Daali

Daali, also remembered as Dali or Dalil Bahr, is the great culture-hero and lawgiver of the Fur, the figure to whom the Keira state traces its ritual and legal foundations. From his seat at Turra in the northern Jebel Marra he is said to have established the sacred tree, the numang fadda; laid out the five provinces on which the sultanate's administration rested until the nineteenth century; and given the Kitab Daali, the code of customary law later understood as an attempt to reconcile Fur sultanic practice with a Maliki interpretation of Sharia. In the charter legend he is the half-brother of the last Tunjur king, Shau Dorshid, whom the nobility, weary of the tyrant, invite Daali to displace, so transferring the kingship from Tunjur to Keira. Historians treat him as a telescoped and partly legendary figure onto whom the whole architecture of the early state has been retrojected; the traditions disagree over his exact ancestry and over whether the institutions credited to him were the work of one reign or of many.

Parentage

• paternal: Ahmad al-Maqur

Domains

• law justice
• kingship
• sacred landscape

Powers

• codifies the customary law
• founds the institutions of the state

Epithets

• Dalil Bahr — Dali of the river / of BahrR. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary)

Relations

• sibling: Shau DorshidNamed as the half-brother whom the Tunjur nobility raised up against the tyrant Shau Dorshid.R. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary)
• rival: Shau DorshidR. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary)
• sibling: Ahmad KunjarR. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary)
• sibling: MusaR. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary)

Sources

• Daali, also called Dalil Bahr, is remembered as the founder-hero of the Keira state, seated at Turra in the northern Jebel Marra, who instituted the sacred tree, the five provinces and the codified Kitab Daali law.: R. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary); R. S. O'Fahey, State and Society in Dar Fur (London: Hurst, 1980) (secondary)
• In tradition he is the half-brother whom the Tunjur nobles asked to usurp the tyrant Shau Dorshid.: R. S. O'Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (London: Hurst, 2008) (secondary)