Although the potential for Ottoman sources to illuminate the history of Africa has occasionally been noted,Footnote 1 they have rarely been exploited. The greatest contribution by a Turkish scholar to the history of sub-Saharan Africa is undoubtedly Cengiz Orhonlu's study of the Ottoman province of Habeş on the Red Sea coast of the modern Sudan and Eritrea.Footnote 2 Yet Ottoman documents also contain valuable information about the states and peoples they encountered in Africa which has to date received very little attention. In this paper, I will examine the Ottoman evidence for the Funj sultanate based at the city of Sinnār which dominated the Gezira and Nile Valley regions of the modern Sudan (Figure 1) between 1504 and 1821. The Funj thus shared a border in the north and east with the Ottoman provinces of Egypt and Habeş respectively.
The Nile Valley and Red Sea showing major places mentioned in the text
The Funj sultanate was one of the major Islamic states in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa, controlling the trade and pilgrimage routes at the eastern extremity of the Bilād al-Sūdān. The Funj exported gold and slaves through the Ottoman lands to the worlds of both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.Footnote 3 It was under the Funj that Islam became the dominant faith in the Nilotic Sudan, although the sultanate itself retained institutions that may be traced back to Christian Nubia, where its own origins probably lay.Footnote 4 Yet sources for the political history of the Funj prior to the eighteenth century are few and far between. Local traditions of historiography offer little more than king lists for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while the earliest surviving archival documents from Sinnār are also from the eighteenth century.Footnote 5 Thus we are largely reliant for the first two centuries of Funj history on oral traditions recorded much later, although there are also occasional references in Ethiopian sources and, even more rarely, reports of travellers, of whom the earliest was David Reubeni, who left an account in Hebrew of his visit to the Funj lands and Sinnār in 1521–22. The first Westerner to describe Sinnār was the Frenchman Poncet who visited in 1699.Footnote 6
Given this paucity of sources, the Ottoman references to the Funj are, if relatively few, especially significant as rare contemporary documents on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Funj history. The sixteenth-century Ottoman materials largely comprise archival documents connected with Ottoman efforts to secure Habeş and wage war on Ethiopia, with which the Funj sultanate was allied. No explicit references to the Funj have yet come to light in any sixteenth-century Ottoman chronicles or literary sources, but such texts tend to be firmly focused on the central lands of the empire and only extremely rarely mention the Ethiopian campaigns or events in Habeş itself. However, there are allusions to Ottoman manoeuvres against the Funj in the anonymous Rüstem Paşa Tarihi, which will be discussed further below. Conversely, from the end of the sixteenth century, as Habeş declined in importance and the war against Ethiopia was abandoned, the Funj very rarely appear in archival materials. Instead our main sources are literary: an account by Evliya Çelebi, the famous Ottoman traveller, of a journey he purported to have made to the Funj lands in 1671, accompanied by a map, and a brief account of the Funj given in Abu Bekr el-Dimaşki's geography of the world completed just over a decade later.
A number of these documents on the Funj were published by Orhonlu, who also included a brief survey of Ottoman–Funj relations in his work,Footnote 7 but they have attracted little attention from Africanists, doubtless largely for linguistic reasons. Evliya Çelebi's account has also long been known to scholarship, but the reliability of the passages relating to the Funj has never been thoroughly discussed. This paper aims, first, to make this Ottoman documentation available to a wider audience and to evaluate it in its historical context. Second, it presents a fuller analysis of Ottoman–Funj relations than has yet appeared: despite growing interest in Ottoman relations with neighbouring powers,Footnote 8 the documentary evidence for Ottoman frontier policies in north-east Africa in this period has been largely ignored since the publication of Orhonlu's book. Indeed, the lands of the modern Sudan present the possibly unique example of an Ottoman frontier that is better-known archaeologically than through textual evidence.Footnote 9 It is hoped that this paper will help rectify this imbalance. It should be stated at the outset that I have not tried to locate every possible piece of evidence on the topic: the archival materials used here are exclusively those of the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive in Istanbul, and no effort has been made to consult the potentially valuable Ottoman archives in Cairo. The reader's indulgence is therefore begged for what is very much a preliminary survey.
I. The Ottomans and the Funj in the sixteenth century
Ottoman attempts to conquer the Funj in the sixteenth century
The first Ottoman reference to the Funj occurs in a report dated 1525 attributed to Selman Reis, a naval commander commissioned by the Ottoman grand vizier İbrahim Pasha to inspect the military resources available in Jeddah. Selman Reis also described the political situation in the region in the context of a growing threat from Portuguese expansion in the Indian Ocean, and presented an agenda for action in the wake of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Mamluk lands in the Ḥijāz. After listing the ships, guns and men mustered at Jeddah available for use against the Portuguese, he outlines the latter's activities in India and South-East Asia. Selman Reis then surveys potential Ottoman conquests in the Red Sea, arguing that Yemen and Aden, keys to the India trade, should be captured, along with Suakin, favoured by Indian merchants trying to escape taxes in Ottoman-controlled Jeddah. To secure the entrance to the Red Sea and prevent Portuguese plans to build a fort there, Dahlak should be taken. Finally, the report recommends the invasion of the Funj lands and Ethiopia. Although the text has been published three times and translated into French and English,Footnote 10 it has not attracted the attention of scholars of Africa, as textual problems and faulty translations have prevented a proper appreciation of the relevant passage, of which a new English version is offered here:
A black slave, ʿAmāra, rules over a territory three months' [journey wide], stretching from the port of Suakin over the mountains to the waters of the Nile.Footnote 11 They are such weak people that they give 9,000 camels each year to the infidels of Ethiopia as tribute (kharāj). This region from Suakin to the Nile has vegetation and water, and at the place where it meets the Nile, the Nile's waters split into two branches. In the middle of them there is a big city and port called [Sinnār].Footnote 12 Endless merchandise, most of it gold, musk and ivory, comes from Ethiopia and from other unknown regions … . God knows best [but in our view], with a thousand men not only could the town of [Sinnār] and these three-month-broad territories be conquered, but also it would be easy to take the land of Ethiopia.Footnote 13
The “black slave ʿAmāra” is clearly ʿAmāra Dūnqas, the founder of the Funj sultanate. This is the earliest extant account of the Funj after that of David Reubeni.
Ambitious though the report's programme of conquest was, the Ottomans attempted to implement all of it in time, starting with the occupation of Suakin. This may have been a direct response to the recommendations of 1525, for the port's revenues are included in the budget for Egypt for the financial year 1527–28, indicating it must have been captured in the intervening years.Footnote 14 The Ottoman penetration of Yemen started rather later with the seizure of Aden in 1538,Footnote 15 and a foothold in Eritrea was secured with the capture of Massawa, Dahlak and Harqiqo in 1557.Footnote 16 However, with the exception of their tenuous hold on Debaroa, captured in 1559, the Ottomans never succeeded in establishing themselves inland. The report of 1525 suggests they drastically underestimated their opponents, dismissing ʿAmāra Dūnqas as “a black slave” and describing the Ethiopians as “naked infidels with wooden arrows and elephant-hide shields; apparently most of them are bare-footed, weak infidel foot-soldiers”.Footnote 17 This impression is confirmed by the proposal to conquer the vast lands of the Funj and Ethiopia with an army a mere thousand strong.
The Ottomans soon found their commitments in the region a significant burden. Establishing Ottoman authority in Yemen was an uphill – and ultimately unsuccessful – struggle. Their hold on Suakin was tenuous, and the only obstacle the Portuguese fleet faced on sailing into the port in 1541, staying for ten days, was navigating the treacherous reefs that protected its approaches.Footnote 18 Any Ottoman military presence was too insignificant to be noted in the Portuguese expedition's log. Even in Egypt, Ottoman control was undermined by insurrections and dissent; it was much easier, therefore, to leave Upper Egypt largely to its own devices, appointing the longstanding local rulers, the Banū ʿUmar, to administer the area on the Ottomans' behalf.Footnote 19
The eventual adoption of the plan to attack Ethiopia was, it seems, the initiative of one individual, Özdemir Pasha, Ottoman governor of Yemen between 1549 and 1554. According to the Yemeni chronicler al-Nahrawālī, Özdemir was granted an audience with Süleyman the Magnificent in which he persuaded him that a jihad against Ethiopia should be launched.Footnote 20 The plan promised to gain Ottoman access to the sources of African gold as well as thwarting the efforts of the Portuguese to establish a hold on the region through their Ethiopian allies. As a result, in July 1555, the Ottoman province of Habeş, with its capital at Suakin and Özdemir Pasha its first governor, was founded to serve as a bridgehead.Footnote 21 Although like most provinces in the Arab world Habeş was meant to be self-financing, for most of the sixteenth century there was a gaping chasm between what the province earned (mainly from customs revenues and pearl diving) and what it cost to defend.Footnote 22 The shortfall was met by nearby provinces, sometimes Yemen but more usually Egypt.
No sooner had Habeş been established than a party was pressing for action against the Funj, as is suggested by an undated document held in the Topkapı Palace. This must have been written around the time of the foundation of the province in 1555, for none of the basic structures of government had yet been established, as the document itself makes clear: “In the province of Habeş there should be a beylerbeyi [governor-general], a financial official, a qadi, soldiers and gold suitable for minting coins. At the moment they deal with scales, coins are needed in that land”. The document – whose author may have been Özdemir Pasha himself – was apparently designed to persuade the Porte to solve these problems by the conquest of the Funj.
If an imperial order is issued to the shaykh al-ʿarab of the Banū ʿUmar in Upper Egypt and the beylerbeyi of Egypt to go and conquer the Funj, when this task is completed neither cash nor provisions will be spent from the Imperial treasury and no requests will be made for any Janissaries to conquer more provinces for you. It is certain that – if God wills it – the entire land of the Funj [can] be conquered. It is a place suitable for a beylerbeyilik [governorate, province] comprised of five sancaks. There are suitable men who will tax-farm the aforementioned country for 60,000 gold pieces a year.Footnote 23
At one stroke, the Porte could not only solve the problem of financing its impoverished East African territories, but could even make a tidy profit out of the venture by assigning the Funj lands to tax farmers. Even better, it was to be conquest on the cheap, the only budgetary implication being 200 men whom it was requested to recruit for the campaign.
According to the anonymous sixteenth-century Rüstem Paşa Tarihi, Özdemir in fact set off against the Funj (who are not mentioned by name) and Ethiopia before establishing himself in Suakin. On appointment as governor of “Habeş” – and it appears from the context that Ethiopia itself is meant,Footnote 24 rather than merely the Red Sea strip in Ottoman hands – he advanced southwards from Egypt where he had raised a Janissary army. Some of his army went by land, some by the Nile, but at the border of Upper Egypt, by the First Cataract, the troops mutinied and Özdemir was forced to abandon the expedition and return to Istanbul.Footnote 25 What made the troops rebel is not specified, but very probably the realization of their lack of preparation for the vast distances and unknown foe contributed. In Istanbul, Özdemir was instructed to go to Suakin and use that instead as the base for the campaign to conquer Ethiopia.Footnote 26
The failure of Özdemir's expedition up the Nile did not end Ottoman interest in this approach. Within fifteen years, the Ottomans had occupied and fortified the Nubian fortress of Ibrīm, which may have been intended as a base against the Funj;Footnote 27 whether, however, it was envisaged as being pre-eminently defensive or rather as an outpost from which to launch future campaigns in the south is open to question. For the moment, Ottoman attempts to conquer the Funj were abandoned, even though they remained a threat to Ottoman control in north-east Africa. In 1564 the governor of Habeş was complaining to Istanbul that the “Funj who are rebellious Bedouin” (ʿasat-ı ʿurbandan Func aʿrabı) had cut off the water supply on which Suakin depended and were allowing supplies to be sold only for an exorbitant price. It was decided to build a fortress and appoint a sancakbey, a certain Yusuf from Egypt, with the task of “protecting those places and suppressing the Funj tribesmen”.Footnote 28 A few years later, another attack was sufficiently serious to warrant a report to Istanbul. On 10 Muḥarram 979/4 July 1571, while the governor was absent, the rebellious tribal chiefs (meşayih-i ʿarab) made a move on Suakin, and fought fiercely with the castle defenders, only retreating on hearing of the return of the governor (and presumably his army).Footnote 29
The condemnatory rhetoric of the documents rather obscures the precise identity of these “tribesmen” whom one would expect to have been Beja or Ḥaḍāriba given their apparent proximity to Suakin. The term Funj probably indicates that they were allied or subject to the sultanate of Sinnār. It might be argued that Funj in this context is a vague term that the Ottomans had encountered locally, and not too much should be read into its use in these documents. Yet the Ottoman authorities in Habeş were well informed about the peoples surrounding them. A document dated 1586 (MD 60, no. 580, translated below) indicates that the government of Habeş was alarmed at the possibility that the tribes might act in concert with the Ethiopians and the Funj, and sent agents to woo wavering chiefs. Furthermore, local groups played an important part in the administration of Suakin even in the sixteenth century: responsibility for defence, for instance, was shared between the Ottoman dizdar (castle warden) and the shaykh al-ʿarab, a local chief.Footnote 30 One document even lists some of the tribes subject to one such shaykh al-ʿarab, among them the Ḥaḍāriba, Kammālāb and ʿAmrāb.Footnote 31 The Ottoman authorities in Habeş, then, knew with whom they were dealing, as indeed they had to in order to maintain their hold on this remote province. We can thus be fairly confident that the “Funj tribesmen”, whatever their actual ethnicity, were indeed affiliated to the sultanate in Sinnār. Funj is thus a political, not an ethnic, term in these documents.
The Funj were thus able to present a severe threat to Ottoman control of the capital of Habeş itself, but were either unable or chose not to press home their advantage. Suakin was allowed to survive, but at a cost. The water supply was under constant threat, and purely to protect it the Ottomans had been obliged to construct three, admittedly quite small, forts by the end of the sixteenth century.Footnote 32 At the same time, provisions vital for Habeş, such as grain, came entirely from “the rebels from the land of the Funj”. In exchange, the Ottomans paid 200 bolts of cloth every year,Footnote 33 cloth being the Funj's preferred currency for outside trade. It is doubtful whether Ottoman control could have been maintained without Funj acquiescence; perhaps the attacks described above were designed to remind the Ottoman authorities of this reality and extort suitable subsidies.
The Ottoman response to the threat from the Funj fluctuated according to the personalities on the ground as well as imperial policy set by Istanbul. An attempt by Süleyman Pasha to conquer the Funj around 1577 was apparently a personal initiative, and did not meet with Istanbul's approval. Süleyman had been appointed governor of Upper Egypt in 1576 to keep an eye on the Banū ʿUmar, with whose misgovernance Istanbul was growing increasingly weary, and to ensure revenues reached Cairo.Footnote 34 Shortly afterwards, Süleyman became governor of Habeş, but he did not proceed directly to his new province, to the annoyance of the Porte, which wrote to him in Muḥarram 985/March 1577:
It is reported that a long time has passed since you were appointed to the aforementioned province [of Habeş], and you have still not gone there because you have some ideas concerning the conquest of the land of the Funj. You must give up that project and hasten to Habeş.Footnote 35
Süleyman seems to have been undeterred, for two years later Istanbul was again writing to him complaining he had not yet gone to Habeş.Footnote 36 Perhaps such an impoverished province was not an attractive posting,Footnote 37 and Süleyman's scheme to conquer the Funj may have been little more than a pretext to disguise his unwillingness to leave the presumably more lucrative pickings of Upper Egypt.
The Sublime Porte's reluctance to attack the Funj did not last. As the military situation in Habeş deteriorated with fierce fighting over Debaroa, new attempts to strike against the Funj from the north were made. In early 1584, the Porte authorized a substantial reward of 60,000 akçes for a soldier named Mehmed for a campaign he had led against “the princes and rebellious Bedouin on the frontiers of Ibrīm”. He had conquered “many places” as far south as Sise, just north of the Third Cataract, cutting off the head of the governor of Sise castle, Melik Saʿid.Footnote 38 Later in the same year, a sancak (“liva”) of the Maḥās (in the Third Cataract area) is mentioned in the Ottoman archives.Footnote 39 That the ultimate target of these operations was the Funj is confirmed by a Venetian traveller who visited the region in 1589, and provides the most detailed known account of how the Ottoman advance up the Nile was frustrated.
It is impossible to navigate [the Third Cataract] with boats because of the very numerous large rocks that one can see there. In the last few years, the Turks armed some boats to go to conquer Dongola, which is ten or twelve days distant from this cataract. Concerning Dongola, everyone I asked told me that the largest number of Nubians live there, which is why the Turks regard it with desire. It belongs to the King of the Funj. If it had not been for the obstacle of the rocks in the river, the Turks could easily have seized it and the whole Kingdom of the Funj, but beneficent, almighty God has established frontiers across the whole world. As for the fate of the boats that the Turks armed – only a single one came back intact, all the rest were broken. The realm of the Turks extends as far as Sukkot…Footnote 40
These events are also reflected in the traditions of the ʿAbdallāb, the Funj's former Arab rivals who from the early sixteenth century ruled the lands north of Arbajī as Funj vassals, which recall a major battle in which the Ottomans were defeated at Ḥannik by the Third Cataract, which is said to have become the frontier.Footnote 41 This expedition, which must have occurred around 1585,Footnote 42 was, as far as we know, the last Ottoman attempt to conquer the Funj. It underlines the persistent failures in Ottoman planning and intelligence. Despite the operations in the Third Cataract area around 1583–84, preparation for surmounting the natural difficulties presented by the river was clearly completely inadequate. In any case, had the Ottomans reached Dongola, the chances of them continuing successfully as far south as Sinnār were slim. Even in 1820–21, the major expedition sent by the Egyptian viceroy Muḥammad ʿAlī to seize the feeble remnants of the Funj sultanate faced huge logistical problems in maintaining supply lines from Egypt to Sinnār.Footnote 43
By the end of the sixteenth century, then, the Ottomans had not achieved any appreciable success against the Funj. Further attempts were doubtless discouraged by Ottoman recognition of their failure in Ethiopia. Although the first Ethiopian attack on Debaroa in 1574 was thwarted, the Ottomans do seem to have lost control of the town briefly around this date, and it fell to the Emperor Serse Dingil after the battle of Addi Qaro in 1579. Debaroa was retaken by the Ottomans in 1582, but was captured by the Ethiopians again around 1588–89, after which the Ottoman military and administrative presence was restricted to the coast.Footnote 44 At this juncture, the Ottomans settled for peaceful coexistence with the Ethiopians rather than jihad. Any thoughts of conquering the Funj were probably abandoned alongside the Ethiopian campaign. The Ottomans' East African territories remained confined to the Red Sea coast, while the southernmost Ottoman territory on the Nile was Sukkot, where the Ottomans built their frontier fortress of Ṣāy.
Even before the loss of Debaroa and the consequent contraction of Ottoman ambitions and territories in East Africa, sixteenth-century Ottoman policy towards the Funj was not entirely consistent, as is illustrated by the widely differing instructions issued by Istanbul. This ebb and flow of interest reflects shifting imperial policies towards expansion. These have been elucidated by Casale with regard to the Indian Ocean. Although Ottoman politics in the mid-sixteenth century was dominated by the vizier Rüstem Pasha, known for his scepticism towards expansion, from 1553 to summer 1555 Kara Ahmed Pasha held office. He was much more sympathetic to adventures in far-flung places, hence the foundation of Habeş as a base to prosecute the jihad against Ethiopia, and the apparent authorization of Özdemir's abortive attempt to conquer the Funj lands.Footnote 45 Between 1565 and 1579, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was vizier, adopting a policy of what Casale describes as “soft empire”, avoiding military confrontation in the east,Footnote 46 hence the lack of enthusiasm for Süleyman Pasha's proposed Funj campaign. Although Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was murdered in 1579, even in the months before his death he had been planning a new, aggressive strategy designed to shore up Ottoman prestige, challenged by a concatenation of threats, among them Ethiopian victory at Addi Qarro over the Ottomans and the fall of Debaroa. The pro-expansion party remained influential throughout the following decade.Footnote 47 It is in this context that we must understand the renewed initiative against the Funj of c. 1583–85. However, alongside these questions of imperial policy, the situation on the ground influenced Ottoman attitudes towards the Funj, in part perhaps attacks on Suakin, but more particularly fear of the Funj alliance with Ethiopia.
The Funj–Ethiopian alliance
It has generally been assumed that the rise of the Funj presented a headache to their Christian neighbour to the south. They have been blamed for blocking communication with Egypt between 1480 and 1516, meaning that a new head of the Ethiopian church, who had to be a Coptic monk, could not be appointed. The accounts of Portuguese embassies to Ethiopia indicate that in 1519–20 there was fighting between the governor of the Ethiopian coast and “Moors” to the north, who have been identified with the Funj.Footnote 48 Yet it is by no means certain that these “Moors” were the Funj of Sinnār; they may well have been some Beja grouping, albeit possibly subjects of Sinnār, as the Ethiopian governor's expedition was launched from the Ethiopian coast in the direction of Egypt, i.e. through the Beja lands.Footnote 49 A further possibility is that the ʿAbdallāb are meant, for the great ʿAbdallāb leader ʿAbdallāh Jammāʿ is reported to have been active around Suakin in the early sixteenth century.Footnote 50 The ʿAbdallāb had complex relations with the Beja – sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile. According to ʿAbdallāb tradition, the ʿAbdallāb themselves waged war on these Beja around Suakin and even as far away as Massawa. These traditions, it has been argued, reflect, albeit in exaggerated form, the reality of the situation in the Red Sea–Eastern Desert region on the eve of the Ottoman conquest of Suakin around 1526.Footnote 51 These may be the disturbances that the Portuguese sources record. The Ethiopian sources are silent about Funj–Ethiopian relations in the first half of the sixteenth century, for Ethiopia was politically orientated towards the south. Its capital was in the southern province of Shewa, and it was from the south that Aḥmad Grañ's jihad against Ethiopia – which was supported by the Ottomans – originated.Footnote 52
In contrast, Selman Reis' report of 1525 (cited in section I, note 10) sheds unexpected light on early Funj–Ethiopian relations, stressing Funj weakness and political subordination to Ethiopia. Selman suggests that exports from Ethiopia lay behind Sinnār's commercial vitality. This also casts doubt on the Funj tradition heard by James Bruce in the eighteenth century that the Funj's conversion to Islam (which occurred in the years shortly before this report was written) was motivated by the desire to facilitate trade with their neighbours, especially Egypt.Footnote 53 Egypt was certainly Sinnār's major trading partner when Bruce visited the Funj lands, but it is far from certain that this was the case in the sixteenth century. The importance of Sinnār's economic relations with Ethiopia has long been recognized, but the apparent contradiction with the thesis of conversion for commercial gain has been discounted on the grounds that Ethiopian traders “were exclusively Muslim”.Footnote 54 The Ottoman report that Sinnār's relationship with Ethiopia was one of political as well as economic dependence (through paying kharāj, tribute) casts some doubt on the traditional explanations for Funj conversion.
It might of course be argued that undue credence should not be given to the report of 1525. While contemporary, Selman Reis had clearly never been to Ethiopia or Sinnār, and his depiction of the Ethiopians as naked savages reflects prejudice rather than sound information. On the other hand, he was well informed about Ethiopia's struggle against the Muslim emirates in the Horn of Africa, and other evidence supports the existence of a Funj–Ethiopian coalition, in particular the rather scanty Ethiopian material,Footnote 55 confirmed by Ottoman documents from the later sixteenth century. The Funj supplied Ethiopia with camels and were also the major intermediary in the sale of Egyptian horses there.Footnote 56 Indeed, Selman Reis had noted that the thousand horses imported annually via Suakin (and thence probably through the Funj lands) to Ethiopia were being used against the Muslims of Zaylaʿ.Footnote 57 With the start of the Ottoman campaign to conquer Ethiopia in 1555, the Ottomans found that these horses were now directed against them, and their irritation is reflected in an order issued by the Sublime Porte in 980/1572–73:
Instruction to the beylerbeyi of Egypt: It has been reported that horses are currently being taken via the place named Funj to the Dār al-Ḥarb by caravan. I have not permitted the export of horses to the Dār al-Ḥarb. When this order arrives, the shaykh al-ʿarab of the Banū ʿUmar province who is responsible for this and the rest of the kāshifs [deputy governors] in this region should pay attention to my instructions and should beware of contravening my noble decrees in future.Footnote 58
The Dār al-Ḥarb can only be Ethiopia, the sole significant non-Muslim power in the region likely to have worried the Ottomans.
Efforts to suppress the trade seem to have been unsuccessful. Ten years later, in 990/1582, the governor of Habeş complained to the Porte that the Funj were still supplying the Ethiopians with horses, while military equipment was reaching them via the port of Beylul, whose ruler had apparently thrown off Ottoman suzerainty.Footnote 59 In 1586, when Suakin was in danger of attack from the Funj and the Ethiopians had advanced towards Debaroa, the Porte sent an instruction that horses should be bought in Upper Egypt and sent via Alexandria to Istanbul, doubtless in an attempt to stop them falling into the wrong hands.Footnote 60
Ottoman preparations for war in 1586 seem to reflect worries that the Funj might act in concert with the Ethiopians. A letter addressed to the beylerbeyi of Habeş summarized the concerns he had presented to the Porte:Footnote 61
According to your report, when you heard that the infidel king of Ethiopia had set out from his capital with an army 40,000 strong and had come to the province of Shire,Footnote 62 you sent two spies, the first of whom was lost, and the second of whom reported that provisions were being made ready. Therefore a man was sent to the Bedouin chiefs (Bedvan şeyhlerine) and every possible precaution was taken. A man was also sent to the aforementioned accursed [king of the Ethiopians] to ask, “While relations between us are peaceful, what is the reason for these movements and unfriendly actions?” [The king] replied that, “We do not deserve this reputation [for hostility]”,Footnote 63 but his intentions are unknown. Therefore fortifications and ports have been put [on a war footing], trenches have been dug, and the country is in a state of defence and vigilance. Furthermore, with the death of the Funj king, his elder son has become king in his place and is certain to attack Suakin. For the moment, however, he is fighting with his paternal uncles, so he has not yet mobilized.Footnote 64
The new Funj sultan mentioned must have been Dawra b. Dakīn. Later Ethiopian sources mention the friendship between Dawra's father Dakīn (976/1568 to 999/1585–86) and the Ethiopian Emperor Serse Dingil (1563–96).Footnote 65
Strategic considerations kept Sinnār aligned with Ethiopia against the Ottomans, despite the latter being fellow Muslims. First, there was the question of access to the fabled gold of Ethiopia. Aḥmad Grañ's jihad had deprived the Ethiopians of most ports, and the main export route that remained open to them lay through the Sudan via Sinnār and Suakin.Footnote 66 Gold was of crucial importance to the Funj too. In the absence of a mint in the Funj realms, the gold ounce seems to have served as the effective currency of Sinnār. Maintaining control over gold, both imported and that mined within his kingdom, was crucial to the Funj sultan's authority.Footnote 67 Ottoman interest in Ethiopian gold, and awareness of Sinnār's involvement in its export, is clear from the report of 1525. Ethiopia and the Funj thus had a common desire to maintain their control over the production and export of this commodity.
Alongside Ethiopian–Funj collaboration, there were periods of tension, even hostility, between the two sides. The Ottoman report of 1525 suggests that ʿAmāra Dūnqas’ subjugation to the Ethiopians was not entirely voluntary. Ethiopian sources confirm that from the late sixteenth century the boundary disputes and cross-border slaving expeditions that both the Ethiopians and the Funj directed against each other's territories resulted in tensions between the two sides, culminating in outright war in 1618–19. Periods of war and peace alternated throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Footnote 68 Even in the sixteenth century, the Funj allowed the Ottomans to hang on to Suakin, the main base through which the Ethiopian campaigns were supplied, suggesting their alliance with Ethiopia was somewhat half-hearted. It is easy to discern the strategic considerations that would have influenced them. Firstly, the Funj were themselves reliant on Suakin as their main entrepot for trade with the outside world, and they probably welcomed the access to world markets provided by Ottoman Suakin's prominent place on the trade routes connecting the Red Sea coast of Africa with India, South-East Asia and the Mediterranean.Footnote 69 Secondly, the Funj are unlikely to have wanted Ethiopia to win an absolute victory which might threaten Sinnār's own position and even independence. So they supplied both sides, Ethiopia with horses to keep the war going, the Ottomans with enough provisions to allow them to retain their East African foothold. At the same time, they could easily tighten the noose around Suakin by cutting off water or communications with other Ottoman possessions in Habeş, like Debaroa.Footnote 70
Thus when Ottoman pressure on Ethiopia and the Funj relaxed from the 1590s onwards, neither party needed the alliance that had protected them during the epoch of Ottoman expansion. This opened the way to their often tense relations from the seventeenth century onwards. Even then the occasional fragment of evidence suggests that the two sides continued to collude against the Ottomans from time to time, such as an appeal for help (of questionable authenticity) from the Funj to Ethiopia around 1654, after the former's involvement in murdering the governor of Suakin.Footnote 71
II. The Ottomans and the Funj in the seventeenth century
Increasing military and financial problems closer to home forced the Ottomans to abandon their ambitions for expansion in the Indian Ocean and Africa, adventures which had anyway met with very limited success. Habeş continued to exist but is mentioned with increasing rarity in the Ottoman archives. Janissaries posted to Habeş and to Nubia began to intermarry with the local population and to identify increasingly closely with local, rather than Ottoman, interests. Sometimes power was more or less entirely devolved to local agents, such as the nā'ibs of Harqiqo.Footnote 72 At the same time, the seventeenth century saw the Funj rise to the apogee of their power while becoming increasingly open to foreign influences. Sinnār, with its substantial colonies of foreign merchants, became a cosmopolitan city, and the Funj sultans attempted to modernize their army by importing firearms and cannons.Footnote 73 Ottoman Egypt may have been one channel through which knowledge about military technology was diffused, but so probably was Habeş. Suakin, on the front line with the Funj, was certainly defended by cannon and muskets.Footnote 74 Culturally, too, there are suggestions of a certain rivalry with the Ottomans. The panegyric qaṣīda dedicated to Sultan Bādī II (r. 1644/5–1681) by the Azhar scholar ʿUmar al-Maghribī was inspired by a poem originally dedicated to the Ottoman Bayezid II (1481–1512), and went so far as to promote the Funj sultan as Caliph himself.Footnote 75
Despite the occasional hostile incident, in general relations between the Ottomans and the sultanate thawed. With the growing irrelevance of Habeş, the Funj sank largely – but not entirely – beyond the horizons of the Sublime Porte, and Egypt became the main link between the two sides, the corridor through which Sudanese gold, swords and slaves were brought to the Mediterranean world.Footnote 76 The importance of the connection with Egypt is suggested by our principal Ottoman source for the Funj in the seventeenth century, the account of the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi.
Evliya Çelebi's travels in the Funj lands and Habeş
It was from Egypt that the famous Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi claims to have set off in July 1672 to explore the land of the Funj, armed with letters of recommendation from his patron, Kethüda Ibrahim Pasha, the governor of Egypt.Footnote 77 Evliya's journey led him up the Nile, across the frontier at Ṣāy into the ʿAbdallāb territories (Berberistan in his terminology), and then south into the heart of the Funj kingdom. Indeed, Evliya purports to have been given a tour around Sinnār by the Funj sultan in person, before penetrating deeper into Africa, into Ethiopia itself, where his ambition to see the source of the Nile was frustrated. A second journey took him from the Nile across the desert to Ottoman Habeş, whence he returned to Egypt.
Evliya's account should, then, be a source of exceptional importance for our theme, and it is widely cited in works on Sudanese history.Footnote 78 Yet the further Evliya's journey led him up the Nile, the more exotic his stories become and the further his itinerary diverges from the actual topography of the lands through which he purports to have passed. The descriptions of the two main Ottoman settlements towards the frontier, Ibrīm and Ṣāy, are reasonably detailed and convincing, as too is the later account of Suakin and Massawa. Immediately after Ṣāy, Evliya mentions Mağrak, correctly locating it on the east bank (although it is in fact situated north of Ṣāy), and Tinare and Sise on the west bank.Footnote 79 Yet doubts begin to arise. Where could the west bank castle and town of Hafir-i Kebir be, with its twenty mihrabs, numerous mosques, fifty zaviyes and hundred shops?Footnote 80 Evliya's persistent references to elephant and rhinoceros products, ranging from ivory cannonballsFootnote 81 to his tales of having ridden an elephantFootnote 82 and meeting rhinoceros-mounted dervishesFootnote 83 surely represent the exotica he imagined he might encounter in Africa rather than what he really did. “The valley of demons”, with its wondrous columns and miraculous healing waters that were exported as far as the lands of the Franks and India, is the stuff of legend.Footnote 84 So too is the vast congregational mosque of the Prophet Solomon which Evliya claims to have seen in the desert, larger, he says, than any mosque he had seen in Constantinople or Mecca.Footnote 85 By the time we reach Ethiopia, we are in an entirely imaginary world of wonders such as a “land of monkeys”.Footnote 86
Evliya's account of the Funj sultan also owes more to mythology than to any real encounter. Although the sultan at the time of his visit was Bādī II, also known as Abū Diqn, Evliya calls him Qaqān b. Ghulām Muḥammad Qaqān b. Idrīs Qaqān.Footnote 87 Qaqān or Kakan is the word Evliya uses to mean sultan or king of the Funj, but is not otherwise attested, nor are the other names Evliya gives. In fact, they have nothing to do with the names or titles of any real Funj monarchs. Evliya's account of Nubia and Africa is permeated by legends associating these regions with the Prophet Idrīs, to whom he frequently connects the remains that he saw and the peoples he encountered.Footnote 88 This is why Evliya also claims to have heard “Hebrew” in Sinnār: it is part of his mythologizing of Africa, by which he attempts to link the wonders he claims to have seen with Muslim lore about pre-Islamic prophets.Footnote 89
Despite his passion for travel, Evliya rarely went far beyond the Ottoman frontiers. His visits to Iran were restricted to the (formerly Ottoman) border provinces of Armenia and Azerbaijan, while his most exotic destination, the remote north Pontic steppe, was nominally subject to the Ottomans’ vassals, the Tartars. His account of visits to Western Europe are fictitious, and his trip to Vienna of 1665 was made in the company of an Ottoman embassy.Footnote 90 In Africa, a visit to Habeş, and up the Nile to Ibrīm and Ṣāy, is credible, but Evliya probably got little further than Ottoman-controlled territories, as his confused and fantastic itineraries up the Nile and into Ethiopia so strongly suggest.
Yet Evliya's account of the Funj kingdom is not complete nonsense. Many of the places mentioned are genuine toponyms, albeit in mangled form: for example, Petti Sumi suggests that Narnarinte is derived from the common Nubian toponym narti, meaning island.Footnote 91 Hannak must be Ḥannik, the site of the great Ottoman–Funj battle according to ʿAbdallāb tradition, although Evliya makes no mention of this. Tinare, Sise, Dongola, Qarrī and Arbajī are all real places on the route south to Sinnār. Even the samples of African languages Evliya gives are not entirely invented. Parts of them have been identified as Kanuri, the language of Bornu,Footnote 92 and, significantly, Evliya says that in Funjistan “they call their kings mây, which means sultan”.Footnote 93 They did not, but this title was used in the sultanate of Bornu, with which the Ottomans had diplomatic links.Footnote 94 Indeed, Ottoman soldiers served in the army of Bornu, and in the late sixteenth century, Bornu's sovereign even bore the name Idrīs, like the ancestor of Evliya's ruler of Sinnār. Evliya does tell us he encountered a diplomatic mission from the ruler of Bornu in Cairo,Footnote 95 and this may have served as his source for this information, which was then – accidentally or deliberately – displaced to the sections on the Funj.
Other possible sources may have been slaves from Funjistan whom Evliya mentions in his account of Cairo, and merchants doing business with the Funj.Footnote 96 Evliya claims to have undertaken the journey into Ethiopia in the company of Jabartī merchants from the Horn of Africa.Footnote 97 He also mentions the Banyans, or Indian merchants, who came from Habeş to do business in Sinnār, and he quotes verses in Hindi by them.Footnote 98 This Hindi is not one of the mythological languages, perpetrated as a “hoax” on his readers, as Dankoff puts it, but genuine quotations from a north Indian language. Banyans, then, may have been a source, and there was a community of them at Suakin, which Evliya is much more likely to have visited.Footnote 99 Thus even if Evliya's account of the Funj owes little or nothing to personal experience, it probably does reflect, in intentionally exaggerated and mythologizing form, tales the author heard from better-informed sources in Cairo, Suakin and elsewhere. In a sense, then, it can be said to offer an insight into the Ottoman experience and perception of Africa.
Abu Bekr el-Dimaşki's account of the Funj
Evliya may also have had access to literary sources on the Funj. His contemporary Abu Bekr b. Behram el-Dimaşki was commissioned to translate Johannes Blaeu's famous world atlas into Ottoman by Sultan Mehmed IV in 1675. It was more than a simple translation, however, for Dimaşki greatly expanded the parts relating to Ottoman and adjoining territories, and included an account of the Funj kingdom, the source of which I have not been able to identify. Although Dimaşki's translation, entitled the Nusretü'l-İslam ve'l-Surur fi Tahrir-i Atlas Mayor, was not completed until 1685, after Evliya's death in 1682, it indicates that there were written accounts of the Funj in circulation, however fantastic in character, upon which Evliya may have drawn. As Dimaşki's account of the Funj has not previously attracted attention, I quote it in full here, firstly transcribed into Latin script, secondly in English translation. As will be seen, the account is too vague to allow a precise dating. Furthermore, there are often textual differences in the manuscripts I have inspected: rather surprisingly, the text of the abridgement of Dimaşki's Nusretü'l-İslam (MS Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye 2996, fol. 70a) is longer than that in the supposedly full version (MSS Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye 2994, fol. 385b; Istanbul University, TY 6609, fol. 34a). Significant lexical variations also appear in the text of the eighteenth-century Ottoman geographer Bartınlı İbrahim, who incorporated much of Dimaşki's work into his own Atlas-ı Cihan (MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Esad Efendi 2044, fol. 46a–b). This is not the place to provide a critical edition: I aim merely to introduce the fullest version of this text presented by Nuruosmaniye 2996 with a translation and noting any major discrepancies I have encountered in the other manuscripts.Footnote 100
Fasıl der beyan-ı Func saltanatı
Bu vilayet Nubiya'dan bir kısımdır ve hududı şarktan Bece ve garptan Nube ve cenuptan Habeş ve şimaldan Mısır hududı ki ol semte livanın ibtidasıdır ve şark ve cenub-ı Cebel-i ʿAcun dahi Ra's ül-Dünya derler. Ve bu memleketin en baş şehri Sinnar'dır ve bu medine büyük[tür] Nil kenarında olur Sevvakin'den yigirmi merhaledir ve bu şehirde Func meliki olur. Ve bu memleketin halkı ehl-i İslam'dır ve cümlesinin mezhebleri Malikidir. Ve bunlarun meliki kumaştan esbabFootnote 101 giyerler amma başı açıktır ve giydüği esbab astarsızdır dahi kumaştan don giyer ve bir peştimal kuşanur ve boynunda zi-kıymet bir şalFootnote 102 ve kulaklarında altundan mücevher küpeler ve kollarında altundan mücevher bilezik olur. Ve oturduğı odada sac ağacından ve üzerinde mücevher tahtalar kaplanmıştır ve dört köşesinde altun mücevher toplar vazʿ olunmuştur ve tavanı envaʿ-ı zinetlerle müzeyyendir. Bu iradeFootnote 103 istedüği yere nakl olunur ve kaçan ki taifesinden bir kimse buluşmak murad eylese yüzü üzerine düşer ve “şar şar” deyü söyler yaʿni “ey vallah” demektir. Baʿdahu kalkar ve ʿarzıhal eder. Ve bu melikin veziri [Arbaci]Footnote 104 şehrinde olur, Sinnar'dan bir merhale baʿiddir. Ve bu vezirin ancak kulağında bir mücevher küpe, kolunda bir mücevher enlu bilezik ki buna vüzerat mührü derler.Footnote 105 Ve bu vilayetin bir garib vilayet ʿadetleri vardır. Hatibleri ʿİyü 'l-Adha namazı kıldıkta minbere çıkar ve hütbeyi okur. Tamam oldukta eline bir kalkan alur ve minberden iner ve kalkanı elinde tutar ve cemaʿatın her birinin elinde sığır tezeğinden bir top anar kadar yapılmıştır. Ol topı hatib minberden indüği vaktinde ana atarlar. Her kim topunı hatibe dokunursa gayetle şadman olur, bu sene taliʿi mübarek ve devesi ve mavaşisi ve evladı ve gayrısı cümlesi afatten amindir deyür. Eğer dokunmazsa mahzun olur ve der ki bu sene taliʿi fenadır ve kendüye bir zarar ısabet eder. Fi 'l-vakıʿa böyle olur ve anlarda mücerrebdir hatta padışahları Sevvakin'den vaʿizler ve şeyhler götürüp, vaʿz-ü nasihat ittirüp, bu şeyin aslı yokdur deyü. Olmadı, farig olmadılar ve bu taifenin muʿameleleri demürdendür.
Chapter describing the Funj sultanate
This land is part of Nubia. Its borders are the Beja in the east, Nubia in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and the borders of Egypt in the north which mark the beginning of that region [i.e. the Funj lands]. They call the south and east of Mount ʿAjūn “The Head of the World”. The most important town of this country is Sinnār, a large city on the banks of the Nile, twenty stages from Suakin, in which the king of the Funj lives. This country's people are Muslims, and they all belong to the Maliki madhhab. Their king wears robes of cloth, but does not cover his head. The robes he wears have no lining, and he wears cloth trousers and a waistcloth. On his neck is a valuable shawl (or stone) and he has gold earrings and gold bracelets on his arms. The room he lives in is made of teak and is covered with bejewelled wood. In each of its four corners are placed balls of gold, and its roof is decorated with various jewels. This [room] is taken wherever he wants, and when one of his people wants to meet [with the king], [the supplicant] falls on his face saying, “Shar shar”, which means “Oh by God”. Then he gets up and presents his petition. This king's minister lives in Arbajī, one stage distant from Sinnār. This minister has only a bejewelled earring and a bejewelled, decorated bracelet which is called the seal of the vizierate. This land has strange local customs. When their khaṭībs perform the ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā prayers, they go up to the minbar, and read the khuṭba. When it is finished, they take a shield and come down from the minbar while holding the shield. Each one of the congregation has in his hand a ball the size of a pomegranate made of dried ox (or bull's) dung. When the khaṭīb comes down from the minbar, they throw it and whoever's ball touches the khaṭīb is very happy, and says, “This year my fortune will be good and my camel, cattle and children and so on safe from disaster”. If [the ball] does not touch [the khaṭīb], he becomes sad, thinking his luck will be bad this year and he will be afflicted by harm. In truth, this is how it turns out, and it is tried and tested by them. Even their kings bring preachers and shaykhs from Suakin and make them preach and give advice, saying, “This custom has no basis”. It did not work out, and they have not given it up, for this people's behaviour is unshakable.
It is easy to dismiss Dimaşki's account of the Funj as being little more than tall tales of Africa designed to titillate the prejudices of his audience. Yet he should be given his due. The only mention of the Funj in Blaeu's Atlas was as the “Nova Fungi” who are marked on his map of Africa far to the south of Ethiopia, roughly in modern Kenya.Footnote 106 Dimaşki's description locates them much more accurately, and this is also reflected in the maps accompanying at least some versions of his text.Footnote 107 Thus before Poncet undertook his famous trip to Sinnār in 1698–99, which was to introduce Europe to the Funj kingdom for the first time, a seventeenth-century Ottoman audience reading works like those of Dimaşki and Evliya had access to better information than a European one: the Ottoman sources at least manage to locate the Funj lands accurately and name the capital Sinnār, and the second town of Arbajī. The reference to the king's minister residing in Arbajī is doubtless a reflection of the division of the Funj kingdom into two spheres, with the area to the north of the Nile confluence subject to the ʿAbdallāb rather than directly to the sovereignty of the sultan of Sinnār.Footnote 108
Ottoman influences in seventeenth-century Sinnār
The concluding passage of Dimaşki's account of the Funj points to Suakin as a source of religious instruction for the Funj. From the seventeenth century onwards, Islam in the eastern Bilād al-Sūdān was transformed from being the preserve of the ruling elite to the faith of the masses. Holy men from the Ottoman lands, especially from Egypt and the Ḥijāz, played a crucial part in these conversions.Footnote 109 The question of whether they brought anything specifically Ottoman with them has never been examined, perhaps because the Ḥanafī law-school which the Ottomans espoused never won any popularity in the Sudan. Even in Suakin, the Ḥanafī mosque and qadi faced stiff resistance,Footnote 110 and one of the more credible parts of Evliya's report on Sinnār notes the absence of any Ḥanafīs there.Footnote 111 Yet Evliya also claims that the name of the Ottoman Caliph Mehmed IV was mentioned after that of the Funj sultan in the khuṭba at Friday prayers in Sinnār in his capacity as protector of the holy cities of the Ḥijāz.Footnote 112
It might be tempting to dismiss the Ottoman khuṭba at Sinnār, along with tales of the Turkish-speaking members of local elites Evliya claimed to have encountered,Footnote 113 as examples of Evliya's overactive imagination and his Ottoman patriotism. Yet religious links between the Funj and Ottoman territories were strong. The Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt of Wad Ḍayf Allāh, a work composed in the Gezira in the last years of the Funj monarchy in the early nineteenth century which is our main source for the religious history of the eastern Bilād al-Sūdān, frequently refers to such contacts, although I have not discovered any references to ulema from Suakin itself; perhaps all that is meant by Dimaşki's report is that the ulema were brought via, rather than from, Suakin. A certain Muḥammad b. Fāyid al-Sharīf from Ottoman Massawa, however, is mentioned.Footnote 114 The name of another scholar, al-Khalīl b. al-Rūmī, suggests an Anatolian or Ottoman ancestor of some sort, even if he himself was a native of Dongola.Footnote 115 However, it was not purely a question of the Funj acting as passive recipients of religious knowledge from abroad. Links with the Ottoman territories across the Red Sea were cemented through the hajj, and some Funj ulema repeatedly undertook the journey to the Ḥijāz in search of knowledge.Footnote 116 The seventeenth-century Sinnār scholar, Junayd walad Ṭāhā, had great influence among both the elite and the ordinary people in the Ḥijāz.Footnote 117 Rather less welcome, presumably, were the activities of another seventeenth-century Sufi from the Funj lands, Ḥamad al-Naḥlān, known as Ibn Turābī, who was beaten and imprisoned for declaring himself the Mahdi while on the hajj.Footnote 118 Visits to the Ḥijāz and the resulting association with men of learning from across the Ottoman Empire and Africa could consolidate a Funj scholar's reputation. When ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, khaṭīb of Sinnār, was obliged to go into exile in the Ḥijāz in the wake of a dispute with the Funj sultan, he forged contacts with ulema from the Maghrib, Ḥijāz, Rūm and Takrūr who feted him as the leading learned man of Sinnār.Footnote 119
The effect of these contacts can be seen in Wad Ḍayf Allāh's account of the debates among the Funj ulema over the permissibility of the consumption of tobacco. One of the leading holymen of Sinnār, Shaykh Idrīs b. Muḥammad al-Arbāb (d. c. 1650), had issued a fatwa that it was illicit, based on practice in the Ottoman empire, for “The Sultan [in] Istanbul, Mustafa, had banned it and the Maliki madhhab requires obedience to the sultan in cases where there is no legal text”.Footnote 120 The details of which Ottoman sultan was responsible are confused – Mustafa's predecessor Ahmed I had in fact introduced the ban, which was later reinforced by Osman II and Murad IVFootnote 121 – but it is a telling comment on the prestige of the Funj's old adversaries that the social policies of Istanbul should have been seen as authoritative in Sinnār, although not decisive, for Wad Ḍayf Allāh indicates the debate continued after this intervention. In this context, Evliya Çelebi's claim that the Ottoman sultan was mentioned in the khuṭba at Sinnār should perhaps be given a degree of credence.
By the seventeenth century, then, Sinnār looked towards the Ottoman empire not merely as a potential threat or as a source of military technology, but also as source of religious legitimacy, notwithstanding the differences of madhhab. For their part, the Ottomans' attitude towards the Funj had relaxed considerably, as is suggested by Suakin's role as the major port for the Funj and the apparently regular traffic between Cairo and Sinnār. This new attitude is attested by a directive dated Dhū 'l-Ḥijja 1112/July 1701 addressed to the beylerbeyi of Habeş by the Sublime Porte in response to a letter received from the Funj sultan, who must have been Bādī III, although he is not named. In contrast to the sixteenth-century Ottoman rhetoric about “rebellious tribesmen”, the document of 1701 refers respectfully to the vilayet-i Sinnarü's-Sudan hakimi, “the ruler of the land of Sinnar in the Sudan”. The governor of Habeş is rebuked by Istanbul for levying excessive taxes on slave caravans passing from Sinnār to the Ḥijāz via Suakin, taking, in contrast to the established rate of one gold piece per prisoner and one esedi guruş per head of camel, five gold pieces per slave, both children and adults, and three gold pieces per head for camels. The Porte demanded an immediate end to this oppression of the Sinnār merchants, as it was in breach of the custom established since the time of Sultan Selim.Footnote 122
Elsewhere in the eastern Sudan, Istanbul's prestige became increasingly alluring to local rulers during the eighteenth century, who had long-established trade links with Ottoman Egypt.Footnote 123 This phenomenon is well illustrated by the titles adopted by Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rashīd of Dārfūr (1787–1801). Even his laqab al-Rashīd is said to have been awarded to him by the Ottoman sultan in response to gifts he sent to Istanbul, and in his correspondence he styled himself by a number of Ottoman-sounding titles: khādim al-ḥaramayn al-sharīfayn and sulṭān al-ʿarab wa-'l-ʿajam. Most preposterously of all, the ruler of land-locked Dārfūr called himself the sulṭān al-barrayn wa-’l-baḥrayn, “sultan of the two lands and the two seas”, a typically Ottoman title.Footnote 124 That, as far as we know, such titles were not adopted in eighteenth-century Sinnār is probably more a reflection of the increasingly weak position of the Funj sultans than a continuation of the enmity and suspicion of earlier times.
The Porte's award of titles to the ruler of Dārfūr and its concern at the fate of trade with Sinnār indicates that even in the eighteenth century Istanbul never entirely lost interest in Africa. Its earlier policies towards the Funj in the sixteenth century suggest a combination of arrogance and bravado more popularly associated with European colonialism. Whereas for campaigns in Europe the Ottomans went to great lengths to acquire accurate intelligence and guides,Footnote 125 the circumstances in which the expeditions against the Funj failed indicate a gross lack of planning. It was bad enough that the Ottomans believed that the conquest of the Funj could be carried out with negligible forces, severely underestimating their opponents as the evidence from 1525 and 1555 shows; but the failure of the Ottomans to prepare for the entirely predictable hurdle of the Third Cataract, lying on the edge of the Ottoman-controlled Maḥās sancak, suggests sheer recklessness. It is tempting to think that the Ottomans were seduced by the rhetoric of their own reports that contemptuously mentioned the “black slave ʿAmāra” and rebellious “Funj tribesmen” into neglecting the kind of preparations they would make as a matter of course for campaigns elsewhere. At the same time, the Ottoman authorities on the ground in Suakin clearly had, as we have argued, good quality local information. Despite the long-standing Portuguese involvement in neighbouring Ethiopia, for all the faults of Ottoman intelligence on the Funj, it was superior to anything available in Europe until the end of the seventeenth century.
