Tunjur

The Tunjur, or Tungur, were a Sunni Muslim people of eastern Chad and western Sudan. Their origins are disputed: their own traditions claim Arab descent, while the archaeologist Claude Rilly traces them to Christian Nubia, deriving their name from Tungul, the old name of Dongola.

In the 1200s they peacefully took power from the Daju in Darfur and Wadai; their capital at Ain Farah has yielded Christian iconography. In the 1500s an Arab group overthrew them and founded the Keira dynasty of Darfur; the last Tunjur ruler, Shau Dorshid, was driven out by his own people, and the survivors merged into the Fur.

Around 1650 Abd-el-Kerim of the Bargo expelled the Tunjur from Wadai, and they migrated westward, adopting the Maliki school of Sunni Islam. Their own Tunjur language became extinct, replaced by Chadian Arabic, Fur and Bari.