Slavery in Sudan began in ancient times, and had a resurgence during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005). During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, many Nilotic peoples from the lower Nile Valley were purchased as slaves and brought to work elsewhere in North Africa and the Orient by Nubians, Egyptians, Berbers and Arabs.
Sudanese tribesmen raid a Dinka village in around 1870
Ziber Basha Street in Khartoum
The Funj Sultanate, also known as Funjistan, Sultanate of Sennar or Blue Sultanate, was a monarchy in what is now Sudan, northwestern Eritrea and western Ethiopia. Founded in 1504 by the Funj people, it quickly converted to Islam, although this conversion was only nominal. Until a more orthodox form of Islam took hold in the 18th century, the state remained an "African empire with a Muslim façade". It reached its peak in the late 17th century, but declined and eventually fell apart in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1821, the last sultan, greatly reduced in power, surrendered to the Ottoman Egyptian invasion without a fight.
Contemporary albeit romanticizing depiction of Sultan Badi III receiving Theodor Krump. Over 100 years later an eyewitness would describe Badi VII, the last Funj king, as wearing a robe and a tunic and horned cap of rich Indian fabric. He rode a horse with a harness decorated with gold and silver and a plume made of ostrich feathers.
A Sudanese woman in an Ottoman miniature from the late 18th century
At the time of the Egyptian invasion in 1821 the palace of Sennar was already in ruins.
A Funj king of Sennar and his ministers as represented in a book by Félix Mengin, 1823
