Runga

The Runga are a Muslim people of the borderlands where Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic meet, between the Salamat, Aouk and Kara rivers. They form a composite society split by tongue into Arabic-speaking Runga and the Runga-Aiki who speak Aiki, usually with Arabic as a second language, yet share a single culture.

Their country was organized as the Sultanate of Dar Runga, which by the reign of the Wadai ruler Muhammad Sabun, between 1804 and 1815, had become a Wadai tributary; it also served Darfur as a hunting ground for slaves. The Runga homeland remained a prize of the Wadai-Darfur rivalry until the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr overran it at the end of the nineteenth century.