Fur

The Fur are settled farmers of the Jebel Marra highlands in Darfur, western Sudan, whose name lives on in Darfur, home of the Fur. They speak a Nilo-Saharan tongue, living by millet and cattle under elders, and follow Maliki Sunni Islam, adopted after medieval Kanem-Bornu conquests reached their mountains.

Ruled by Daju and then Tunjur dynasties, they rose in the mid-sixteenth century as the Fur leader Daali overthrew the last Tunjur ruler and founded the Keira state at Turra, with five provinces and a law code later called Kitab Daali. His successor Sulayman Solong, reigning from 1596, made Islam the state religion and became the first sultan; around 1800 Darfur at its height reached through Kordofan to the White Nile.

Arab nomads filtered into the lowlands from the fifteenth century, Fur farmers turned nomads gradually merging into the Baqqara Arabs, the mountains keeping their language and identity.