CHAP. XIX.
DAR-FÛR.
Government — History — Agriculture, &c. — Population — Building — Manners and customs — Revenue — Articles of commerce, &c.
Government.
The magistracy of one, which seems tacitly, if it be not expressly favoured by the dispensation of Mohammed, as in most other countries professing that religion, prevails in Dar-Fûr. The monarch indeed can do nothing contrary to the Korân, but he may do more than the laws established thereon will authorise: and as there is no council to control or even to assist him, his power may well be termed despotic. He speaks in public of the soil and its productions as his personal property, and of the people as little else than his slaves.
When manifest injustice appears in his decisions, the Fukkara, or ecclesiastics, express their sentiments with some boldness, but their opposition is without any appropriate object, and consequently its effects are inconsiderable. All the monarch fears is a general alienation of the minds of the troops, who may at their will raise another, as enterprising and unprincipled as himself, to the same envied superiority.
His power in the provinces is delegated to officers who possess an authority equally arbitrary. In those districts, which have always or for a long time formed an integral part of the empire, these officers are generally called Meleks. In such as have been lately conquered, or perhaps, more properly, have been annexed to the dominion of the Sultan, under certain stipulations, the chief is suffered to retain the title of Sultan, yet is tributary to and receives his appointment from the Sultan of Fûr.
In this country, on the death of the monarch, the title descends of right to the oldest of his sons; and in default of heirs male, as well as during the minority of those heirs, to his brother. But under various pretences this received rule of succession is frequently infringed. The son is said to be too young, or the late monarch to have obtained the government by unjust means; and, at length, the pretensions of those who have any apparent claim to the regal authority are to be decided by war, and become the prize of the strongest.
It was in this manner that the present Sultan gained possession of the Imperial dignity. A preceding monarch, named Bokar, had three sons, Mohammed, surnamed Teraub, el-Chalîfe, and Abd-el-rachmân. Teraub the eldest (which cognomen was acquired by the habit of rolling in the dust when a child) first obtained the government. He is said to have ruled thirty-two lunar years, one of the longest reigns remembered in the history of the country. The sons he left at his death being all young, the second brother, under pretence that none of them was old enough to reign, which was far from being the fact, and in some degree favoured by the troops for the generosity by which he was eminently distinguished, under the title of Chalîfe, vicegerent of the realm, assumed the reins of government. His reign was of short duration, and characterised by nothing but violence and rapine. He had been only a short time seated on the throne, when a discontented party joining with the people of Kordofân, in a war with whom his brother Teraub had perished, found employment for him in that quarter. Abd-el-rachmân, who, during the life of his brother, had assumed the title of Faquîr, and apparently devoted himself to religion, was then in Kordofân. He took advantage of the situation of the Chalîfe, and the increasing discontent of the soldiery, to get himself appointed their leader. Returning towards Fûr, he met his brother in the field, and they came to an engagement, which, whether by the prowess of Abd-el-rachmân, or the perfidy of the other’s adherents, is unknown, was decided in favour of the former. The Chalîfe was wounded; and while one of his sons parried the blows that were aimed at his life, they perished together covered with wounds. The children of Teraub, the rightful heirs, were in the mean time forgotten, and are now wandering about, scraping a miserable subsistence from the parsimonious alms of their usurping uncle. Abd-el-rachmân thought fit to sacrifice but one of them, who being of mature age, and, according to general report, endowed with talents greater than the rest, was the chief object of his suspicion and his fears.