An Embassy from the Sultan of Darfur to the Sublime Porte in 1791


This article presents documents relating to the embassy sent by Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān of Darfur to the Ottoman Sultan Selim III in 1791. These include an original Arabic letter which is an unusually early surviving example of sultanic correspondence from the Sahel. The documents permit a new interpretation of the purposes of the embassy, as well as an examination of chancery practice in Darfur, and offer an insight into Darfuri views of the outside world. To aid the analysis, the article compares this letter with a second surviving letter from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān addressed to Napoleon Bonaparte around 1800, of which the Arabic text has not previously been published.

and possibly as far south as the Kawar oasis in northern Niger (figure 1).2 The Ottomans' interest was in securing access to the trans-Saharan trade, in particular the valuable commodity of slaves, and this brought them into contact with the kingdoms of the Sahel, in particular Bornu (southern Chad and northern Nigeria), with whose ruler Ottoman correspondence is preserved from as early as 1577.3 The Ottoman presence in the region coincided with the emergence of new Muslim states in the Sahel in the sixteenth century. Neighbouring Habeş province was the Funj kingdom of Sinnar, to the west of which lay the newly Islamised state of Tunjur, whose history is extremely murky but which by the seventeenth century had split into the sultanates of Wadai and Darfur.4 Yet the dealings of these Sahelian states with the Ottomans has remained largely unstudied, as a result of a sparse local source base for these sultanates and a lack of awareness among Africanists of Ottoman materials. Nonetheless, tantalizing hints in the published nineteenth century travel literature attest the existence of links. Gustav Nachtigal, for instance, reported that the sultan of to protect himself from British encroachment by becoming an Ottoman vassal, requesting an Ottoman flag be sent to Darfur. Indeed, ʿAlī Dīnār's response to the Ottoman declaration of jihad at the beginning of the First World War provided the excuse for the British annexation of Darfur in 1916 and the abolition of the sultanate.7 However, the earlier history of Darfur-Ottoman relations remains largely unstudied. New information is provided by the documentation surrounding an embassy sent in 1791 by Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān of Darfur (r. 1787-1803) to the Ottoman ruler Selim III (r. 1789-1807). The embassy brought two letters, of which the Arabic original of one is now preserved in the Presidential Ottoman Archive in Istanbul, while the second survives only in Turkish translation. A further document from the same archive records the unidentified ambassador's oral summary of his mission. While the existence of this embassy has long been known, being mentioned by the British traveller W.B. Browne in his account of Darfur published in 1799 and occasionally briefly referred to in the subsequent scholarly literature,8 the Istanbul documents, which have never previously been published, offer new insights into its purpose. This was not limited to just political relations, but also trade. Moreover, the original Arabic letter of 1791 is an unusually early example of sultanic correspondence from Darfur. Although quite a number of documents have survived from the Darfur sultanate, the majority are land-grants;9 a handful of examples of sultanic correspondence with other local rulers have been published, but most of these are much later, dating to the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.10 The 1791 letter sheds new light upon the Darfur sultanate's self-representation and legitimisation through the titulature and rhetoric deployed and may represent the earliest surviving original diplomatic letter from the Sahel. These features can be better understood when compared with our other surviving example of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's correspondence, a letter sent to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800,11 which is also presented here, and when contextualised with the diplomatic practices of other major Muslim states in the Sahel, Bornu and the Funj sultanate. Darfur lay in between these two powers, and the diplomatic aspects of the letter present interesting parallels to practices in both, as well as other Sahelian states such as Wadai. The present article thus offers a contribution to the study of diplomatics in the Islamic world more broadly by publishing documents from a region often neglected by such scholarship, with previous publications of Darfuri and Sudanese documents concentrating more on their contents than their formal characteristics.12 Both elements, however, can enrich our understanding of political, diplomatic as well as textual practices. In addition, the article addresses our understanding of the relationship between the written word and power in Islamic Africa,13 for, as we shall see, not just the words but also the format of the letters conveyed distinct messages about the status of sender and recipient.

Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's Letter to Selim III: Text and Translation
Below are presented the diplomatic edition and translation of the original Arabic letter preserved in the Presidential Ottoman Archive in Istanbul,14 of which a facsimile is reproduced in Figures 2 and 3. The letter is catalogued as Hatt-ı Humayun 117/4735/3; the Hatt-ı Humayun series comprises imperial correspondence, both original documents and their Turkish translations and synopses. In the edition, the orthography of the original has been scrupulously respected and there has been no attempt to standardise it. The original letter measures 31.5 x 44 cm and is of thick, high quality unwatermarked paper.15   It is requested, from your exalted, high determination and your pleasing morals, by way of desire and anticipation ]as follows[: large sultanic swords and impregnable dāwūdī armour;21 in terms of precious stones: white diamonds, nabātī diamonds, sapphires, real emeralds, kingly, sultanic perfume, coloured Venetian silks ]hita'i[, Anatolian carpets, and whatever you see fit by way of weapons, jewels, necklaces22 and perfumes. As for the weapons, they will strengthen us against our enemies, for we face the mountains of the infidel ʿayla. 23 We seek your solicitude and prayers, and we constantly undertake the duty of prayer for you, day and night. May God aid you and give you victory over the infidel, the pol- ]Margin[ And inform us of everything of advantage and service to you, so that we can accomplish them, whether they are small or great, with the utmost pleasure. Peace and blessings upon our lord Muḥammad, his Companions and Family. Farewell.

Verso
By God's grace may it arrive and be honoured by the hand of the greatest sultan, and the noble khaqan, sultan Selim son of sultan Mustafa son of sultan Ahmed, may God render him victorious, Amen. 864224

Historical commentary
Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's embassy to Istanbul was evidently well known in Darfur. As noted above, it is mentioned in W.B. Browne's account of his prolonged and involuntary stay in al-Fāshir, the capital, during that sultan's reign (although curiously, there is no reference to it in our other near-contemporary source for ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the travel account of Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Tūnisī, who visited Darfur shortly after the sultan's death).25 Presumably drawing on what he was told by courtiers or merchants, Browne related that, The sultan 'Abd-er-Rachmân, soon after he became possessed of sovereign authority, with the ostensible motive of testifying his attachment to the religion of the Prophet, but more perhaps with a view of obtaining greater weight among his subjects, by some mark of the consideration of the first of Mohammedan princes, thought proper to send a present to Constantinople. It consisted of three of the choicest eunuchs, and three of the most beautiful female slaves that could be procured. The Othman emperor when they were presented, had, it is said, never heard of the Sultan of Dar-Fûr, but he returned a highly-ornamented sabre, a rich pelisse, and a ring set with a single diamond of no inconsiderable value.26 Naʿūm Shuqayr, whose history of the Ostensibly the text of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's letter supports Browne's interpretation, constituting a simple request for luxury goods, accompanied by proclamations of friendship and prayers. Indeed, there is reason to think that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān may, as Browne indicates, have wanted to bolster his legitimacy. Aged around fifty to sixty, he had only recently come to power in the wake of a bitter civil war, and was tainted by the accusation of usurpation, which is reflected in Browne's contemporary account.30 Two of his relatives had died fighting him, even according to the much more sympathetic narrative of 26  al-Tūnisī. Having spent most of his earlier life as a faqīh, his reign marked a distinct shift towards the Islamisation of the sultanate and the repudiation of local traditions, even those connected with the sultanic accession ritual.31 All these factors suggest ʿAbd al-Raḥmān would have had good cause to seek validation for his rule from the Ottoman sultan, who was, even if beset by difficulties, the greatest Muslim potentate of the period.
While the request for various luxuries features prominently in the letter, al-Tūnisī emphasises ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's personal asceticism, one of his first acts on becoming sultan being to distribute the wealth in his predecessor's treasury among the ʿulamā', ashrāf and fuqarā' .32 This would also point to the embassy's aims being largely political. The luxuries requested were possibly intended for public display or redistribution as a way of emphasising the sultan's legitimacy and recognition by the leading state of the Muslim world, rather than for his personal consumption, although Browne notes that the sultan used to sit on a "Turkey carpet", suggesting some items may indeed have been destined for court.33 On the other hand, given the Darfur sultans' interests in commerce, in which they personally had a major stake, as will be discussed below, the goods sought from Istanbul may have been intended for resale.
Yet the Turkish documents preserved alongside the Arabic letter reveals that in fact the embassy also brought a second letter from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān which was rather different in tone. The original of the second letter seems to be lost,34 and it survives only in the Turkish translation (Figures 4 and 5). Although the Turkish version removes the elaborate opening compliments, comparison with its translation of the surviving Arabic letter suggests the extant Turkish version is likely to be an accurate rendition on the contents of the original. The lost letter read: Our desire is only to serve the Two Holy Shrines with waqf and to benefit Muslims by trade, but the rulers and administrators in Egypt oppress the Muslims, taking ]in taxes[ more than the established custom. We request your assistance to prevent them from taking more than the established custom.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān again burnishes his Islamic credentials, serving the Muslims both by waqf in Mecca and Medina, and by trade. Although, as far as I am aware, there is no other evidence directly of this sultan's support for endowments in the Hijaz, it is likely to be based in fact rather than rhetoric. There is evidence from as early as the sixteenth century of a waqf being endowed in Medina by a relative of the Tunjur sultan of Darfur,36 and investment in endowments in the holy cities was a popular way for rulers from across the Muslim world to promote themselves as well as serving pious objectives. Lying on a trans-African pilgrimage route, Darfur would have had plenty of contacts with the Hijaz,37 and al-Tūnisī mentions an embassy sent by the Sharif of Mecca to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. 38 The Turkish letter shows that the motives for the mission were not limited to establishing contact with the Ottoman ruler and acquiring luxury goods, but also encompassed the practical one of requesting that the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul rein in the exactions of their nominal subordinates in Egypt. This purpose is also reflected in a second Turkish document which summarises the two letters, but also adds some additional information, apparently based on the oral report of the Darfur ambassador: The aforementioned ambassador of the said ruler reports that he has brought four eunuchs and a sack of tamarind as a gift to ]your Majesty's[ shining, imperial presence. He explained in the petition he presented that they were waging holy war against the infidel, but these wars were not with Europeans but rather the infidel Blacks known as the Nuba40 in their neighbourhood. ]He reported[ that they required an imperial order to be issued to prohibit oppression and aggression towards merchants in Egypt. They had come to the Sublime Porte only on account of the matters mentioned in their petition.41 Egypt was Darfur's crucial link to the outside world. The main route by which Darfur's products -of which the most important was slaves -were exported was the famous Darb al-Arbaʿin, Forty Days Road, which led from Kobbei, a day's journey north of the Darfuri capital al-Fashir, across the desert to the Kharga oasis and then to Asyut on the Nile Valley. Goods -and slaves -were 39 Cumhurbaşkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi, hat 118 4770. The catalogue gives the date as Rajab, but this must be incorrect, as it would mean the document had arrived before it was written! 40 Although Nuba might be taken to refer to Nubia, this had been converted to Islam by the sixteenth century. It is therefore more likely this is a reference to the people of the Nuba mountains in southern Kordofan, many of whom were yet to convert, and who were the frequent target of Darfuri slave-raids. This seems to be confirmed by the reference to the 'mountains of the infidel' in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's Arabic original, which would fit the Nuba mountains better than Nubia, where much of the landscape is flat or small hills. However, the term Nuba in origin referred to any African peoples living south of Egypt who were subject to slave raiding. On Darfur and the Nuba mountains see Ewald, Soldiers, Traders, and Slaves, esp. pp. 45-48. 41 This is doubtless an allusion to the fact that envoys were often entrusted with the most sensitive missives only orally, while the written documents they brought were often largely made up of formulaic good wishes that served to authenticate the embassy. then transported upriver to Cairo, or occasionally by land. From there, they could be sent on to Istanbul. Darfur was the largest single source of these slave caravans, which were considerably larger than those from Sinnar, the other main supplier in the Bilad al-Sudan.42 The leader of the caravan, the khabīr (pl. khubarā'), was appointed by the sultan of Darfur, and was usually a wealthy merchant who might also function as the personal envoy of the sultan, carrying out diplomatic as well as commercial functions.43 It is possible that the Darfur envoy who brought ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's letter to Istanbul was a khabīr, and, as is shown by the text of the letter to Bonaparte (present in the Appendix below), khabīrs were involved in that mission. Towards the late eighteenth century, the caravan routes between Egypt and Darfur became increasingly troubled, as the Turkish translation of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's second letter suggests. The Ottoman authorities exerted little influence on the ground in Egypt, which was run, in effect, by its Mamluks,44 who often relied on extortion to finance their rule. Ismāʿīl Beg, the Mamluk ruler of Egypt between 1787 and 1791, is known to have extorted a large sum from the merchants of the Wakālat al-Gallāba, who specialised in the Sudan trade, in late 1787.45 In addition to fixed customs charges and protection fees, merchants also ran the risk of having to pay illegal taxes to government agents, especially in Kharga and Asyut.46 Customs records from Cairo dating from 1790 to 1792 indicate a sudden collapse in the Sudan trade in this period. Instead of 17,500 slaves, as would be expected, only 3,780 passed through customs. The reliability of these figures is certainly open to question: they may indicate that merchants were simply avoiding official customs points by paying bribes to officials.47 Complaints about the treatment of the Sudan merchants in Egypt were not new. Nearly a century earlier, in 1701, the Funj sultan of Sinnar was complaining to the Ottomans of exactly the same problems.48 Darfuri resentment at what they saw as excessive taxation and 'oppression' of merchants is also reflected in the letter sent in 1800 by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to Napoleon Bonaparte (Figure 6 Mamluk regime.49 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's letter rejoiced in the fall of the Mamluks and requested that the French 'sultan' lower the dues to earlier rates; its text and translation is presented in the appendix to this article. For their part, the Ottomans were seriously concerned by the activities of the Mamluks. As recently as 1786 sultan Abdülhamid I had sent an expeditionary force under the famous kapudan paşa (grand admiral) Gazi Hasan Pasha of Algiers (d. 1790) to reassert Ottoman control of Egypt, which had succeeded in defeating the Mamluk rulers Murad Beg and İbrahim Beg. However, Gazi Hasan Pasha had been forced to withdraw after a year and a half to face the greater threat of Russia.50 Although Mamluk rule was restored in 1787, the expedition shows that the Ottomans maintained an interest in the region, and it may have prompted ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to seek their renewed intervention, as it is highly likely that merchants or other intermediaries would have informed him of Gazi Hasan Pasha's expedition.
Both ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and his Ottoman counterpart shared an interest in the smooth running of trade. Taxes on merchandise were a substantial component of the sultan of Darfur's income, but the sultan was also Darfur's 'chief merchant' , sending prodigious quantities of his own merchandise for export to Egypt, of which slaves were unquestionably the principal component.51 Many of these slaves were captured by raids in the Nuba mountains, which are alluded to in the second Turkish document. Even if, by the late eighteenth century, black eunuchs no longer enjoyed quite political significance in the Ottoman empire they previously had, they still constituted an important part of the sultan's household and were employed in other prominent functions such as guards of the Kaʿba and the Prophet's tomb in Medina.52 The importance of slaves in relations between the two sides is reflected in the gifts sent from Darfur. As the second Turkish document notes, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān sent Selim the gift of four eunuchs -which, given the high mortality rate of castrated slaves,53 was doubtless a generous gift. It is unclear whether Browne's count of six slaves, three male and three female, is simply a mistake, or reflects that fact that some died en route and possibly were only partially replaced. In addition, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān sent another principal export, tamarind, which grew in northwest Darfur and Kordofan and on the supply of which the Darfur sultanate enjoyed a monopoly in the late eighteenth century.54 Tamarind was prized in the Ottoman court (as well as more widely in Ottoman society) where it was used in the drink demirhindi şerbeti.55 The gifts were most likely carefully calculated to reflect the value of the goods ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was requesting. Reciprocity in value was a basic principle of diplomacy, in which gifts played a crucial part both in the Sahel and the broader Ottoman world, and diplomacy was itself closely linked to commercial relations.56 Gifts also served to advertise the commercial opportunities a ruler and his land could provide, and thus the advantages of a relationship between the two sides.57 Naturally, slaves and eunuchs were a common diplomatic gift from Sahelian states, although it is noteworthy that the numbers here are considerably lower than those presented by Bornu to the Ottomans (via Tripoli) in the seventeenth century, when twenty or even thirty eunuchs were typically sent, alongside a hundred to two hundred slaves.58 Whether this reflects changing economics of the slave trade or simply Darfur's relative impoverishment compared to Bornu is harder to assess. The custom of embassies requesting specific luxuries from foreign powers is also attested in Bornu, including requests for firearms.59 The gifts sent by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān thus reflect broader Sahelian as well as international diplomatic conventions. They were also evidently informed by knowledge of Ottoman tastes and commerce, information which was probably mediated by the khubarā' who led caravans to Egypt, as well as by the merchants who specialised in the Sudan trade, the gallāba, many of whom came from Dongola. Men like the sultan's agent (wakīl) also would have played a role in transmitting knowledge about the outside world. ordered a copy of the same text.60 Darfur, then, was not isolated from the wider Muslim world and its trends, despite its apparent remoteness. At the Wakālat al-Gallāba in Cairo, the Sudan merchants sold on their goods to others specialising in European or Asian trade.61 While the importance of contact with Europe has been acknowledged in scholarship on the Sudan trade,62 it is possible that the Ottoman dimension of the Sudan trade has been underestimated. It is interesting to note that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān sought from the Ottomans not just products for which they were renowned such as armour and carpets, but also Venetian silk, for which he uses the Ottoman term khiṭāyī (hita'i).63 Venetian silk was especially prized in Istanbul, and indeed the demands of Ottoman customers led to technical refinements in the Venetian silk industry, which became increasingly orientated towards supplying this market.64 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's request thus suggests that routes for the import of European goods to the Bilad al-Sudan were considerably more complex than a simple exchange between the gallāba and merchants specialising in European trade in Cairo, and perhaps involved the transhipment of materials via Istanbul or other ports. Testimony to this Ottoman link is the use of the Turkish form for Venice (Venedik, al-Wanādīkī) in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's letter rather than the standard Arabic one (Bunduq).
It is clear, then, that the Darfuri mission was prompted not simply by a search for legitimacy but by commercial and political objectives, while the letter suggests the sultan of Darfur was already quite well informed about the Ottomans, their tastes and commercial networks. Yet the mission of 1791 seems to have elicited no response from the Ottoman side. It is possible, of course,  68 Selim also faced severe internal challenges, including rebellions in Arabia, the Balkans and Anatolia; the empire was near bankrupt and in need of radical reform and modernisation, which Selim did attempt to effect. It was not an auspicious time for diplomacy with a remote region of which the Sublime Porte was probably barely aware. However, it is also unclear whether the embassy made the presents to officials that were de rigueur for a successful mission, of which there are no mention in the documents,69 and, as will be discussed further below, the formal characteristics of the letter may also have contributed to a frosty reception. As for Browne's account of the gifts bestowed by the Ottoman sultan in return, it is quite possible this represents popular rumour in Darfur rather than fact.

Diplomatic Commentary
The message of a letter was communicated not simply through the text itself, but through formal aspects such as styles of address and even layout.70 In both the Sahel and the central Islamic lands these were governed by specific conventions which indicated the status of sender and recipient, although these differed between the two regions, as will be discussed below. There is evidence for established conventions in correspondence from Bornu as early as the fourteenth century.71 The letter to Selim III shows influence from the epistolographic conventions of both Sahelian and the central Islamic lands, as befits Darfur's location on the cusp between these two worlds. It has been debated to what extent Darfur in this period had a formal chancery responsible for drawing up documents.72 Certainly, if there was a chancery, it did not preserve copies of outgoing correspondence (although even in the case of the Ottoman chancery, which certainly did exist, their preservation was far from guaranteed). As a result, letters preserved in archives outside Darfur are perforce our main sources to allow us to deduce information about diplomatic practice. Nonetheless, as noted above, the royal correspondence of the Darfur sultanate has only received attention for the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. As far as I am aware only one other letter from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān has been preserved, being his letter to Napoleon Bonaparte (unnamed, but it can only be he who is designated at the 'sultan of France') of which the French translation is dated April 1800 ( Figure 6) The reader cannot but be struck immediately by the very different form of each letter. While the missive to Selim III is written in a professional scribe's mashriqi naskh, that to Bonaparte is untidy in appearance, written in an amateurish hand somewhat reminiscent of Maghrebi scripts, and violates the near-universal principal of Islamic diplomatics that the left margin should be justified. In the letter to Selim, the first line ends with the 'stacking' of words one above each other, a practice that can ultimately be traced back to ʿAbbasid precedents but which was common in Ottoman documents,74 as well as those of other chancelleries of the central and eastern Islamic world (although it was apparently unknown in Bornu and the Maghreb).75 For example, stacking is used in the Persian correspondence of the sultan of Muscat in the late eighteenth century, although curiously his Arabic letters do not employ this device.76 The stacking is entirely absent from the letter to Bonaparte. As one might expect, the letter to the unbeliever entirely omits the religious invocatio with which that to Selim III starts.
A further contrast is in the positioning of the seals. Although the seal in the 1800 letter is illegible, it is positioned firmly in the middle of the top of the letter, and evidently has a different design from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's other known seals.77 A similar size and positioning of seal is found on a letter from translation, it seems unlikely to have been quite so long as two years. B6 54 is accompanied by a note from General Donzelot, the French commander at Asyut, where the translation was made, where he remarks he had mentioned the correspondence from Darfur in a letter dated 11 October, suggesting it had reached Asyut only very shortly before the translation was made. The Arabic text of a letter purporting to be from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to Bonaparte is given by Shuqayr, Ta'rīkh al-Sūdān, p. 162. However, it does not reflect either the French translation of the October 1800 letter, which is much longer, or the Arabic text of the extant April 1800 letter. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān is styled simply 'sulṭān dārfūr', which does not resemble the titulature used in any other document issued by him. As noted above, Shuqayr relied on an oral informant, an imam, for his information about Darfur, and he is very likely to have tidied up the language in preparing the materials for print, quite apart from the inaccuracies that may very probably have entered the text over the course of oral transmission of a good hundred years. If anything, the discrepancy between the two documents is a stark warning of the dangers of relying on versions of documents preserved in literary sources rather than their original forms.  Sultan Ibrāhīm al-Muʿtaṣim bi'llāh of Darfur to the Khedive of Egypt Ismāʿīl in 1873.78 However, although the latter seal cannot readily be read, it is much more clearly a conventional seal than the one in the letter to Bonaparte where there is no obvious space for the names or the date. In contrast, in the letter to Selim III, a smaller, octagonal seal, resembling those found in royal documents from Bornu and Fazzan,79 is stamped multiple times on the margins of the letter -twice at the top, twice at the bottom, and once on the side.
It is unlikely that these sigillographic peculiarities are accidental. The explorer Charles Cuny (d. 1858) reported that in Darfur a decree affixed with a royal seal was not to be given to Christian, or even a foreigner. While this may be an exaggeration, or least was not always observed in practice, the royal seal was sufficiently valued that it was specially commissioned from Egypt.80 Moreover, it seems different secretaries had control of different seals.81 Seals could serve not just to identify the sender and to authenticate the document, but also to represent his authority visually, and to indicate the relative status of sender and recipient; this is why their positioning could be highly contentious.82 However, there were major regional differences in usage. In the central It seems likely that a larger seal, different from other known designs, was deliberately chosen for the letter to Bonaparte, perhaps to avoid affixing the sultan's personal seal on a document destined for a non-Muslim while at the same time suggesting ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's superiority. On the other hand, the use of the smaller rectangular seal was deemed more appropriate for a relationship with the Ottoman sultan. It is more difficult to say why the seal was impressed no fewer than five times on the letter to Selim. Although on occasion documents from the Funj sultanate do have multiple seal impressions on them (but rarely more than two), this practice is otherwise unknown in Darfur.85 Elsewhere in the Islamic world, the use of multiple seal impressions is unusual too. In Southeast Asia, it seems from the few extant examples that it was intended as a sign of respect to the recipient.86 However, multiple seals are also known from Mongol letters of the 13th-14th centuries, with no fewer than five on the letter from the Ilkhan Öljeitü to King Philip le Bel of France in 1305. In all these letters, the Mongol ruler emphasises his status as a universal ruler, demanding submission from the addressee.87 It seems more likely that in this context the use of multiple seal impressions was intended as mark of superiority. The exact significance of the use of five seal impressions in the 1791 Darfur letter is unclear. It may, in fact, have resulted from an awareness of different practices in different parts of the dār al-Islām, with the tendency to place the seal at the top of the letter in the central and western Sahel and the Maghreb, and at the bottom elsewhere. Possibly the multiple impressions were a deliberate attempt by the Darfur chancery to hedge their bets, aware that the positioning of the seal might be susceptible to different interpretations and expectations in different areas, an attempt to avoid offence by placing the seal regularly in every possible position. How, exactly, this would have been understood by its recipient is open to question, as Ottoman royal letters were generally validated by a tuğra88 rather than a seal. The titulature used in letters to Selim and Bonaparte is also quite different. The rulers of Darfur and surrounding sultanates such as Wadai arrogated to themselves the Caliphal titles of the great empires of the central Islamic lands, and some even claimed 'Abbasid descent.89 The use of such titles was a longstanding tradition in the Sahel, and can be traced even in the 1391 letter from Bornu to the Mamluk sultan, in which the ruler of Bornu was styled, among other things, by the 'Abbasid-sounding laqabs al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allah and al-Mustanṣir bi'llāh and as al-ḥājj amīr al-mu'minīn.90 In his letter to Bonaparte, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān describes himself as 'the sultan of the Muslims, the Caliph of God's Prophet' (sulṭān al-Muslimīn wa-khalīfat rasūl rabb al-ʿālamīn), and a string of epithets follows emphasising his belief in the one God. Napoleon on the other hand is referred to briefly as simply 'sulṭān Faransīs', 'Sultan of France' without any further epithets, a rather curt and dismissive formula that perhaps, in combination with the positioning of the seal, suggests a somewhat dismissive attitude towards the letter's recipient. The land charters also attest the Darfur sultan's use of the title of khalīfa, along with the similarly aggrandizing amīr al-mu'minīn or 'Commander of the Faithful' .91 Amīr al-mu'minīn also appeared on the seals of some Darfur sultans,92 and at least in the nineteenth century, sultans sometimes adopted 'Abbasid-sounding laqabs such as the above-mentioned al-Muʿtaṣim. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān himself is said by al-Tūnisī to have used the title sulṭān al-barrayn wa'l-baḥrayn 'sultan of the two lands and two seas' , an Ottoman title of Seljuk pedigree that originally referred to mastery of both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, as well as khādim al-ḥaramayn al-sharīfayn, 'servant of the Two Holy Shrines' (Mecca and Medina).93 These also are attested on the charters issued by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.94 The frequent appearance of these Ottoman-sounding titles on documents from Darfur suggests the existence of a body of scribes who were informed about Ottoman practice, which they sought to appropriate. This chancery was also sufficiently self-aware and professional to abandon entirely the Darfur sultan's Ottoman-sounding titles when actually addressing the Ottoman sultan, and moderates the claims made by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān accordingly. ʿAbd 89  al-Raḥmān's letter to the Ottoman sultan correctly allocates the titles malik al-barrayn wa'l-baḥrayn and khādim al-ḥaramayn al-sharīfayn to Selim, while ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's own titulature avoids the claim to be Caliph that we see in the letter to Bonaparte and instead emphasises his upholding of the Sunna and the Qur'an. This latter formula also has parallels in the charters, appearing in almost identical form in the intitulatio of a grant issued by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān in 1214/1799-1800.95 However, the use of the formula sulṭān b. sulṭān, 'sultan son of the sultan' , which we find in the 1791 letter, is also reminiscent of Ottoman practice, although does not obviously usurp the privileges of the Ottoman sultan.96 Further, the emphasis in the letter on friendship and 'love' (maḥabba) between the two sides emulates the rhetorical formulations of the Ottoman chancery.97 Rather than faqīhs drawing up documents ad hoc, it seems clear that scribes possessing certain knowledge of both indigenous and foreign diplomatic conventions were required, and it seems reasonable to characterise the body of men so charged as a chancery. The identity of these scribes must remain uncertain, although it is very likely they were faqīhs, or possibly other specialists in the written word such as copyists of books, judges, imams or possibly even merchants. Elsewhere in the central Sahel such specialists in the written word were often immigrant hajjis, which might explain awareness of diplomatic practices of the central Islamic lands.98 However, the presence of certain words and spellings characteristic of Sudanic Arabic such as ʿayla and waḍīfa suggests the scribe of the 1791 letter was a native of the region, who, whilst educated, did not have a sufficient mastery of classical Arabic to avoid these solecisms. Nonetheless, there are attempts at stylistic elegance through the use of rhyme, as conventional in chancery documents of the central Islamic lands (e.g. line 10 maḥabbatanā fīkum zā'ida wa'l-murāsala baynanā wa-baynakum hiya al-fā'ida).
Given that the chancery officials of Darfur were evidently acquainted with Ottoman diplomatic convention, it may seem surprising that both sender and recipient are named in the letter to Selim. Conventionally, diplomatic correspondence in the central Islamic lands in this period omitted reference to or attributes of the sender. Indeed, on the rare occasions when the sender's name is included, it is usually a deliberate insult, or an indication of inferiority of the The question thus arises of both what was intended by the letter's scribe and how the letter was understood. On one level, it might be argued that the scribe simply adhered to local Sahelian practice; on the other hand, given the evident knowledge of Ottoman conventions we see in other aspects of the letter, its formal features seem unlikely to be accidental. It is possible that the naming of both sender and recipient was intended to assert equality between Selim and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān as two sultans, an idea which is also reflected in the contents of the letter, in which ʿAbd al-Raḥmān implicitly compares his own battles against the infidel ʿayla with Selim's battles against the infidel in Europe. If, indeed, it was understood as such in Istanbul -which it may well have been even if this was not the intent -this would also go some way to explaining the apparently frosty reception of the embassy, suggested by the silence of the contemporary Ottoman sources. Ottoman diplomacy asserted the superiority of the Ottoman sultan to other contemporary rulers,103 and  4), which entirely omits ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's titulature, starting only from line 11 of the original text. The wholesale omission of the protocol in translation was certainly not conventional. In the contemporary Turkish translations of Tīpū Sulṭān's letters, prepared by the Ottoman chancery, the protocol (which of course mentioned only recipient, not sender) was invariably translated in full, for all its verbosity and rhetorical redundancy.106 The choice of the Ottoman chancery not to translate the protocol of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's letter supports the impression given by the silence of other Ottoman sources that the embassy was not a success. While there is room to debate the intentions of the scribe of the 1791 letter, it is clear that it is the product of a sophisticated chancery with established conventions. A completely different impression is given by the letter to Bonaparte. Not only does the layout violate all established epistolographic norms, as noted above, but the Arabic is extremely colloquial, with (for example) numerous spoken forms such as -tū in places of the classical second person plural ending -tum. There are numerous spelling errors such as the regular omission of the final alif of the first person plural ending -nā, and there is no attempt at stylistic elegance at all. Given that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's chancery evidently regularly drew up Arabic documents such as land charters which are of far greater lucidity and elegance both of language and form, quite apart from the letter to Selim III with its clear knowledge of Ottoman epistolographic conventions, it is hard to know what exactly to make of this.
Was it just that no competent scribe could be found to write the letter? This seems unlikely given the evidence al-Tūnisī presents for the presence of educated faqīhs and the reading of Arabic texts at ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's court.107 Or was it that a letter to a non-Muslim ruler was not seen as something worthy of the attention of the chancery, in keeping with the convention alluded to by Cluny that the sultanic seal should not be attached to such a document? Although it might be argued on the basis of later examples that professional letters impressed with the royal seal were sent to non-Muslims,108 it should be remembered that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's reign represents a turning point in the Islamisation of Darfur. As ʿAbd al-Raḥmān had spent much of his life as a faqīh himself, and according to al-Tūnisī was profoundly personally pious, it is entirely possible that the sultan had a rather different attitude than his successors. Browne repeatedly and bitterly complained about the intense prejudice against non-Muslims in Darfur that he experienced during his visit at this time. 109 Yet in terms of contents, the Bonaparte letter is friendly in tone, although lacking the rhetorical emphasis on mutual affection found in the 1791 letter. Indeed, it was delivered by an embassy that comprised a faqīh, and was accompanied by gifts -again, local products, slaves and civets. The numerous faults of presentation suggest that it was not properly speaking a product of the Darfur chancery. We know on some other occasions that diplomatic letters were composed by ambassadors en route,110 although even that hypothesis would not fully explain its peculiarities, as there must have been no shortage of qualified scribes in Egypt who could have assisted in producing a more professional-looking document, should, say, the original have been lost through some accident. Nonetheless, its author was not wholly unfamiliar with diplomatic convention, as the correct rendering of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's titles suggests, and the omission of the invocatio is clearly deliberate. Although no one explanation for the form of this letter is wholly satisfying, it seems reasonable to assume its inelegant appearance is not accidental, and may reflect Darfuri attitudes towards the recipient.

Conclusion
The substantial differences of form and language between 'Abd al-Raḥmān's letter of 1791 to Selim and 1800 to Bonaparte underline the difficulties of generalising about chancery practice on the basis of a very limited corpus of materials. While the letter of 1800 superficially suggests a profoundly provincial and remote court that had no idea how to prepare a letter according to the conventions of Islamic diplomatics, the letter of 1791 strongly suggests that there was a Darfuri chancery that was aware of the correct protocols for dealing with other Muslim rulers, even if on occasion it still adhered to Sahelian practice such as the inclusion of the name of the sender. I suggest that these differences are deliberate. Despite the gifts that accompanied both missions, a very different attitude towards each recipient was reflected in the formal aspects of each letter, with the curt language and lack of formalities in the letter to Napoleon suggesting a somewhat contemptuous attitude towards the infidel, even while requesting he do the sultan a favour.
In contrast, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's letter to Selim was addressed to a fellow sultan, an equal, a point which is emphasised by both the letter's form and its content, with its references to the Ottomans' and Darfuris' shared experience of jihad. This may have seemed less preposterous from the Darfuri perspective than it may at first appear, given the repeated claims of the Darfuri sultans to be amir al-mu'minīn and khalīfa, claims which are diplomatically passed over in this missive. The mission was far from being the sort of vanity project that Browne portrayed. It was intended to gain not just luxury goods and weapons for import, but possibly more importantly, to secure Darfur's crucial trade route through Egypt by soliciting Ottoman assistance against the Mamluk regime in Egypt, whose fall is celebrated in the letter to Bonaparte. It seems likely that reports of Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha's abortive expedition to Egypt just a few years before would have encouraged the Darfuris to believe Ottoman intervention was possible, although both the letter itself and the ambassador's oral testimony suggest they were also aware of Selim's protracted battles with his European enemies. In practice, however the embassy reached Istanbul at peacock Islamic Africa 12 (2021) 55-91 the worst time possible, in the wake of disastrous Ottoman defeats, meaning it seemingly met with little response from the Ottomans. The formal attributes of the letter itself may have further contributed to the embassy's apparent lack of success. The diplomatic features of both letters, however, are clear testimony to the use of writing as an expression of power in Islamic Africa, with its distinctive articulations in both the central Sahel and the central Islamic lands, elements from both of which were reflected in Darfuri practices.

Translation
From his majesty the sultan of the Muslims, the Caliph of God's Prophet, who trusts in the assistance of the One God, our lord Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān son of sultan Aḥmad Bukr, may God render him victorious amen by the great Qur'an, to the Sultan of France. There are arriving to you our subjects al-Ḥājj Bilāl, the faqih Aḥmad and Zāyid. We have heard that you have occupied Medina,111 and we sent you our subjects asking you for the ancient dues from before the Ghuzz's112 oppression of the gallāba. We have heard the news that you have forbidden oppression. We have sent you this slave, explain to him and address me ]through him[. Let the gallāba trade in your lands and return ]to us[. I ask from you the ancient dues, two sequins113 for a slave, one sequin for a camel. The Ghuzz oppressed the gallāba, even their possessions. This is not nice between sultans. Write for him ]the slave[ an answer to me for him to bring in haste with the goods dispatched. Among the gallāba coming to you are three khabīrs, among whom is the khabīr Faraj Allaj, our subject, the khabīr Ishaq our subject and the khabīr Munawwar. They bring you three slaves and two civets114 by way of affection. The present is coming to you with the khabīr Faraj Allah. Communicate my greeting to all the French army and greetings to you. 111 Thus the accompanying French translation; perhaps the city (madīna) of Cairo is meant. 112 Al-Ghuzz was the term commonly used for Mamluks. 113 Text maḥbūb. The coin referred to is the Ottoman gold zer mahbub, see J. Allan, "Zer Maḥbūb", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition