Sudanالسودان

The middle Nile was the land of Kush. The kingdom of Kerma, from about 2500 BCE, was a rich African state that traded and fought with Egypt. After centuries of Egyptian occupation, Kushite kings based at Napata, below the holy mountain of Jebel Barkal, conquered Egypt around 750 BCE and ruled it as the 25th Dynasty. Pushed back south, the kingdom moved its centre to Meroë, where it built hundreds of steep pyramids, worked iron and developed its own script, Meroitic, still only partly understood.

From the sixth century three Christian Nubian kingdoms — Nobadia, Makuria and Alodia — held the Nile valley, and a treaty with Muslim Egypt, the baqt, kept the peace for about 600 years. Arab migration, trade and intermarriage gradually spread Islam. The Funj Sultanate of Sennar (from 1504) and the Fur Sultanate of Darfur became Muslim states with Sufi scholars at their centre.

Egypt's Muhammad Ali conquered the north in 1821, founded Khartoum and ran a slave-raiding economy. In 1881 Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi and led a revolt that took Khartoum in 1885, killing the British general Charles Gordon. The Mahdist state lasted until Kitchener's army destroyed it at Karari near Omdurman in 1898. Britain and Egypt then ruled the 'Anglo-Egyptian Sudan' as a condominium, governing the Muslim north and the largely Christian and animist south separately.

Independence in 1956 began with war between the government and southern rebels, which lasted with a pause until 2005 and ended with South Sudan's independence in 2011. Military coups alternated with brief democracy; Omar al-Bashir ruled from 1989 with Islamist allies, hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and led the counter-insurgency in Darfur from 2003 that brought an ICC arrest warrant for genocide. Mass protests ousted him in April 2019. A civilian-military transition was cut short by a coup in October 2021, and on 15 April 2023 the army and the Rapid Support Forces — a paramilitary grown out of the Darfur Janjaweed militias — turned on each other in Khartoum, starting the current war.

Sudan is one of Africa's most diverse countries. Arabic-speaking groups such as the Ja'aliyin and Shaygiyya along the northern Nile have dominated the state since independence; Nubians of the far north speak Nobiin and related languages; the Beja of the Red Sea hills speak Bedawiyet; Darfur is home to the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa as well as Arab cattle- and camel-herding tribes; the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan hold dozens of peoples and languages.

Almost all Sudanese are Sunni Muslims, and Sufi orders — the Khatmiyya, the Qadiriyya, the Sammaniyya — have shaped politics and daily faith. The Friday dhikr at the tomb of Hamed al-Nil in Omdurman, with drumming and whirling dervishes in green and red, became famous with visitors before the war. Small Coptic, Catholic and other Christian communities live in the cities and the Nuba Mountains.

Identity has been contested: governments promoted an Arab-Islamic definition of the nation, while people in Darfur, Kordofan, the east and the south fought against marginalisation. The 2019 revolution, led by professionals, neighbourhood resistance committees and young women, briefly offered a different, inclusive idea of Sudan.

The White Nile, flowing from the East African lakes, and the Blue Nile, from Ethiopia's Lake Tana, meet at Khartoum; north of the city the river loops through the Nubian desert past a series of cataracts. The Gezira, the plain between the two Niles, was turned into one of the world's largest irrigation schemes under British rule to grow cotton, and still feeds much of the country when war allows.

The north is hyper-arid Sahara with almost no rain; the centre is semi-desert and savanna with a short summer rainy season from June to September; the south of Darfur and Kordofan is wetter savanna. Jebel Marra, a volcanic massif in Darfur, rises to over 3,000 m. The Red Sea coast around Port Sudan and Suakin has coral reefs, including the Sanganeb atoll, a UNESCO site.

Temperatures in Khartoum often pass 40 °C from April to June, and haboobs, walls of dust driven by storm winds, sweep the city in the early rains. Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam upstream on the Blue Nile changes flood timing for Sudan's dams and farms.

Sudanese food is simple and shared. Ful medames, fava beans with oil, cheese and bread, is breakfast almost everywhere; kisra, a thin fermented sorghum crepe, is eaten with mulah stews such as okra (weka) or spinach; aseeda is a stiff porridge. Meat is grilled as shaiya or cooked in tagalia. The tea lady (sitt al-shai), serving spiced tea and coffee on the pavement, was an institution of Khartoum life and a symbol of women's work in the revolution.

Hospitality is a point of honour, with coffee (jebena) brewed with ginger and cloves and served in small cups. Weddings last days and include the jirtig ceremony, with red and gold, sandalwood and henna; women's perfume smoke baths (dukhan) and the tobe, a long wrapped cloth, are part of daily dress.

Music ranges from the haqeeba songs of the 1920s and the big-band style of Mohammed Wardi to the Nubian oud; poetry and song carried the protest movement in 2019. Writers such as Tayeb Salih gave Sudan a place in world literature. The war has scattered artists, writers and musicians across Cairo, Kampala and the Gulf.