Qualla: Funj Sultanate https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Funj Sultanate https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate Funj Sultanate: Introduction https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate/ Photo credit Lord Prudhoe, Public domain. A sultan of Sennar kept six hundred noble wives. A senior nobleman kept two hundred. A lesser lord kept thirty. These were not trophies. Under the Funj political system that governed the land between the Blue and White Niles from 1504 to 1821, a man's rank depended on which princess he had married, and every woman a nobleman received from his superior bound him in political debt. Power moved through marriage, and through the maternal uncle, and through a court ritual in which, when a sultan was deposed, his own mother's brother was the man charged with killing him. Scholars have called the Funj an African empire with a Muslim facade, and the phrase is almost right. The facade was real but the interior was its own architecture.

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Image: Lord Prudhoe | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/sdz1-funj-sultanate-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Funj Sultanate: How a Kingdom Begins https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate/ Photo credit James Bruce, Public domain. There are two stories of the founding, and neither is fully reliable. The Funj Chronicle, compiled in the nineteenth century long after the fact, says that in 1504 the Funj chief Amara Dunqas allied with Abdallah Jammah of the Abdallabi to conquer Soba, capital of the older Chris...

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Image: James Bruce | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/sdz1-funj-sultanate-how-a-kingdom-begins.mp3 0:06 2 full Funj Sultanate: The Ottoman Line https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate/ Photo credit Stefano Bonsignori 1589 – cartographer (Italian) Born in Firenze. Died in Firenze. Details on Google Art Project, Public domain. In 1555 the Ottoman Empire, then pushing into the Horn of Africa, appointed Ozdemir Pasha as governor of a Habesh Eyalet that did not yet exist. His attempt to march up the Nile to conquer the Funj ended when his troops mutinied near the First Cataract. By 1570 the Ottomans had s...

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Image: Stefano Bonsignori 1589 – cartographer (Italian) Born in Firenze. Died in Firenze. Details on Google Art Project | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/sdz1-funj-sultanate-the-ottoman-line.mp3 0:06 3 full Funj Sultanate: The Court and Its Rules https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate/ Photo credit L'Isle, Guillaume de (Hrsg.) et al., CC0. The royal family traced their lineage to a legendary ancestress, and the court's succession practices kept that maternal thread taut. The sultan's successor was chosen by the royal court from among sons of previous rulers and Funj noblewomen, not simply from the sitting sultan's ...

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Image: L'Isle, Guillaume de (Hrsg.) et al. | CC0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/sdz1-funj-sultanate-the-court-and-its-rules.mp3 0:06 4 full Funj Sultanate: A Line of Meks https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate/ Photo credit Frédéric Cailliaud, Public domain. The rulers of Sennar used the title Mek, which is the Sudanese Arabic rendering of the older title for king. The list runs from Amara Dunqas (reigned 1503-1533) through twenty-eight successors to Badi VII (reigned 1805-1821). In between, three kings stand out: Badi II (1644-1681)...

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Image: Frédéric Cailliaud | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/sdz1-funj-sultanate-a-line-of-meks.mp3 0:06 5 full Funj Sultanate: What Remained https://qualla.com/funj-sultanate/ Photo credit Robert Hartmann, Public domain. The sultanate left a lingering inheritance. Sufi Islamic orders, the holy men whose mosques and tombs now dot Sudan, traced their arrival and establishment to the Funj centuries. The market town of Sennar is still there. The Funj Chronicle survives as a document of nineteenth-cen...

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Image: Robert Hartmann | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/1/funj-sultanate-wp/sdz1-funj-sultanate-what-remained.mp3 0:06 6 full