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R. S. O'Fahey. The Darfur Sultanate: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. xix + 357 pp. Figures. Bibliography. Index. $60.00. Cloth.
Anyone acquainted with historical writing on Darfur will know of R. S. O'Fahey's singular role in collecting, photographing, and archiving source materials, and of his several books and many articles. The Darfur Sultanate: A History is the crowning achievement of four decades of research.
In commenting that the book "builds upon" (ix) his magisterial State and Society in Dar Fur (St. Martin's Press, 1980), and omitting mention of a similar connection to his and Jay Spaulding's Kingdoms of the Sudan (Methuen, 1974), O'Fahey perhaps overstates the originality of the present volume. While he does indeed incorporate much material from his own and others' research and publications since 1980, many passages from those two seminal volumes are here reproduced verbatim. Nor is the period of coverage expanded: chapter 14, "Darfur since 1916: A Postscript" is, at five...