Ahmad al-Maqur

Fur · mortal · Fur traditional religion; continuing · mortal

Ahmad al-Maqur is the founder-ancestor of the origin legend that binds together the Tunjur, Kunjara and Keira ruling lines of Darfur. In the standard telling a wandering Arab of noble descent, lamed in the leg or heel, arrives from the north as a penniless stranger at the court of a Fur chief; his wisdom in settling disputes wins him the chief's favour and, in one widespread version, the chief's own repudiated wife, a daughter of the ruling house. From this union the royal line descends. Traditions assign him sons who become eponyms of peoples and dynasties: Ahmad Kunjar, ancestor of the Kunjara section of the Fur from whom the Keira sprang, and Musa, who carried the line west to found rule in Wadai. His epithet al-Maqur, 'the hamstrung', is itself woven into the tale as the mark of an old wound. Scholars read the legend as a charter that grafts an Arab and Islamic pedigree onto an older indigenous kingship; the several oral versions disagree over which chief received him and which woman bore his heirs, and the same charter is claimed, with variation, by neighbouring dynasties.

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