The rulers of Cush, which fell c.­ 350, may have established a dynasty in Darfur. Christian kingdoms emerged in the period between 900 and 1200, but they were destroyed by Muslim incursions from Kanem in the mid-13th cent. Fur, a major kingdom probably founded in the 15th cent., pushed aside the Kanem rulers in the 17th cent. Fur was conquered by the Egyptians in 1874 and by the Mahdists (see Mahdi) of Sudan in 1883. With the fall of the Mahdist state in 1898, Darfur became a semiautonomous sultanate under Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty. The sultan attempted to expel the foreign colonizers during World War I, but his forces were defeated by the British in 1916, and Darfur was incorporated into Sudan.

Since 2003 the region has been scene of fighting between government forces and their allied Arab militias and non-Arab rebels linked to an opposition party. An estimated 50,000 persons have died in the fighting, and another 150,000 have died from disease, hunger, and other causes. Some 2 million people have been made refugees.