This work is an annotated translation of the Funj Chronicle, the only full-length Arabic account of the Nilotic Sudan from 910/1504-5 to 1288/1871, produced by a succession of nineteenth-century Sudanese writers. The earlier part is based on a king-list of the Funj dynasty of Sinnār. From the mid-twelfth/eighteenth century an increasingly detailed narrative describes the rule of Hamaj regents, the conquest by Muḥammad 'Alī Pasha's forces and the first half-century of Turco-Egyptian government.
The translator's Introduction discusses the textual history, structure and authorship of the Chronicle, while four Appendixes provide supplementary materials. This is a major source for Sudanese history, to which non-readers of Arabic have previously had access only through the summary translation in Harold MacMichael's History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge, 1992).