The hakura system: Land and social stratification in the social and economic history of the Sultanate of Dar Fur (Sudan), ca. 1785-1875. (Volumes I and II)

The study examines the growth and development of the hakura system, a new form of control over land, which arose in this period between the conquest of Kordofan in 1820-1821 and the fall of Dar Fur in 1874. Previously, local sedentary and pastoral groups had used kinship and lineage-based principles to allocate land and labor for agricultural production. From 1785, two other sets of principles were introduced in northern Dar Fur to allocate land. One was based on sultanic hegemony; the other, on the commercial practices of the jallaba which permitted the buying and selling of land and labor.;After a theoretical introduction and background on the geography, ecology and inhabitants of Dar Fur, the study is divided into sections. The first places Dar Fur in a regional context, by examining the sultanate's foreign relations; its trans-Saharan trade (including the slave trade) with Egypt; and the role of drought in the history of Dar Fur. This section draws primarily on French and British archives, travellers' accounts and secondary sources.;The second section traces the history and development of the political economy of land within Dar Fur from early patterns of sultanic intervention in land to the height of the hakura system, using local land documents, letters and court cases in Arabic; Sudanese oral sources; and Condominium archives. The internal dynamics of the hakura system and its socio-economic implications are analyzed in a separate chapter. The new land-holders became a new class which consumed the bulk of the imported goods, had use of slave and free labor, and has been able to preserve its status through drought and war even to the present time.