Sennar ( Arabic : سنار Sannār ) is a city on the Blue Nile in Sudan and possibly the capital of the state of Sennar . For several centuries it was the capital of the Funj Kingdom of Sennar and until at least 2011, Sennar was the capital of Sennar State .
7-510: The French traveler Charles-Jacques Poncet , who visited Sennar near the end of the 17th century, estimated the town had a population of 100,000 inhabitants. However, when the Dutch explorer Juan Maria Schuver travelled through the town in April 1881, he doubted it had "anything like 100,000 inhabitants, when Khartoum, the centre and capital of a tenfold larger country is not able to muster more than
14-410: A borderline hot arid climate ( Köppen BWh ) a little below a hot semi-arid climate ( BSh ). [REDACTED] Media related to Sennar (town) at Wikimedia Commons Juan Maria Schuver Juan Maria Schuver (born Joannes Maria Schuver ; 26 February 1852 – August 1883) was a Dutch explorer. The son of a wealthy merchant, as a young man Schuver travelled extensively throughout Europe,
21-487: A lifelong dream, to undertake a scientific expedition to the interior of Africa. He joined the Royal Geographical Society of London and took classes on various subjects in order to prepare for his upcoming journey. In March 1881, he reached Khartoum with a small entourage, and subsequently spent the better part of the next two-plus years performing explorations of southeastern Sudan , particularly
28-547: A quarter of that number, if we exclude the garrison." He observed that Sennar had declined as trade had over the years shifted to Karkoj , "much more advantageously situated as the terminus of regular navigation, as the natural outlet of the Takruri country between Kassala and Galabat ." The modern town lies SSE of the ruins of the ancient capital of the Funj Kingdom , 300 kilometres (186 miles) southeast of Khartoum ,
35-511: The Capital of Sudan . The city is home to Sinnar University , established in 1977. In 2011, the Library of Congress still presented maps indicating that Sennar was the capital of Sennar state , but more recent works indicate that the capital is at Sinja . Despite receiving over 400 millimetres or 16 inches of rainfall per year, the extreme heat and high evaporation means Sennar still has
42-798: The Middle East and northern Africa. At the age of 21 he worked as a private correspondent for the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad , covering events that took place in the Third Carlist War in Spain. Afterwards he travelled to the Balkans and reported for the Handelsblad involving action from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 . In 1879 his father died and Schuver inherited a fortune. At this time he made plans to pursue
49-574: The eastern watershed of the White Nile and the hill regions surrounding the upper Blue Nile . In southern Sudan, he had a keen interest in the political and social aspects of the area, and made important historical and ethnographic observations concerning the various tribes he encountered. His detailed descriptions of the Sudanese-Ethiopian border region in the early 1880s constitute an extremely valuable and exciting new contribution to
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