r), region and former sultanate, W Sudan. The region is mountainous, dominated by the central massif of Jebel Marra, which rises to 10,130 ft (3,088 m). Much of the terrain is dry plateau, and there are sand dunes in the extreme north. The region is divided into the states of North, West, and South Darfur. The Fur (for whom the area is named) and the Baggara are the major ethnic groups. Darfur's economy is based on subsistence agriculture. Cattle, sheep, and goats are raised in the north.
The rulers of Cush 1 Asian nation, perhaps the same as one of similar name in E Mesopotamia. Gen. 10.8; 1 Chron. 1.10.
2 Ancient kingdom of Nubia , in the present Sudan, which flourished from the 11th cent. B.C. to the 4th cent. A.D. The rulers of Cush overran Upper Egypt (mid-8th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. , which fell c.A.D. 350, may have established a dynasty in Darfur. Christian kingdoms emerged in the period between 900 and 1200, but they were destroyed by Muslim incursions from Kanem Kanem (känēm`), former empire in Africa in the areas near Lake Chad that are now part of Chad and N Nigeria.
..... Click the link for more information. in the mid-13th cent. Fur, a major kingdom probably founded in the 15th cent., pushed aside the Kanem rulers in the 17th cent. Fur was conquered by the Egyptians in 1874 and by the Mahdists (see Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad, 1844–85, a Muslim religious leader in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He declared himself in 1881 to be the Mahdi and led a war of liberation from the oppressive Egyptian military occupation. He died soon after capturing Khartoum.
..... Click the link for more information. ) of Sudan in 1883. With the fall of the Mahdist state in 1898, Darfur became a semiautonomous sultanate under Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty. The sultan attempted to expel the foreign colonizers during World War I, but his forces were defeated by the British in 1916, and Darfur was incorporated into Sudan.
Since 2003 the region has been scene of fighting, with government forces and their allied Arab militias (the janjaweed) battling non-Arab rebels linked to an opposition party. An estimated 50,000 persons have died in the fighting, and another 150,000 have died from disease, hunger, and other causes, and the government and janjaweed have been accused by some of genocide. Some 2 million people have been made refugees, and attempts to establish a cease-fire have produce only temporary results.
Darfur
Historical region and former province, western Sudan. It was an independent kingdom from c. 2500 BC. Its first traditional rulers, the Daju, probably traded with ancient Egypt; they were succeeded by the Tunjur. Darfur's Christian period (c. 900–1200) was ended by the advance of Islam with the empire of Kanem-Bornu. In the 1870s Darfur came under Egyptian rule, and in 1916 it became a province of Sudan.
Darfur
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