Land in Dar Fur: Charters and Related Documents from the Dar Fur Sultanate (Fontes Historiae Africanae. Series Arabica, 3)

181 Pages·2003·6.44 MB·English

by  R. S. O'Fahey

Land in Dar Fur
UNION ACADEMIQUE INTERNATIONALE
INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC UNION
FONTES HISTORIAE AFRICANAE
SERIES ARABICA III
Series published under the editorial direction
of J. O. Hunwick with the assistance of Y. F. Hasan,
J. F. P. Hopkins, V. Monteil and M. Zouber
Published on the recommendation of the International Council for
Philosophy and Humanistic Studies with the financial assistance of
Unesco and of the Norwegian Research Council.
Land in Dar Fur
Charters and related documents from
the Dar Fur Sultanate
Translated with an introduction by
R. S. O'FAHEY and M. I. ABC SALlM
with
M.-J. and J. TUBIANA
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1983
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1983
First paperback edition 2003
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress catalogue card number: 82-4186
ISBN 0 521 24643 1 hardback
ISBN 0 521 54563 3 paperback
Now, with very few exceptions which have just been explained, they
(i.e. medieval legal documents) were, till the thirteenth century, inva-
riably drawn up in Latin. But this was not the way in which the realities
they were intended to record were first expressed. When two lords
debated the price of an estate or the clauses of a contract of subjection
they certainly did not talk to each other in the language of Cicero. It
was the notary's business later to provide, as best he could, a classical
vest for their agreement. Thus every Latin charter or notarial record
is the result of a work of translation, which the historian today, if he
wishes to grasp the underlying truth, must put back, as it were, into the
original.
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society
i, 77-8.
i • •
+0^$
I
Document XXIV
CONTENTS
Preface and acknowledgements page ix
List and concordance of documents xiii
Transliteration and abbreviations xv
Chapter 1 The Dar Fur Sultanate
Introduction 1
The administration of northern and central Dar Fur 4
Taxation and revenue 6
The law and its administration 8
Chapter 2 Estate and privilege
The growth of the estate system 12
Immunity 17
The charitable estate 18
The procedure 20
Chapter 3 Literacy and Chancery
Official literacy 22
An official chancery? 23
Chapter 4 A Diplomatic Commentary
Physical description and language 26
The structure of the charters 28
(a) seal 28
(b) invocatio 29
(c) intitulatio 30
(d) inscriptio 32
(e) expositio and dispositio 32
(f) final injunctions 33
Chapter 5 Translations and Commentary
Document
I The faqth 'Abdallah's charter 35
II to VI The J awami'a fuqar a' of Jadld al-Sayl 37
vii
viii Contents
VII to XXIII The Tunjur fuqarcC of Khirlban 45
XXIV and XXV The Masamlr Arabs 76
XXVI to XXXVII The land and followers of Nur al-DIn
b. Yahya 79
XXXVIII to XLI The Princesses Fatima Umm Dirays
and Zahra 99
XLII to XLVII The merchants Muhammad Kannuna
and 'All Bey Ibrahim al-Tirayfi 106
Sources and bibliography 119
Notes 124
Indices
(a) Titles and honorifics 151
(b) Administrative and legal terms 153
(c) Botanical and topographical terms 157
(d) Personal and place-names 158
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
Map 1. The Dar Fur sultanate 15
Map 2. Northern and central Dar Fur 16
Diagram 1. The Keira sultans 2
Diagram 2. A typology of documents 24
PLATES
Document XXIV vi
Document XVI 60
Document XXIII 72
Document XXVIII 83
Document XLV 116
PREFACE
We present here translations1 of forty-seven documents chosen from a
total now approaching five hundred concerning land and related matters
issued by the sultans of Dar Fur or their officials in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. For the most part the documents have survived
as family archives preserved by the descendants of those to whom they
were originally addressed. In making our selection, we have sought to
illustrate the main administrative developments of the period as
presented in the whole corpus. Thus the archives of three holy families
are given (I to XXIII), the archive of a chief and his patrons (XXIV
to XXXVII), five documents (XXXVIII to XLI) concerning two
princesses, and finally six (XLII to XLVII) dealing with the land of
two merchants. These proportions do not reflect the whole corpus where
the papers of the holy families predominate, since they have been the
most successful in holding on to both their land and their documents.2
The introduction tries to situate the charters and court records within
the environment which produced them. Chapter 1 gives a brief summary
of the political and administrative history of the Dar Fur sultanate;
chapter 2, again briefly, outlines the principles whereby privileged
status, rights in people and landed estates were granted. Chapters 3 and
4 take up the question of literacy and of the existence of a formal
chancery and present a brief diplomatic commentary. Since we hope
that this volume, together with a companion volume presenting land
charters and related documents from the Sinnar sultanate,3 will stimulate
1 The texts of the documents translated will be published in Al-ard fl-Dar Fur, ed.
R. S. O'Fahey and M. I. Abu Salim, Occasional Paper no. 6, Middle Eastern Section,
Department of History, University of Bergen, Norway (1983).
2 It is for this reason that we are particularly grateful to Professor and Madame
J. Tubiana for their kindness in allowing us to publish here translations of the archive
of NQr al-DIn b. Yahya (XXIV to XXXVII). They hope to republish the documents
at a later date with a more detailed local commentary.
3 Documents from Eighteenth Century Sinnar, ed. and transl. M. I. Abu Salim and
J. L. Spaulding, Fontes Historiae Africanae: series arabica, vol. n (forthcoming). See
also M. I. Abu Salim, Al-Funj wcil-ard: WathcCiq tamllk (Khartoum, 1967).
x Preface
research on this type of documentation (not least in the search for
further archives), we have made some comparisons with diplomatic
practice in the Islamic heartlands. But if the similarities are often
obvious, the means of transmission are usually obscure.
With three exceptions (XXXVIII to XL), all the documents here
were found, photographed and transcribed in Dar Fur. The majority
were recovered by O'Fahey in the course of visits in 1969, 1970, 1974
and 19761. Generally, the documents were found as family archives,
numbering from two to three to the largest single archive, fifty-eight
documents (ranging from c. 1720 to 1916) belonging to the Awlad Jabir
holy clan of Mellit. Most were found in northern and central Dar Fur,
especially in and around the capital, al-Fashir. The procedure adopted
was to register and photograph the documents in the field (since there
was no question of physically collecting them) and then to try and build
up an exegesis upon them on the spot. Once their historical significance
was understood, their owners were generally very willing to let them
be photographed and to give whatever information they had about them.
Difficulties of travel and time made systematic search almost impossible;
one contact led to another in a haphazard fashion. Nevertheless, it
became clear that there are many more documents waiting to be
photographed, but that their discovery is likely to be piecemeal, not to
say accidental. Their recovery is, however, a matter of urgency since
each year a proportion are destroyed by fire, rain or insects and each
year the generation of those who have some idea of their meaning grows
fewer.2
The documents translated here deal with local communities and their
affairs; the mainstream of the state's history appears only incidentally.
It is precisely because of the range, detail and vividness of the
information they offer, on taxation, on the estate system, on relations
between the state and the local communities, and even on local
topography and flora, that we have thought it worthwhile to publish this
selection. We hope also that the present volume will serve as a modest
contribution to the comparative study of "feudalism" and related
institutions.
Specialists will regret the absence of the texts in the same volume;
our defence is that this is a selection not a regesta. The translations are
as literal as is compatible with comprehensibility; titles, the various
taxes and a number of other local terms are given in transliteration
1 The complete collection is deposited in the Central Records Office, Khartoum, and
at the Department of History, University of Bergen.
2 As one example: in 1974 O'Fahey visited TarnI, south-west of al-Fashir, to
photograph the documents of the family of the abu'l-jabbayyin or chief of the sultanate's
tax-collectors. For various reasons, they could not then be photographed. By the time
of a return visit in 1976, the entire archive had been destroyed by fire.