Fur

Teferi Abate Adem

The Fur people’s preferred self-name is Fora (sing. Fordungɔ). The neighboring Masalit, Senyar, Deju, Zaghawa, and Arabic speakers call them, respectively, Forta (sing. For), Forsi, Yerce, Kora, and Furawi.

The Fur constitute Darfur’s largest ethnic group. In 1937 their population was about 120,000, increasing to 303,000 by 1956. There are no comparable, ethnically-disaggregated data for more recent years. Drawing on Sudanese government sources, Flint and de Waal (2008:4) reported that the total population of Darfur in the mid-2000s was over six million people.

Comparative linguists consider the Fur language to be unrelated to any of the other languages spoken in the Darfur region. Greenberg (1971), classified Fur as apart from several languages that fall within the main Nilo-Saharan language group. Beaton (1948) similarly argued that Fur is distinct from Arabic because it contains a range of vowels and consonants widely present in the Niger-Congo language family, yet is contrastingly rich in vocabulary, and is highly complex both in its grammatical and syntactical systems.

Mohammed Fadl (1800–1839) reorganized the sultanate into four administrative regions or magdumates, variously ruled over time by hereditary or centrally-appointed governors/emirs/madgums, recruited from major ethnic groups. This new administrative system reinforced central control over local communities and economically important resources, and facilitated implementation of a complex land tenure and taxation system tailored to Darfur’s three major ethnic and economic zones. The northern zone was home to several, predominantly nomadic Arab and non-Arab herders; the largest was (and remains, although in other zones now largely agricultural) the Zaghawa, who also are found in the adjacent areas of Chad and Libya. The central zone, encompassing the relatively cool Jebel Marra, is home to the predominantly millet-cultivating Fur, Masalit and other, smaller groups. The southern zone is inhabited by the Arabic-speaking Baggara and other nomadic cattle herders.

Like other ethnic groups in Sudan’s northwestern and southern regions, the recent history of the Fur is dominated by devastating civil wars. The most tragic of these was the Darfur war that during its height in 2003-2004 caused the deaths of some 200,000 civilians and left millions homeless (Flint and De Waal 2008: 305). Most analysts trace one root cause of the war to the 1984-1985 drought that threatened the livelihoods of millions of people, from Africa’s Sahel region in the west through northern Sudan and the Ethiopian highlands in the east. In response, nomadic herders from the arid areas of Darfur reportedly encroached on the arable land of Fur farmers in the wetter Jebel Marra area. Ethnic competition over productive land was exacerbated by climate change that accelerated desertification, especially in the already arid areas of Darfur to the north and west of the Jebel Marra. Starting in 1986, a struggle over resources grew into a large-scale civil war with the rise and consolidation of a pro-Arab Islamist regime in Sudan led by Sadiq al-Mahdi, followed by Omar al-Bashir in 1989. Farming communities in ethnically Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and other non-Arab communities felt that the Khartoum regime pursued Arab-supremacist policies, including the arming of Arabic-speaking nomadic herders, while securing and disarming sedentary black communities demeaningly referred to using the racist term “zurga.”

During the Egyptian occupation of Darfur in 1875, the hereditary rulers of each magdumate were replaced with military governors loyal to the new regime. This change, together with invading ethnic groups from the east, greatly diminished the customary prerogatives of Fur elites, including preferential rights in land access. In 1898 Ali Dinar, a descendant of the hereditary Fur sultans, restored the Darfur Sultanate through a protracted insurgency against Egyptian forces, against a backdrop of a broad coalition of anti-colonial movements across Sudan. Over the next two decades, Ali Dinar took a series of measures that reconfigured ethnic relations in the region to favor Fur political elites, among them driving back the encroachment of nomadic non-Fur peoples on agricultural lands in areas surrounding the Jebel Marra, and strengthening central control over local communities by appointing a large number of agents (mandubs), troops, and police, undercutting the authority of the four regional governors (magdums).

The local impacts of the civil war became especially severe with the rise of ethnically-based, armed insurgency groups that sought to seize military bases, and “liberated” areas in the Jebel Marra and along Sudan’s border with Chad and the Central African Republic. The largest such insurgent group was the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). Although predominantly multi-ethnic in both its senior leadership and rank-and-file fighters, the SLA in Darfur mainly was supported by settled farmers, the majority of whom are ethnically Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit. In the course of the long civil war some SLA commanders quit to create rival, ethnic-based that splinter groups that fought not just against the government of Omar al-Bashir but also against other warring factions, including their former allies and many pro-government Arab militias locally called Janjawiid.

Ali Dinar was killed by the British in 1916 when they re-annexed Darfur as part of their Sudan colony. They instituted a policy of “Indirect Rule” in which the predominantly Fur political elite continued to govern the region under the supervision of a handful of strategically deployed British colonial officers. This system remained in place until Sudan’s independence in 1956.

The Fur people have a long history of dynastic rulers who founded, organized and enlarged the Darfur Sultanate. Both oral tradition and written sources trace the origin of the sultanate to the mid-sixteenth century, when Suliman Solong rose to power, establishing his capital at Dar Tora. Over the ensuing decades and centuries, successive hereditary sultans moved the capital to El Fasher, and expanded the empire in all directions. Suliman Teirab (1752-1758) defeated the Fung, adding a huge part of Sudan eastward to the Nile and the Ethiopian border. The territory of the sultanate also stretched westward and southward to the frontiers of Chad and the Central African Republic.

When visited by Fredrik Barth in 1964, a majority of the Fur lived in village communities of up to about 500 inhabitants. A typical village consisted of the homesteads of the original founding families, with those of their daughters’ husbands and some newly settled relatives expanding the hamlet over the years. Enclosed by a rough hedge or fence, the homestead consisted of circular huts of varying numbers and sizes. Larger households had several huts, including a larger one where the couple and their under-aged children slept, and separate, smaller huts for each married daughter and her husbands. Traditionally, a husband maintained a separate hut nearby and socialized with other men in the village’s men’s house. All unmarried adult and adolescent girls and boys slept in gender-separated smaller huts.

The traditional Fur economy primarily depended on hoe cultivation of a variety of crops and vegetables, depending on the local micro-environment. For dry terraces constructed on moderately sloped landscapes, summer rains permitted cultivation of a variety of millets—including the most common staple, bulrush millet (dukhn)—as well as rice, beans, groundnuts, sesame (simsim), tomatoes, potatoes, chilies, and herbs. In irrigated plots along streams, farmers cultivated wheat and other commercial crops such as onions, garlic and cotton. A majority of households supplemented a largely millet-based diet by seasonally collecting wild foods, such as swarming termites and locusts, figs, edible grasses, and honey. Domestic animals consisted of cattle, goats, chickens, and donkeys.

In 1964, Barth observed a growing trend of planting irrigated orchards with limes, lemons, oranges, mangoes, papayas and bananas destined for market. There is no commercial investment in the area, whether by state or private companies. For far too long, the Fur peoples’ only resource has remained their young men (and, rarely, women) who migrate eastward to find work in large-scale commercial cotton plantations between the Blue and White Niles.

Traditional Fur society included a small occupational caste of male blacksmiths and female potters. Smiths made and repaired iron hoes, spears, swords, knives, axes, bracelets and rings. Some Fur are recognized as having special skills in working leather and skins, and in making musical instruments, dyes, fishing nets, baskets, and other tools and utensils.

The Fur have a network of designated market places, held once or twice a week, where they exchange goods and products. By the 1960s the Fur had adopted Sudan’s national currency as the main medium of exchange. Traditionally, the medium of exchange was cloth, often measured by the length of the arm. Some Fur men traded in rock salt and other valuable local resources. Trading activities increased in times of prolonged drought, when crops failed and households faced acute food insecurity.

Both men and women jointly performed a range of agricultural activities. During sowing time, men made holes in the soil with stakes and women followed, dropping seed in each hole. Men spun cotton, often while chatting in public spaces. Women, in addition to cooking and other domestic chores, brewed beer for seasonal labor exchange parties. Men participated in labor exchange for a wide variety of tasks, such as felling trees, hunting big game, building homes, seasonal agricultural activities, and organizing annual rituals.

When studied by Beaton in the late 1930s, land was communally owned by village communities. Individual farmers held rights to use small plots of land within their village territory. Household plots were, at the same time, recognized as the fief of a centrally-appointed official who held hereditary rights to collect taxes and other tribute, including free labor. With increasing population pressure on village lands, the titled fief-holder could appropriate some plots from larger stakeholders for reallocation to new claimants.

The Fur are broadly described in the older literature as having matrilineal descent. Beaton mentioned the presence of a matriclan system (ori), but noted that what constituted a “clan” was unclear because it did not prohibit endogamy. Similarly, the Fur communities Barth studied in 1964 lacked distinct unilineal lineages with a corporate ideology and related characteristics found in other parts of Africa. Instead, each village consisted of a large block of relatives who thought of themselves as patrilineally related, though in reality they were loosely related through female ancestors. Emphasizing this ambiguity, Barth argued that Fur villages are best understood primarily as territorial units administered by hereditary heads, as opposed to kin-based affective groups.

The Fur have adopted a rich repertoire of kinship terms that do not easily fit formal classifications, a majority apparently borrowed from Arabic and exhibiting a strong patrilineal orientation.

While bridewealth in the form of some animals and basic gifts was required, the actual amount was negotiated and often depended both on the girl's rank and the boy’s wealth. Beaton (1948:19) listed basic bridewealth as the bride's cow, the cow of the mother's breast, the cow of the father's clan, the mother's sister's share, the mother's brother's share, and the father's sister's share.

The marriage ceremony, which was commonly held in the evening in the bridegroom’s village, involved immense quantities of food, beer and wine.

The preferred residence pattern after marriage was matrilocal, but with flexibility over the ensuing years because of the unusually loose nature of Fur marital relations. When a girl approached marriageable age, her fiancé would be invited to build her a separate hut inside (or sometimes near) her parent's compound, where he regularly visited her while also maintaining a separate hut for himself nearby. After the birth of children the husband was allowed to bring the wife to a new hut built in his own homestead. Beaton (1948) noted that such a change could also happen at any time following the marriage, especially if the husband did not get along with the wife’s family.

When visited by Beaton in the late 1930s the Fur practiced limited polygyny. Men usually took additional wives only after they had accumulated enough wealth to build them a separate hut in a different part of the village or in another village.

Fur marriage prohibition was limited only to a person’s maternal cousins, as well as siblings, parents and grandparents. Marriage with paternal cousins and all other clan members and relatives was allowed. The preferred marriage age was following the onset of puberty, typically marked by initiation rites for boys, and the onset of menstruation for girls who, although they could be betrothed earlier. During an engagement period that lasted for a year or two, the young man was allowed to visit his fiancée at night in a separate hut he built for her.

The traditional Fur domestic group was characterized by notable ambiguity, both in its social boundary and in relations among family members. As observed by Felkin (1886), the most common domestic group included one’s parents, and married daughters with their husbands. Relations within Fur domestic groups, including between spouses, were reportedly looser than commonly found in comparable extended families or joint households, leading Barth to argue that Fur households were not primary units of production and budgeting. While reciprocally exchanging certain obligations and services as household members, Fur husbands and wives cultivated separate plots and stored their produce in separate bins. In addition to cooking for the husband, wives used their own stores to feed young children. Responsibilities of fathers included sponsoring the education of boys and contributing to their bridewealth when they came of age for marriage.

Married daughters inherited dry plots from their mothers, and sons took over fields that had been cultivated by their fathers. The lineal transfer of agricultural land across generations often was negatively affected by population growth in a village. The titled fief holder often sought to accommodate newly-established households who lacked land by taking plots from those with larger holdings. Children of the deceased also inherited all other property, such as houses, animals, grain, weapons, and other valuables. Under Sharia law the share for each heir varied by gender and seniority at birth.

Fur households practiced strict child rearing practices. As soon as they were old enough to understand instructions, children were taught to disdain stealing, deceit, and related bad conduct. Children were also taught, as well as expected, to be very polite and to obey orders at all times. Disobedience was severely punished with a whipping, or by being bound for a time and denied food and water. Children also were instructed to be helpful in both seasonal agricultural activities and domestic chores. Young boys were encouraged to complete basic religious schooling prior to coming of age. In achieving this goal, most boys moved from one koranic school taught by a fiki to another, in the course of which they had to feed themselves and their fellow students by begging.

Under the old system, sultans maintained a large class of dignitaries and soldiers by imposing burdensome taxes and tributes on overworked, near-starving peasants. In addition to the royal family, political elites benefitting from this system included senior army chiefs, the police, troop commanders, local fief managers, and village heads.

The Fur were successively ruled by a series of hereditary Sultans whose line continued from the seventeenth century to 1916, when Darfur came back under the control of the Sudanese government. Sultans commanded a large personal army and ruled by delegating power to a body of councilors and carefully-recruited provincial and district governors. For much of the nineteenth century, the sultanate was organized into five large provinces, each ruled by a titled dignitary beholden to the sultan. The provinces were in turn subdivided into small districts ruled by title-holding local governors. The wealth and power of these officials depended on the sultan’s judgement of their success in ensuring peace and security at each level of the political structure.

Each village had a small council of elders who settled minor disputes over land, enforcing their decisions through advice and warnings. Decisions of elders and traditional authority figures were strictly obeyed, so very few land disputes arrived in court. Willful homicide and other serious crimes were severely punished by the police and formal courts.

The prolonged Darfur war that began in the late 1980s and reached its peak in 2003-2004 was popularly viewed as one between indigenous African insurgent groups and government-supported militias drawn from nomadic Arab herders. This view was only partly true, in that a majority of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army’s (SPLA’s) rank-and-file fighters, as well as some of its influential leaders, were drawn from the Fur people and neighboring settled black farmers. Furthermore, none of the warring factions were ethnically or “racially” homogenous in a way that fit the Arab vs non-Arab dichotomy. Baggara Arabs, for example, historically included successful Fur farmers who, after accumulating enough cattle, adopted herding as their principal livelihood. Similarly, the neighboring Zaghawa and Masalit peoples included both Arab camel herders and non-Arab (“African” in popular perception) millet cultivators.

By the late 1930s the Fur were all followers of Islam, which spread steadily under Arab influence. Beaton (1948:38) noted that every village had a mosque or designated prayer place with a revered imam and fiki (religious scholar and teacher). Villagers gathered there for both regular public prayer and major religious festivals. Beaton nevertheless observed that the villagers retained some traditional beliefs, such as how the people of certain localities were able to transform themselves into animals, or that some men had powers to drive away plagues of locusts.

The village imam (religious leader) or fiki (religious scholar/teacher), offered prayers and blessings at a number of events, including births, weddings, offerings, and burials. They were also called upon to help in crises, including when disputes broke out, family members fell ill, or life-threatening misfortune occurred.

Major life-cycle events such as births, puberty, weddings and funerals are marked with communal feasts and celebrations. The Fur also observe annual Muslim religious holidays and celebrate a range of agrarian rites, most notably the sowing and harvest festivals.

The Fur are very fond of storytelling, and of traditional music employing a number of musical instruments, most notably drums. They also have a variety of unique folk dances. Other skills are displayed in basketry patterns and decorated pottery.

Victims of witchcraft and sorcery consulted the a fiki (learned man) for help. The commonly prescribed antidote was to drink the water used to wash a koranic inscription off a writing tablet. Amulets protecting against bewitchment consisted of formulaic verses from the Koran written on carefully rolled parchments. The Fur recognize a hereditary class of healers who treat diseases with medicinal barks, roots and leaves.

Death was believed to be caused by the devil, sickness or the evil eye. At death, the Fur believed that the soul would leave the body and fly to meet God somewhere in the west. Within a few hours after death the body was buried in an individual grave in a graveyard, after having been washed, wrapped with cloth, and laid in front of the house or under a tree for prayer and recital from the Koran.

The culture summary was written by Teferi Abate Adem in July, 2020.

Barth, Fredrik (1967). “Economic Spheres in Darfur.” Themes in Economic Anthropology, edited by Raymond Firth, 149-174. London: Tavistock.

Beaton, Arthur C. (1941). “Youth Organization Among the Fur.” Sudan Notes and Records 24:181-187.

Beaton, Arthur C. (1948). “The Fur.” Sudan Notes and Records, 29(1):1-39.

Felkin, Robert W. (1886). “Notes on the For Tribe of Central Africa.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 13:205-265.

Greenberg, Joseph H. (1971). “Nilo-Saharan and Meroitic.” In Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 7, Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by J. Berry and T.A. Sebeok, 421-442. The Hague: Mouton.

Lampen, G.D. (1950). “History of Darfur.” Sudan Notes and Records 31:177-209.