Berti speakers migrated into the region with other Nilo-Saharan speakers, such as the Masalit and Daju, who were agriculturalists practicing varying degrees of animal husbandry.
The term Daju was a linguistic designation that was applied to a number of groups scattered from western Kurdufan and southwestern Darfur states to eastern Chad.
Nyala (Daju: "the place of chatting or a theatre") is the capital of South Darfur state in the south-west of Sudan.
Daju |
In his judgement, the Eastern Daju languages separated from the others perhaps as much as 2000 years ago, while the Western Daju languages were spread more recently, perhaps by the Daju state which dominated Darfur from about 1200 AD until scattered after the death of Kasi Furogé, the Daju king, and replaced by the Tunjur.
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The Daju languages are spoken in isolated pockets by the Daju people across a wide area of Sudan and Chad, in parts of the regions of Kordofan, Darfur, and Wadai.
The Dar Daju Daju are an ethnic group numbering 34,000 people in the Guéra Region of southwestern Chad.