The origin of the Fung is very controversial. Some attach them to the Shilluk, others bring them from Darfur or Abyssin. Be that as it may, the fung kingdom emerges in history in the early sixteenth century, two centuries after the fall of the Christian kingdoms of Nubia. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Fungs victoriously confronted their northern Arab and Ethiopian neighbors in the South. King Badi II builds a palace and a mosque in his capital, Sennar; after defeating Kordofan’s troops, he creates a permanent army. But, around 1660, the Shaigia revolt seriously weakened the fung state. Settled in a strategic region, the Shaigia constantly threaten the roads leading from Sennar to Dongola and Suakin. Never subjected, the Shaigia remained independent until the Ottoman conquest in 1821 and constitute for the Fung a permanent threat. This revolt orients the later course of history by forcing Sennar’s rulers to abandon the hard-to-reach Dongola region and turn their efforts towards Kordofan.

The relative peace of the kingdom until the middle of the eighteenth century is broken by the attack of the Christian Abyssinian in 1742, annihilated in 1744, and by that of the armies of Kordofan, a region finally annexed to the kingdom of Sennar.

The territorial heyday of the kingdom is, however, accompanied by a deep interior decadence in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The viziers exert real power, make and undo kings. Assassinations multiply; the central power is gradually reduced around the capital while the tribal leaders act autonomously. Thus, when the Turkish army of Isma’il Pasha attacked the Fung kingdom, victory returned to him without difficulty; on June 14, 1821, the Turks enter Sennar and annex the country to their empire.