The Nile Valley
Within ten years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632 ce/10 ah), the former Byzantine province of Egypt had been incorporated within the expanding Islamic empire. Penetration into Upper Egypt brought the Arab Muslims for the first time into contact with a sub-Saharan African state, the Christian kingdom of Nubia.
It was, however, to be another seven centuries before Islam made serious inroads beyond the Second Cataract of the Nile and in the intervening period relations between the Muslim dynasties of Egypt and the Nubian kingdoms were governed by a treaty of nonaggression which was guaranteed by an annual exchange of gifts: 360 (or later 400) slaves from the Nubian side and from the Egyptian side a quantity of cereals and cloth of equivalent value. There were obvious benefits to both sides beyond these gifts. The Nubians were left undisturbed politically and religiously and had, by the terms of the treaty, the right to travel and trade in Egypt. The Egyptians, whose political interests were rather in the area of the Fertile Crescent, could be assured of peace on their southern border and trading opportunities in a land which produced gold and precious stones and was the gateway to a vast hinterland.The Arabisation and Islamisation of the northern Sudan only gained impetus after the advent of the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt in 1250. A combination of Arab intermarriage with Nubian royal women and military pressure led in 1323 to the fall of Dongola, the capital of the Nubian state of Maqurra and the installation of a Muslim ruling family. Although Christianity survived in Nubia well beyond this date, the way was now open for nomadic Arabs from Upper Egypt and some who crossed the Red Sea from Arabia to establish themselves in the Nile valley and adjacent plains. The western coastlands of the Red Sea were also exposed to Islam from a similar period.
The port of Sawakin, close to present-day Port Sudan, came into prominence in the fourteenth century in succession to the more northerly Aydhab. The port and the area were controlled by a Beja group called the Hadariba to which various nomadic Arab groups became assimilated. Perhaps associated with the Hadariba rulers was the enigmatic Abd Allah al-Jamma who carved out for himself a state based on Qarri on the Nile about a hundred miles north of modern Khartoum. Extending his influence southward he conquered Soba near the confluence of the two Niles, capital of the declining Christianised state of Alwa (Alodia). Somewhat farther up the Blue Nile he came into conflict at Arbaji with the rising power of a group of southern Nilotic origin, known to history as the Funj. The defeat of the Abdallab, traditionally placed in 1504, marked the founding of the Funj state with its capital at Sinnar on the Blue Nile.The first ruler of this state, Amara Dunqas, became a Muslim, perhaps to facilitate trading relations with his Muslim neighbours (especially Egypt), and although many non-Islamic institutions remained vigorous (the office of Sid al-qom, official regicide, is a noteworthy example), the Funj rulers did much to foster Islam, encouraging holymen (fuqara) to settle in the Gezira by granting them lands and various fiscal immunities and creating a state bureaucracy literate in Arabic. The seventeenth century witnessed an influx of Muslim teachers, jurists and Sufis from Egypt and Arabia as well as the growth of an indigenous class of holymen, trained originally outside the Funj state, but later increasingly at Sudanese centres such as Arbaji. At its height, around 1700, the Funj state extended from the Dongola region in the north to Fazoghli in the south, with a somewhat looser hegemony being exercised over Kordofan and the Nuba mountain kingdom of Taqali. The second half of the eighteenth century, however, saw the decline of the Funj state, symbolised in the establishment of the Hamaj regency in 1760 followed by a period of intrigues and revolts resulting in loss of authority over Kordofan and the disaffection of several of the northern provinces.
When the forces of the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ah, invaded the Sudan in 1821 the Funj state was in no condition to offer effective resistance.The sixty years of Turco-Egyptian rule in the Sudan did little to promote the cause of Islam. Despite the fact that the ruling elite were Muslims and an Islamic judicial superstructure was established, the personal conduct of the Turco-Egyptian officials and the corrupt and exploitative nature of their regime led them to be categorised as ‘infidels’ by the more learned and devout of the Sudanese. Such was certainly the view of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad who led a jihad (holy war) to dislodge the ‘Turks’ (1881-5) and who, together with his successor, the Khalifa Abdullahi Ta'ayishi (1885-98), strove to create a genuine Islamic state in the Sudan. Though their political efforts were brought to nought by the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of 1898, the Mahdi’s teaching and preaching certainly contributed to a profounder Islamisation of many groups in the Sudan. On the other hand, the Sudanese understanding of Islam has been as much shaped by the activities of the Sufi orders—the Qadiriyya and Shadhiliyya at first and then, in the nineteenth century, the Khatmiyya, Rashidiyya, Dan- darawiyya, Tayyibiyya, Tijaniyya and Sammaniyya—with their spiritual hierarchies, special litanies (awrad), cult of the thaumaturge (wall) and tomb visitation (ziyara).