Funj Sultanate

The Funj Sultanate, also known as the Sultanate of Sennar, was an Islamic kingdom in what is now Sudan, founded in 1504 by Amara Dunqas, who established the state's capital at Sennar on the Blue Nile after the decline of the earlier medieval Nubian kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia. Ruled by the Funj people over a diverse population that included Nubians, Beja, Bedouin Arabs and the Hamaj, the sultanate reached its greatest extent in the late seventeenth century, stretching from the Third Cataract of the Nile south to the edge of the Ethiopian highlands, east to the Red Sea, and west into Kordofan. The sultanate's rulers encouraged the spread of Islam by welcoming Sufi religious teachers, which accelerated the Arabization of the region's population. Funj power declined through the eighteenth century, particularly after the Hamaj seized effective control in a 1762 coup, and the weakened sultanate finally fell in 1821 to invading Ottoman Egyptian forces.