Mahdish Faith Sudanic Traditio by Kapteijns

Author:Kapteijns [Kapteijns]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780710300904
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 2022889
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1985-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

‘A brief slaughter of Frenchmen’: prelude to colonial rule

[Dār Masālīt] has contributed nothing to the sweep of history beyond a brief slaughter of Frenchmen, nothing to philosophy beyond a rough habit of contentment, nothing to politics but a short and latter-day shadow of the mediaeval empires from Sennar to Songhay.36

On 2 June 1909 the French occupied Abesher. Dūd Murra fled to the north and was replaced by the French puppet, Adam Asīl, a grandson of Sultan Muḥammad Sharīf. The French conquest of Wadai was the realization of a policy decided upon in 1906, when the French abandoned the defensive policy they had been pursuing towards Wadai and began to push steadily eastward. The factors behind this decision were numerous; among them were the consolidation of French authority in the rear areas; the instability of the border which the Wadaians frequently ‘violated’ fears of a joint Ottoman-Sanūsī occupation of Wadai from the north, or an economic occupation of Wadai and the diversion of its trade to the north and east by respectively the Ottomans and the British.37

After the conquest of Abesher the French disarmed the inhabitants and invited the subjects and tributaries of the Wadai Sultanate to submit. On 5 June 1909 Asīl wrote to the frontier sultans announcing that he was the new sultan of Wadai. The first to respond to his letter was ‘Uthmān, sultan of Dār Tāmā, soon followed by Bakhīt of Dār Silā, who promised to obey Asīl as his ancestors had obeyed Asīl’s ancestors. Idrīs Abū Bakr of Dār Qimr, Tāj al-Dīn of Dār Masālīt and ‛Alī Dīnār all sent congratulations. Those of the latter, however, contained a clear warning:

il y a quelque chose que tout le monde connait, à savoir que le Tama, le Zaghawa, le Guimr, le Massalit, le Sila son mes vassaux; si tu le sais et si tu ťentiennes là nous serons amis, au cas contraire, tu entendras parler de moi.38

Tāj al-Dīn’s letter was a disguised declaration of independence:

Louange à Dieu qui t’a enfin fait rentrer dans le pays de tes pères, et qui t’a donné le thrône de tes ancêtres au Ouadai, comme il m’a donné celui du Massalit.39

Asīl was probably well aware of what ‛Alī Dīnār and Tāj al-Dīn meant, but the French were not, and immediately pushed on east. Aside from that, the instructions of Colonel Fiegenschuh, the new governor of Wadai, were quite explicit: to confirm French sovereignty over Wadai’s vassal states, to give letters of protection to the sultans of all frontier dārs and to all heads of the villages lying astride the border with Dār Fūr. Thus the French hoped to strengthen their hand in the Anglo-French negotiations about the Dār Fūr/Wadai border.40 By the end of September 1909 the French had raised the tricolor in Dār Tāmā, where ‘Uthmān (who fled to ‛Alī Dīnār) was replaced by the French nominee Ḥasan. In November the French visited Dār Qimr which was in a state of mobilization after a threatening letter from Tāj al-Dīn to Idrīs saying:

Tu as appelé les Kirdis dans ton pays et tu es la cause qu’ils viennent chez nous.

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