Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2011
This article examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman sources for the Funj sultanate that ruled the Gezira and Nile Valley regions of the modern Sudan. It also aims to elucidate the relationship between the Ottoman empire and the Funj sultanate. In the first part of the article, the sixteenth-century Ottoman sources, largely documents from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, are translated and analysed. In the second part, two seventeenth-century Ottoman accounts of the Funj are examined: that by the famous Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, and that by the geographer Abu Bekr el-Dimaşki. The text of the relevant passage from Dimaşki's work is provided alongside a translation. The article also examines evidence for religious links between the Ottomans and the Funj.
1 E.g. Hunwick, John, “Arabic sources for African history”, in Philips, John Edward (ed.), Writing African History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), 226–7, with referencesGoogle Scholar.
2 Orhonlu, Cengiz, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun Güney Siyaseti: Habeş Eyaleti (Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaası, 1974)Google Scholar. Selected Ottoman documents on the history of Sudan have also been published in Arabic translation and facsimile in Saʿdāwī, Ṣāliḥ (tr.), al-Sūdān fī 'l-ʿAhd al-ʿUthmānī min khilāl wathā'iq al-Arshīf al-ʿUthmānī (Istanbul: IRCICA, 2007)Google Scholar, but the vast majority date to the nineteenth century.
3 This trade has been most extensively studied from the eighteenth century onwards. See Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 98–102, 129–32; Walz, Terence, Trade between Egypt and Bilād as-Sūdān 1700–1820 (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1978)Google Scholar; Terence Walz, “Gold and silver exchanges between Egypt and Sudan, 16th–18th centuries”, in Richards, J.F. (ed.), Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), 305–25Google Scholar; Kapteijns, Lidwein and Spaulding, Jay, “Precolonial trade between states in the eastern Sudan ca. 1700–ca. 1900”, African Economic History 11, 1982, 29–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spaulding, Jay, “Suakin: a port city of the early modern Sudan”, in Hall, Kenneth R. (ed.), Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm, c. 1400–1800 (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2008), 39–53Google Scholar; Peacock, A.C.S., “Suakin: a northeast African port in the Ottoman Empire”, Northeast African Studies 12 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 In general on the history of the Funj see O'Fahey, R.S. and Spaulding, J.L., Kingdoms of the Sudan (Studies in African History. London: Methuen, 1974), 15–104Google Scholar; a dated but still sometimes useful survey is Crawford, O.G.S., The Fung Kingdom of Sennar (Gloucester: John Bellows, 1951)Google Scholar. On the spread of Islam see McHugh, Neil, Holymen of the Blue Nile: The Making of an Arab–Islamic Community in the Nilotic Sudan, 1500–1850 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. On the Funj kingdom as a “Nubian renaissance” see Spaulding, Jay, The Heroic Age in Sinnār (Asmara: The Red Sea Press, 2007 [1st ed. 1985]), 4, 9, 19Google Scholar.
5 The so-called “Funj chronicle” refers to at least thirteen nineteenth- and twentieth-century manuscripts, the terminus and contents of which vary considerably, but all of which seem to draw on a source similar to the king list seen by James Bruce in 1772 for the period before the eighteenth century. See McHugh, Holymen of the Blue Nile, 217–26, and Holt, P.M., The Sudan of the Three Niles: The Funj Chronicle 910–1288/1504–1871 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), vii–xviiiGoogle Scholar. Holt provides an English translation based on probably the oldest version of the text, composed by an official known as Kātib al-Shūna in the last years of the Funj monarchy and the first decades of Turco-Egyptian rule, with selected passages from other versions. Kātib al-Shūna's Arabic text was published as Aḥmad b. al-Ḥājj Abū ʿAlī, , Makhṭūṭat Kātib al-Shūna fī Ta'rīkh al-Salṭana al-Sinnārīya wa-'l-Idāra al-Miṣrīya, ed. al-Shāṭir Būṣaylī ʿAbd al-Jalīl, (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1961)Google Scholar.
6 For an overview of the sources, see O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 8–10; for Reubeni, Poncet and other Western travellers to Sinnār see Udal, John O., The Nile in Darkness: Conquest and Exploration 1504–1862 (Wilby: Michael Russell, 1998), 7–17, 36 ffGoogle Scholar.
7 Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 73–8.
8 For example, Faroqhi, Suraiya, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004)Google Scholar.
9 For the archaeology of the Ottoman frontier in the Sudan, see the articles by Alexander, John, Elzein, Intisar, Mallinson, Michael et al. and Lane, Paul and Johnson, Douglas in Peacock, A.C.S. (ed.), The Frontiers of the Ottoman World (Proceedings of the British Academy, 156. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, with references.
10 Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi E. 6455; first published by Kurdoğlu, Fevzi, “Meşhur Türk Amiralı Layihası”, Deniz Mecmuası 47/336, 1943, 67–73Google Scholar; discussion, facsimile, transcription and French translation in Lesure, Michel, “Un document ottoman de 1525 sur l'Inde portugaise et les pays de la Mer Rouge”, Mare Luso-Indicum 3, 1976, 137–60Google Scholar; English translation in Salih Özbaran, “A Turkish report on the Red Sea and the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean (1525)”, in Özbaran, Salih, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion: Studies on Ottoman–Portuguese Relations in the Indian Ocean and Ottoman Administration in the Arab Lands During the Sixteenth Century (Analecta Isisiana XII. Istanbul: Isis, 1994), 99–109 (originally published in Arabian Studies 4, 1974)Google Scholar. For the background to the composition of Reis' report, see Casale, Giancarlo, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. 34–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Özbaran, Salih, Ottoman Expansion towards the Indian Ocean in the 16th Century (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2009), 39–75Google Scholar.
11 The Ottoman is somewhat ambiguous: “asıl Sevvakin iskelesinden öte dağ aşırı Nil suyuna varıncıya değin üç aylık vilayete ʿAmare adlu bir siyah kara ʿabid hükm eder”. This could suggest that the province ruled by ʿAmāra started around Suakin, but it could also mean it started on the other side of the Red Sea mountains.
12 The text has Tabāra, which has been interpreted as referring to ʿAṭbara, at the junction of the River ʿAṭbara and the Nile. However, ʿAṭbara was not founded until the beginning of the twentieth century, whereas the great trading city of Sinnār near the junction of the Blue Nile and the Nahr al-Dindar, was established by ʿAmāra Dunqas in the sixteenth century. Tabāra (تباره) is much more likely to be a scribal mistake for Sinnāre (سناره) than for ʿAṭbara (عطبره). Sinnāre is also the form for Sinnār used by Evliya Çelebi. Furthermore, the territory between Suakin and ʿAṭbara is arid desert, and the lands around Kassala and the Gezira better match the text's description of a fertile land. Kurdoğlu was the first to suggest the reading ʿAṭbara, followed by Lesure, “Un document ottoman”, 160, n. 43, and Özbaran, “A Turkish report”, 108, n. 26.
13 Lesure, “Un document ottoman”, 147, 151.
14 Barkan, Ömer Lütfi, “H. 933–934 (M. 1527–1528) Mali Yılına Ait Bir Bütçe Örneği”, İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 15, 1953, 291Google Scholar.
15 Yavuz, Hulûsi, Yemen'de Osmanlı İdaresi ve Rumuzi Tarihi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2003), vol. I, lxxxv–lxxxviiiGoogle Scholar.
16 Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 42.
17 Lesure, “Un document ottoman”, 151, 160; Özbaran, “A Turkish report”, 109.
18 Kammerer, A., Le Routier de Dom Joam de Castro: L'exploration de la Mer Rouge par les Portugais en 1541 (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1936), 86–7, 91–7Google Scholar; see also Peacock, “Suakin”, for further discussion.
19 Ménage, V.L., “The Ottomans and Nubia in the sixteenth century”, Annales Islamologiques 24, 1998, 138–40Google Scholar.
20 Quṭb al-Dīn al-Nahrawālī, al-Barq al-Yamānī fi 'l-Fatḥ al-ʿUthmānī (ed. H. Jāsir), (Riyadh: Dar al-Yamāna, 1967), 121–2.
21 Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 37–42; Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, 107–8.
22 Cf. Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 83–4; Özbaran, Ottoman Expansion, 151–61, 210–12.
23 Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, N.E. 3462, transcribed in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 185. Orhonlu (ibid., 77) argued that the document dated to c. 1577, when Süleyman Pasha launched an expedition against the Funj; however, the lack of any administrative structures in Habeş when it was composed clearly points to a date around 1555.
24 See the text in notes 25 and 26 below. The term “Habeş” in Ottoman can refer either to the Ottoman province occupying roughly the Red Sea coast of Sudan and Eritrea, or to Ethiopia itself, although in this paper Habeş is used to refer to the province, Ethiopia to the country.
25 Rüstem Paşa Tarihi, Istanbul University, TY 2438, fol. 275b: “Özdemür Paşa vilayet-i Habeş emirü'l-ümerası olup irsal olunmuştur Mahruse-i Mısır'a vardıkta Mısır yeniçerilerinden dahi adam alup ve cami‘-i masalihin görüp leşkerün ba‘zısı karadan ve ba‘zısı Nil-i mübarekten gidip vilayet-i Sa‘id serhaddinde Şelale nam bir mevzi‘e vardıklarında kul mabeyninde ihtilaf olup Paşa-yı mezbure nev‘an muhalefet eyledikleri ecelden ol sefer müyesser olmayup yine ‘avdet olunup Mısır'a gelinüp andan Paşa-yı mezkur der-i devlete revane olup gelüp vusul buldı”.
26 Ibid., fol. 276a: “Bundan akdem Özdemür Paşa ki Habeş seferin edemeyüp der-i devlete gelmiştir Sevvakin beğlerbeğliği verilüp ol canibden vilayet-i Habeşin açılması tefviz olunup irsal olundı”.
27 Ménage, “The Ottomans and Nubia”, 145–6. The southernmost Ottoman fortification in Nubia was Ṣāy, but exactly when this was occupied by the Ottomans is unclear.
28 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul (BOA), Ruus KK, no. 218, p. 168; Ahkam, KK, no. 74, p. 525, both transcribed in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 186; cf. Ménage, “The Ottomans and Nubia”, 145.
29 BOA, Mühimme Defteri (MD) 16, p. 61, no. 126; Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 190–1.
30 Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 99–100, 213, 221.
31 BOA, Ruus, KK, p. 47, no. 238, reproduced in facsimile and transcribed in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 200–1. Orhonlu did not succeed in reading any of the tribal names, and there are another four I could not decipher.
32 MD 39, p. 199, no 413; Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 213.
33 MD 26, p. 9, no. 27; MD Zeyli 2, p. 10; MD 28, p. 235, no. 563; transcribed in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 200, 202.
34 Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 149–50.
35 MD 30, p. 14, no. 35: “Habeş beğlerbeğisine hüküm ki zikr olunan beğlerbeğlik sana tevcih olanalı hayli zaman olup henüz gitmeyüp vilayet-i Funcin fethine mute‘allik ba‘zı efkar düşündüğün i‘lam olundı imdi ol sevdadan feraget idüp mu‘acellen Habeşe varmak lazım olmağın…” cf. MD 30, p. 14 no. 34 in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 204–6.
36 MD 36, p. 313, no. 829, 831; p. 343, no. 902.
37 See further my comments on the difficulty outsiders had in making money from Suakin in Peacock, “Suakin”.
38 MD 50, p. 16, no. 61: “İbrim sancağından munfasıl olup ümera-i Mısır'dan olan Mehmed Beğ İbrim serhaddinde olan melikler ve ‘isyan üzere olan ‘arablar ile leyl nahar ceng-i ceddal ve harb-i kıttaldan hali olmayup nice yerler feth idüp kemal-ı yoldaşlık ve delaverlik itdüğünden gayri ca-i Sise nam kal‘eyi feth idüp [di]zdarı olan Melik Sa‘id nam nefesin başı kesilüp kal‘eyi zabt ettiğinde zuhura gelen hizmeti mukabelesinde altmış bin akçe terakki verilmek buyuruldu. 2 Muharrem 992.”
39 MD 50, p. 38, no. 164, transcribed and discussed in Ménage, “The Ottomans and Nubia”, 152. Maḥas correctly refers to a people who originally lived in the Third Cataract region. The word is written here with a penultimate alif (Maḥās) as opposed to the better-attested spelling Maḥas. See also el Zein, Intisar Soghayroun, “The Ottomans and the Mahas in the Third Cataract region”, Azania 39, 2004, 50–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Voyages en Egypte des années 1589, 1590 et 1591, tr. and ed. Carla Burri et al. (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1971), 146–9. Sukkot is the region of Ṣāy, the southernmost Ottoman fortress on the Nile.
41 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 35.
42 Ménage, “The Ottomans and Nubia”, 153, suggests that the Dongola campaign must be dated to 1582 or 1583 for reasons that are not entirely clear. The campaign must have been launched after the establishment of the short-lived sancak of the Maḥās on 27 Shawwal 992/1 November 1584 – this can hardly have been founded in the wake of the defeat and withdrawal to Sukkot – and “some years” before the report of the Venetian traveller of 1589.
43 Udal, The Nile in Darkness: Conquest and Exploration, 215, 217, 222–3, 230.
44 Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 46, 55, 57, 60, 63, 67; Abir, Mordechai, Ethiopia and the Red Sea: The Rise and Decline of the Solomonic Dynasty and Muslim–European Rivalry in the Region (London: Frank Cass, 1980), 127Google Scholar; Beyene, Yaqob, “Il tentativo turco di islamizzare l'Etiopia”, in Marazzi, Ugo (ed.), Turcica et Islamica: Studi in memoria di Aldo Gallotta (Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli “L'Orientale”, 2003), vol. I, 89–93Google Scholar; Marrassini, Paolo, “‘I Possenti di Rom’: I Turchi ottomani nella letteratura etiopica”, in Marazzi, Turcica et Islamica, vol. II, 602–9Google Scholar.
45 On the policies of Rüstem Pasha and Kara Ahmed Pasha, see Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, 84–8, 95–6, 102, 108; “Ahmed Paşa, Kara”, İslam Ansiklopedisi 1: 193.
46 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, 117–51, esp. 149–50.
47 Ibid., 154–8, 163–6.
48 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 33–4.
49 Barros, João de, Da Asia (Lisbon: Na Regia Officina Typografica, 1777), Decada III, Book IV, chapter 3, 402Google Scholar.
50 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 22.
51 Yūsuf Faḍl Ḥasan, Muqaddima fi Ta'rīkh al-Mamālik al-Islāmīya fī 'l-Sūdān al-Sharqī, 1450–1821 (Khartoum: SUADTek Ltd, 2003 (1st ed. 1971)), 80–81.
52 Aregay, Merid Wolde and Selassie, Segew Hable, “Sudanese–Ethiopian relations before the nineteenth century”, in Ḥasan, Yūsuf Faḍl (ed.), Sudan in Africa: Studies Presented to the First International Conference Sponsored by The Sudan Research Unit, 7–12 February 1968 (Khartoum: University of Khartoum, 2006 (1st ed. 1971)), 63–4Google Scholar.
53 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 32.
54 Ibid., 32–3; Aregay and Selassie, “Sudanese–Ethiopian relations”, 70.
55 Aregay and Selassie, “Sudanese–Ethiopian relations”, 64.
56 See also Crawford, The Fung Kingdom of Sennar, 113–6.
57 Lesure, “Un document ottoman”, 151; Özbaran, “A Turkish report”, 108.
58 MD 24, p. 301, no. 817: “Mısır beğlerbeğisine hüküm ki hala Func nam mahallden kafile ile at alup Darü 'l-Harbe gittikleri i‘lam olundı Darü 'l-Harbe at gitmeğe emrim yokdur buyurdum ki varıcak bu babda mükayyed olup ‘Ömer oğlu vilayeti şeyhü 'l-arabına ve sair ol cevanibde olan kuşşafa hükme tenbih ve te'kid eyleyesin ki min ba‘d firman-ı şerifime mugayir iş olmaktan hazer eylesin”.
59 MD 48, p. 3, no. 6, transcribed in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 227.
60 MD 60, p. 250, no. 585.
61 BOA, MD 60, p. 248, no. 580. The document is dated 26 Jumādā I 994, corresponding to 15 July 1586; almost identical to text in MD 60, p. 247, no. 578, addressed to the beylerbeyi of Egypt. Incidentally, the date of this document and its reference to the death of the Funj king and the accession of his son offers a useful confirmation of the accuracy of the king-list that Bruce acquired in Sinnār: O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 35–6; Jay Spaulding and ʿAbd al-Ghaffar Muhammad Ahmad, “The Sinnar king-list of the Sīd al-Qūm Aḥmad, 1772”, Sudan Notes and Records 56, 1975, 234–42.
62 Corrected from Orhonlu's reading Sira; Shire is on the northern frontier of modern Ethiopia, not far from ancient Aksum.
63 The phrase “adımız zahir olmuş” appears to correspond to the modern Turkish phrase “adımız çıkmış” with this meaning. I am grateful to İ.H. Kadı for alerting me to this.
64 BOA, MD 60, p. 248, no. 580; transcribed in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 238.
65 Aregay and Selassie, “Sudanese–Ethiopian relations”, 64.
66 See Walz, “Gold and silver exchanges between Egypt and Sudan”, 319–21.
67 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 55–6.
68 Aregay and Selassie, “Sudanese–Ethiopian relations”, 65–8.
69 See Mallinson et al., “Ottoman Suakin 1540–1865 – lost and found”, in Peacock, The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, 469–92; Spaulding, “Suakin”; Peacock, “Suakin”.
70 On disruption to communications with Debaroa, see MD 28, p. 236, no. 564; Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 204.
71 Jay Spaulding and Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Abū Salīm, Public Documents from Sinnār (African Historical Sources 1. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989), 3.
72 Miran, Jonathan, Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 38–40Google Scholar; on Nubia see Hinds, Martin and Ménage, Victor, Qasr Ibrim in the Ottoman Period: Turkish and Further Arabic Documents (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1991)Google Scholar; for Suakin, see Peacock, “Suakin”.
73 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 57, 68–70.
74 E.g. MD 74, p. 84 no. 243, dated September 1596, ordering the provision of gunpowder, bullets and rifles to Harqiqo and Suakin (Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 246).
75 Aḥmad b. al-Ḥājj Abū ʿAlī, Makhṭūṭat Kātib al-Shūna, 11–17. According to the editor, this poem was derived from the al-Durr al-Manẓūm fī Manāqib Sulṭān Bāyazīd al-Rūm, transmitted through al-Nahrawālī's Kitāb al-iʿlām bi-Aʿlām Bayt al-Ḥarām (ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld as Die Chroniken der Stadt Mekka, III: Geschichte der Stadt Mekka und ihres Tempels von Cutb ed-Din (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1857), 242–4). However, few lines of either the original qaṣīda, which comes at the conclusion of the al-Durr al-Manẓūm, or the abridged version in Nahrawālī, are identical with those in al-Maghribī's version: one of the few that does is the line, “fa-lā zilta maḥrūsa 'l-janābi mu'ayyadan min Allāhi bi-'l-tawfīqi wa-'l-ʿizzi wa-'l-naṣri” (Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Fatih 4357, f. 118a; cf. Makhṭūṭat Kātib al-Shūna, 14). Pace Buṣaylī, the line attributing “the burdens of the Caliphate” to Bādī is not in the original or Nahrawālī, and must be considered al-Maghribī's own, hyperbolic contribution (Mahkṭūṭat Kātib al-Shūna, 13: yaqūmu bi-aʿbā'i 'l-khilāfati qawmatan …).
76 Walz, Trade between Egypt and Bilād as-Sūdān, 1–2, 9–14, 32–9.
77 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitab, ed. Seyit Ali Kahraman, Yücel Dağlı and Robert Dankoff (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2007), 285, 403.
78 Evliya's journey in Sudan is discussed in Udal, The Nile in Darkness, 17–35. The study of Maria Teresa Petti Suma, “Il viaggio in Sudan di Evliya Čelebi (1671–1672)”, Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli 14, 1964, 433–52 consists largely of a summary of Evliya's journey, comparing it with the topography presented in the roughly contemporary Ottoman map held in the Vatican. On the latter see now the edition by Dankoff, Robert and Tezcan, Nuran, Evliya Çelebi'nin Nil Haritası “Dürr-i bî-misîl în ahbâr-ı Nîl” (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2011)Google Scholar, and Robert Dankoff, “Is the Vatican map of the Nile Evliya Celebi's?” / “Vatikan'da Bulunan Nil Haritası, Evliya Çelebi'nin mi?” in III. Uluslararası Türkiyat Araştırmaları Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı, 1. Cilt (Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2011), 259–71/273–85; Nuran Tezcan, “Nil Haritası ile Seyahatname Arasındaki Paralellikler”, in III. Uluslararası Türkiyat Araştırmaları Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı, 1. Cilt (Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2011), 785–97.
79 Evliya, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitap, 440–1.
80 Ibid., 442. A town of Hafir did exist south of the Third Cataract, but the description is clearly fantastical.
81 E.g. Ibid., 442: “fil kemiğinden toplar var”; ibid., 448, “fil inciğinden vafir toplar atdı”; 461.
82 Ibid., 445.
83 Ibid., 457.
84 Ibid., 451–2.
85 Ibid., 451–3.
86 Ibid., 482.
87 Ibid., 460.
88 Ibid., 11–13, 430, 431, 432; Dankoff, Robert, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Çelebi (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage. Leiden: Brill, 2006), 177, 180–1Google Scholar.
89 Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality, 177.
90 Ibid., 57–8, 62.
91 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitap, 442; Petti Suma, “Il Viaggio”, 440–41, n. 47.
92 Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality, 176, 178; Habraszewski, Tomasz, “Kanuri – language and people – in the ‘Travel Book’ (Siyahatname) of Evliya Çelebi”, Africana Bulletin 6, 1967, 59–66Google Scholar.
93 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitap, 46.
94 Martin, B.G., “Kanem, Bornu and the Fezzan: notes on the political history of a trade route”, Journal of African History 10/1, 1969, 22–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
95 Habraszewski, “Kanuri”, 64; Evliya, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitap, 47.
96 E.g. Evliya, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitap, 205, 209.
97 Ibid., 464.
98 Ibid., 460, 468–9.
99 Ibid., 483–4.
100 On Dimaşki, his works and their manuscripts see İhsanoğlu, Ekmeleddin et al. , Osmanlı Coğrafya Literatürü Tarihi (Istanbul: IRCICA, 2000), vol. I, 108–13Google Scholar; on Bartınlı İbrahim see ibid., I, 139–43.
101 Nuruosmaniye 2994: esvab.
102 Nusuosmaniye 2994: bir taş.
103 Istanbul University, TY 6609: bu oda.
104 Nuruosmaniye 2994 and 2996, Istanbul University, TY 6609: ﻋﺭﺒﺠﻪ; Bartınlı İbrahim (Esat Efendi 2044): ﺍﺭﺒﻙ.
105 The passage on the Funj in Nuruosmaniye 2994 concludes here.
106 Dutch edition, 1658, vol. II, map at 147.
107 However, the maps of Africa in MS Nuruosmaniye 2995, another manuscript of the “abridged” version of the Nusretü'l-İslam, are much less detailed and accurate and contain no mention of the Funj (although the text still does). Furthermore, in the “full” version of the work in Istanbul University, TY 6609, fol. 36a, the Funj are marked on the map as Nahiye-i Funci just where Blaeu had them, to the south of Ethiopia. Unfortunately none of the manuscripts inspected is dated. A thorough assessment both of the textual history and the illustrations of Dimaşki's work is needed.
108 O'Fahey and Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan, 37–40.
109 See McHugh, Holymen of the Blue Nile, esp. 38–41, 58–60, 72, 100. A good number of these holy men were the Maḥas who immigrated south to Tuti island and the Gezira. It would be interesting to know whether there was a connection between the Ottoman creation of the sancak of the Maḥās, the apparently profounder knowledge of Islam among the Maḥas, and their migration southwards, but our current sources do not allow us to do more than speculate. On Maḥas holy men, see McHugh, Holymen of the Blue Nile, 58–60; Richard A. Lobban, Jr, “A genealogical and historical study of the Mahas of the ‘Three Towns’, Sudan”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 16/2, 1983, 231–62.
110 Hofheinz, Albrecht, “Transcending the madhhab – in practice: the case of the Sudanese shaykh Muḥammad Majdhūb (1795/6–1831)”, Islamic Law and Society 10/2, 2003, 246–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
111 Evliya, Seyahatnamesi, 10. Kitap, 459.
112 Ibid., 460.
113 For instance, Hüseyin Kan of Hankoç on the Middle Nile, and perhaps rather more credibly the nā'ib of Harqiqo. Ibid., 444, 487.
114 Muḥammad al-Nūr b. Ḍayf Allāh, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt, ed. Yūsuf Faḍl Ḥasan (Khartoum: Jāmiʿat al-Kharṭūm, 1974), 324.
115 Ibid., 202.
116 E.g. ibid., 136, 260–1.
117 Ibid., 132.
118 Ibid., 165.
119 Ibid., 300–1.
120 Ibid., 53.
121 Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923 (London: John Murray, 2005), 212–3Google Scholar.
122 MD 111, no. 555 in Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 247–9. Whether Selim I (1512–20), or Selim II (1566–74) is meant is not specified, and this is probably little more than a formulaic statement that the custom was long-established.
123 See Walz, Trade between Egypt and the Bilād as-Sūdān, passim. On Darfur, see O'Fahey, R.S., The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst and Company, 2008)Google Scholar.
124 Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Tūnisī, , Tashḥīdh al-Adhhān bi-Sīrat Bilād al-ʿArab wa-'l-Sūdān, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Ziyāda, , Khalīl Maḥmūd ʿAsākir, and Muṣṭafā Muḥammad Musʿid, (Cairo: Maktabat al-Usra, 2007), 68, 380Google Scholar; O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate, 11, 68–9.
125 Gábor Ágoston, “Where environmental and frontier studies meet: rivers, forests, marshes and forts along the Ottoman–Hapsburg frontier in Hungary”, in Peacock, The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, 57–79.
