal and has been visited or described many times. Ain Farah moved one author to quote Macaulay – “like an eagle’s nest that hangs on the crest”, for it is built some 100 metres above the spring, is characterised by several hundred brick and stone structures and terraces, and is defended by steep ridges and by a massive stone wall three or four kilometres long. There is a brick and stone edifice which appears to have served as a mosque, a large stone group which may have served as a public building, and a main group on the highest point of the ridge, described variously as a royal residence or military defence.

Archaeological work is still in its beginning stages, but survey of a sample of houses and excavation of a grave was undertaken by Mohammed (1986) during his survey of Darfur. The grave contained a flexed burial and over 200 iron beads, an ostrich eggshell necklace, a perforated cowrie shell, and iron jewellery. One of the corroded iron objects yielded a surprisingly early date (1500 +/- 200 bp, Q 3155), falling at least six and perhaps as many as eleven centuries before the likely time of the Tunjur; Mohammed interprets this as signifying a pre-Islamic presence and continuation into Islamic times.

References

* Balfour Paul, H. G. 1955. "History and antiquities of Darfur. Khartoum, Sudan Antiquities Service".
* Mohammed, I. M. (1986). "The archaeology of central Darfur (Sudan) in the 1st millennium A.D." Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
* Insoll, T. (2003). "The archaeology of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.