Dār Fertit

Dār Fertit (also spelled Dar Fartit) is a historical term for the lowlands south of Darfur (Dar Fur) and east of the highlands in the east of the modern-day Central African Republic that contain tributaries of the White Nile River. This region included parts of southwestern Sudan and northwestern South Sudan. In the present era, Fertit is a catch-all word for non-Dinka, non-Arab, non-Luo, non-Fur groups of the state of Western Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan. Historically and down to the present, the region has been home to many ethnic groups and languages, some going back before 1800, others having migrated there since then. The name is a thus a misnomer because although dār means "homeland", there is in fact no "Fertit people". Nor has Dar Fertit ever been a polity. Until the 1840s it, along with the rest of modern day South Sudan, was unclaimed by any state, in particular the Muslim sultanates with slave-based economies that filled modern day southern Chad and the northern Central African Republic (among them Dar Fur, Dar Runga, Waddai, Dar al-Kuti, etc.). After that time, Egypt, then a domain of the Ottoman Empire, steadily expanded up the White Nile and then westwards, eventually annexing the region in 1873.