A History of The Sudans

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Early Societies: Prehistory in the Nile Valley and Eastern Sudan
• Chapter 2 The Kingdom of Kush: An Ancient Power in Nubia
• Chapter 3 The Meroitic Kingdom and the Christianization of Nubia
• Chapter 4 Medieval Nubia: The Kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia
• Chapter 5 The Rise of Islamic Kingdoms: The Funj and Keira Sultanates
• Chapter 6 The Peoples of Southern Sudan Before the 19th Century
• Chapter 7 Turco-Egyptian Conquest and the Era of the Merchant Princes
• Chapter 8 The Mahdist State: Rebellion and the Rise of a Theocracy
• Chapter 9 The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium: The Establishment of Colonial Rule
• Chapter 10 The Southern Policy and the Divergent Paths of North and South
• Chapter 11 The Road to Independence and the First Sudanese Civil War
• Chapter 12 The Nimeiry Era: From Socialism to Sharia Law
• Chapter 13 The Second Sudanese Civil War and the Rise of the SPLA
• Chapter 14 The Omar al-Bashir Regime and the War in Darfur
• Chapter 15 The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Promise of a New Beginning
• Chapter 16 The 2011 Referendum and the Birth of the Republic of South Sudan
• Chapter 17 Post-Independence Conflicts: The Heglig Crisis and Border Disputes
• Chapter 18 The South Sudanese Civil War: A Nation Divided
• Chapter 19 The Fall of al-Bashir: Revolution and Transition in Sudan
• Chapter 20 Tribal Conflict and Internal Strife in South Sudan
• Chapter 21 The 2021 Military Coup in Sudan
• Chapter 22 The War in Sudan: The Armed Forces versus the Rapid Support Forces
• Chapter 23 International Relations and Regional Interventions
• Chapter 24 Economic Challenges and the Politics of Oil
• Chapter 25 Contemporary Society and the Future of the Two Sudans
• Appendix Timeline of the Sudans: Early Societies, States, and Independence

The Nile is a river of two parts. From the highlands of Ethiopia, the Blue Nile tumbles down, heavy with the rich silt that for millennia fed the civilizations of Egypt. From the great lakes of Central Africa, the White Nile flows more languidly, pushing its way through one of the world's largest wetlands, a vast, seemingly impenetrable marshland known as the Sudd. They meet at Khartoum, the capital of modern Sudan, their distinct waters flowing side-by-side for a time before finally merging into the single, mighty river that journeys north through the deserts of Nubia and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.

This confluence of two rivers is a fitting metaphor for the history of the lands through which they flow. The story of the Sudans is a story of union and division, of distinct cultures flowing in parallel before clashing or merging, of a history that is at once shared and sharply divergent. For centuries, the territory that now comprises two independent nations—the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan—was regarded, at least by outsiders, as a single entity. The name itself, derived from the Arabic bilād as-sūdān, or "Land of the Blacks," was a broad, often vague term applied by northern travelers to the vast African territories south of the Sahara. Yet this single name has always masked a profound diversity of peoples, languages, religions, and ways of life.

This book tells the history of that complex region. It is a chronicle that stretches from the Stone Age hunters of the Dongola Reach to the 21st-century civil wars that have captured the world's attention. It is the story of ancient pharaohs from Nubia who conquered Egypt, of medieval Christian kingdoms that held out against the tide of Islam for centuries, and of powerful sultanates that controlled the trade routes of the savanna. It is also the story of peoples in the south, shielded by geography, whose societies developed largely outside the orbit of these northern states, their histories passed down not in texts but through oral tradition.

Our journey begins in prehistory, in a time when the Sahara was not a desert but a green, fertile savanna. We will explore the rise of the first complex societies along the Nile Valley, culminating in the magnificent Kingdom of Kush. This Nubian power was a contemporary, a rival, and for one glorious century, the ruler of ancient Egypt. The pharaohs of Kush's 25th Dynasty, the so-called "Black Pharaohs," ruled an empire stretching from the upper reaches of the Nile to the borders of the Near East, where their armies contended with the might of Assyria, a testament to the region's ancient importance as a center of power and civilization. We will follow the Kushite kingdom as it moved its capital south to Meroë, developing a unique culture and its own script. Although scholars have long been able to read the script's sounds aloud, the Meroitic language it records is still only partly understood, a silent challenge from a sophisticated past.

With the decline of Meroë, the narrative shifts to the arrival of a new faith. The Christianization of Nubia in the sixth century gave rise to three medieval kingdoms—Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia—whose art, architecture, and faith flourished for nearly a thousand years. These kingdoms formed a Christian bulwark on the southern frontier of the Islamic world, holding off Arab armies through a unique treaty known as the baqt and developing a vibrant Afro-Byzantine culture. Their eventual collapse between the 14th and early 16th centuries paved the way for the next great transformation: the Islamization and Arabization of the northern Sudan.

Two powerful new states emerged to fill the vacuum: the Funj Sultanate of Sennar in the east and the Keira Sultanate of Darfur in the west. These Islamic kingdoms dominated the region for centuries, controlling trade, practicing a syncretic form of Islam that blended with older African traditions, and presiding over societies where identity became increasingly fluid. It was during this period that many of the Nubian and other indigenous peoples of the north adopted an Arab identity and the Arabic language, a process of cultural change that would profoundly shape the future political landscape.

While these great kingdoms rose and fell in the north, the peoples of the south—the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Azande, and many others—followed different historical trajectories. Their world was not one of centralized sultanates but of kinship-based societies, their economies centered on cattle, agriculture, and fishing. Protected by the formidable barrier of the Sudd, they had limited contact with the north. The Shilluk, however, established a powerful centralized kingdom along the White Nile, while the Azande built a network of powerful kingdoms across the wooded savannas of the southwest. Chapter Six will delve into the rich and diverse history of these southern societies before the disruptive changes of the 19th century.

That disruption came in the 1820s, with the Turco-Egyptian conquest. Muhammad Ali Pasha, the ambitious Ottoman governor of Egypt, invaded Sudan seeking gold, slaves, and soldiers for his modernizing army. His conquest unified the northern regions under a single, brutal administration for the first time and pushed southward, opening the previously isolated south to the outside world. This era brought not only a colonial government but also a wave of European and Arab traders, most notoriously those dealing in ivory and human beings. The slave trade reached a devastating scale, depopulating vast areas and creating a legacy of bitterness and mistrust between north and south that endures to this day.

The rapacity of the Turco-Egyptian regime and its European officials provoked a fierce backlash. In 1881, a religious scholar named Muhammad Ahmad proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the "guided one," and declared a jihad against the foreign occupiers. His movement, a powerful fusion of religious fervor and nationalist resentment, swept across the Sudan, culminating in the dramatic capture of Khartoum in 1885. The Mahdist State he founded was a short-lived but pivotal chapter in Sudanese history, an independent theocracy that fiercely resisted foreign domination before it was finally crushed by a technologically superior Anglo-Egyptian army at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

The fall of the Mahdist State ushered in a new era of foreign rule: the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. In theory, Britain and Egypt governed the Sudan jointly; in practice, the British were firmly in charge. The colonial administration pacified the country, built railways and telegraph lines, and established the vast Gezira Scheme, a massive cotton plantation that became the backbone of the northern economy. Yet the British also deepened the chasm between north and south. Through a policy known as the "Southern Policy," they administered the two regions as separate entities, restricting the movement of northern Sudanese to the south, limiting the spread of Islam, and encouraging the work of Christian missionaries and the use of the English language.

This administrative division, intended to protect the unique cultures of the south from northern domination, was abruptly reversed in 1946. As independence loomed, the British, without consulting southern leaders, decided to unite the two territories under a single government to be based in Khartoum. Southern representatives were brought to the Juba Conference of 1947 only after the decision had been made, and historians still debate how much weight their voices carried. Southerners, trained in English and largely non-Muslim, suddenly found themselves slated to be part of a state dominated by Arabic-speaking Muslims from the north. The seeds of future conflict were sown.

Independence, when it came in 1956, was not a moment of universal celebration. A mutiny by southern soldiers at Torit in 1955, just months before the British departed, is generally taken as the beginning of the First Sudanese Civil War, though sustained insurgency took hold only in the early 1960s with the rise of the Anyanya movement. For seventeen years, southern rebels fought a guerrilla war against the central government in Khartoum, which they accused of reneging on promises of a federal system and pursuing policies of Arabization and Islamization. A peace agreement in 1972 brought a decade of uneasy autonomy for the south, but the underlying issues remained unresolved.

The peace unraveled in 1983. President Gaafar Nimeiry had been steadily dismantling southern autonomy, and in June of that year he divided the Southern Region into three. Southern troops had already mutinied at Bor in May, and the newly founded SPLA/M took up arms that summer. Then, in September, in a dramatic political pivot, Nimeiry imposed Islamic Sharia law across the entire country. These moves, together with disputes over newly discovered oil in the south, drove the country fully into the Second Sudanese Civil War. This conflict was longer, more brutal, and more complex than the first. It was led by the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), a new rebel force with the ambitious goal of creating a "New Sudan" that was secular and democratic for all its citizens. The war lasted for twenty-two years, claimed an estimated two million lives, and displaced more than four million people.

During this same period, the regime of Omar al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup, became embroiled in another devastating conflict in the western region of Darfur. The war in Darfur, which began in 2003, pitted the government and its allied Janjaweed militias against rebel groups, leading to accusations of genocide and the issuance of an arrest warrant for President al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court.

The long and tortuous road to peace between north and south culminated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005. This landmark accord ended the civil war and, crucially, granted the south the right to a referendum on independence after a six-year interim period. In January 2011, the people of southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede. On July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan was born, becoming the world's newest nation.

Independence, however, did not bring an end to conflict. The two Sudans have been locked in disputes over borders and the sharing of oil revenues. More tragically, South Sudan, the nation born from a long struggle for freedom, collapsed into its own devastating civil war in 2013, a conflict driven by a power struggle between its leaders that quickly took on ethnic dimensions. In the north, the 2019 Sudanese Revolution saw the dramatic overthrow of Omar al-Bashir after thirty years in power, raising hopes for a democratic transition. But these hopes were challenged by a military coup in 2021 and shattered by the outbreak of a new, catastrophic war in 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

This book aims to navigate this long and often turbulent history in a clear and engaging manner. It seeks to present the facts plainly, without sermonizing, and to provide a neutral perspective on the controversial political and religious issues that have defined the region. From the grandeur of ancient Kush to the painful birth of South Sudan and the ongoing crises of the present day, the history of the Sudans is a powerful, complex, and deeply human story. It is a story of great civilizations and enduring peoples, of profound faith and bitter conflict, all shaped by the currents of the two Niles that give the land its life.

To begin a history of the Sudans is to peer into a past so deep it is measured not in centuries or millennia, but in the slow, geologic time of changing climates and evolving species. Long before any kingdom rose or any border was drawn, the land was a stage for the earliest chapters of the human story. The stage itself was dramatically different. The vast desert we now call the Sahara was, for long periods, a verdant landscape of savanna and grassland, laced with rivers and dotted with lakes. This was the world of the "Green Sahara," a wetter, more hospitable environment that pulsed with life, its climatic rhythm dictated by subtle shifts in the Earth's orbit. It was across this ancient, fertile territory that the first inhabitants of the region moved, their lives intertwined with the ebb and flow of this immense natural system.

The story of humanity itself is an African story, and the lands of the Nile Valley were a crucial corridor in that story. Archaeological evidence suggests a continuous human presence in the region for hundreds of thousands of years, and possibly much longer. In the Bayuda Desert, between two great bends of the Nile, researchers have found some of the oldest known stone tool technologies, pushing the timeline of human activity in this specific area back nearly two million years. These earliest inhabitants were not modern humans, but our distant ancestors, species such as Homo erectus. They left behind a trail of stone implements that whisper of their existence, a testament to their ingenuity and resilience in a world teeming with challenges.

The most characteristic artifacts from this immense stretch of time, the Lower Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, are known as Acheulean tools. Named after a site in France but found across Africa, Europe, and Asia, these implements represent a major technological leap. The most common and recognizable is the hand axe, a teardrop-shaped stone, bifacially worked—meaning it was flaked on both sides to produce a sharp, durable edge. Found at sites like Khor Abu Anga near modern Khartoum and scattered throughout the Nile Valley and the deserts, these hand axes were the Swiss Army knives of their day. They were multi-purpose tools, used for butchering animals, digging for roots, cutting wood, and scraping hides.

Making an Acheulean hand axe required foresight, skill, and an understanding of the properties of stone. It was a cognitive step beyond the simpler, earlier stone choppers. For over a million years, this technology remained remarkably stable, a successful adaptation passed down through countless generations of early hominins. These ancient toolmakers were not just surviving; they were establishing a long-term presence, adapting to their environment and laying the very first foundations of culture in the Sudanese Nile Valley. Their world was one of hunter-gatherers, living in small, mobile groups, their movements dictated by the seasons and the migration of the large animals they hunted.

As millennia passed, both the people and their tools evolved. The period known as the Middle Paleolithic, or Middle Stone Age, saw the emergence of Homo sapiens—anatomically modern humans. The only early human fossil of significance found in the region is the Singa skull, discovered on the Blue Nile and dated to around 130,000 years ago, representing an early member of our own species. With new people came new ideas. Stone tool technology became more refined and efficient. Instead of shaping a whole core into a single tool like a hand axe, Middle Stone Age people developed techniques to produce multiple, specialized flakes from a prepared core.

This innovation, known as the Levallois technique, was a game-changer. It allowed for the production of more standardized and diverse tools, such as points that could be hafted onto spears, and scrapers for working with hides. This more sophisticated toolkit suggests more complex hunting strategies and a greater ability to adapt to different environments. Sites from this period are found across Sudan, from the stratified sediments of Al Jamrab in central Sudan to newly discovered sites in the Eastern Desert, indicating that these early modern humans were successfully exploiting a wide range of landscapes.

The Late Stone Age brought further refinements, with a trend toward smaller, more specialized stone tools known as microliths. These tiny, sharp blades of stone could be set into wood or bone handles to create composite tools like barbed arrows or sickles for harvesting wild grasses. This technology reflects a growing efficiency in exploiting the environment. It was during this period, particularly in a phase known as the Qadan culture from about 15,000 to 9,000 BCE, that some of the first signs of a shift toward a new way of life began to appear. Archaeologists in Lower Nubia have found evidence of intensive fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild grains, accompanied by the use of grinding stones.

These late hunter-gatherers lived in a world of profound environmental change. The last Ice Age was ending, and the climate was becoming warmer and wetter. This period, known as the African Humid Period, began around 12,000 BCE and dramatically transformed the Sahara. What had been arid desert became a vast savanna, teeming with elephants, giraffes, and other large game. Lakes reappeared, and rivers flowed where sand now dunes now stand. For the people living along the Sudanese Nile, this was a time of unprecedented abundance. The river, the savanna, and the wetlands provided a rich and diverse larder.

This abundance allowed for a revolutionary change in human society: the shift from a purely nomadic existence to a more settled, or sedentary, way of life. Around 9000 BCE, a vibrant new culture emerged in the central Sudan, known to archaeologists as the Khartoum Mesolithic. People began to establish long-term settlements, particularly along the banks of the Nile, which was then much higher and wider than it is today. One of the most famous sites was discovered, by chance, during construction work at Khartoum Hospital. Here, and at similar sites, archaeologists found the remains of a society that was expertly exploiting the riverine environment.

The most striking innovation of the Khartoum Mesolithic people was pottery. The ceramics they produced are among the oldest in the world, a remarkable, independent invention. The most distinctive style is known as "Wavy Line" pottery, decorated with incised, undulating lines that perhaps mimicked the ripples of the river that was so central to their lives. This was followed by a related style called "Dotted Wavy Line." The invention of pottery was a profound technological advance. For the first time, people had durable, fireproof containers for cooking, which allowed them to process a wider range of foods—like fish or grains—into more digestible and nutritious meals, such as stews and porridges.

The diet of these Mesolithic peoples was rich and varied. Enormous mounds of fish bones and snail shells found at their settlements attest to the importance of aquatic resources. They fashioned bone harpoons for fishing and used stone tools interpreted as net sinkers, suggesting they were catching fish on a large scale. But they didn't rely on the river alone. The remains of hippos, crocodiles, elephants, and various types of antelope show they were also skilled hunters of the large animals that populated the surrounding savanna. Furthermore, they were harvesting and processing wild plants, especially sorghum, using stone grinders to make flour.

This new, semi-sedentary lifestyle also brought changes in how people treated their dead. For the first time in the region, organized cemeteries appear. Instead of burying individuals in isolated graves, communities began to designate specific areas for their deceased. These early burial grounds, found near settlements from central Sudan to Lower Nubia, suggest a deeper connection to a specific territory and perhaps a growing complexity in their spiritual beliefs and social structure. They were no longer just passing through the landscape; they were putting down roots.

The success of the Mesolithic lifestyle set the stage for the next great transformation: the Neolithic Revolution. This was the global shift from hunting and gathering to producing food through farming and herding. In the Sudanese Nile Valley, this transition was not a sudden event but a gradual process that began around the 6th millennium BCE, as the climate started to become drier again. Migrations of people from the desiccating Sahara into the still-fertile Nile corridor brought new ideas and technologies, including the practice of agriculture.

One of the most significant developments of the Neolithic period in this part of Africa was the domestication of cattle. Pastoralism—a way of life centered on herding livestock—became a cornerstone of many Sudanese societies, a cultural trait that remains profoundly important to this day. While the exact origins of cattle domestication are still debated by scholars, the grasslands of the eastern Sahara and the adjacent Nile Valley were clearly one of the key arenas for this process. Cattle were not just a source of food; they were a form of wealth, a social status symbol, and a central element in the spiritual life of the community.

Alongside herding, agriculture began to take hold. The people of the Neolithic period began to cultivate the wild grains they had been gathering for centuries, particularly sorghum, which was domesticated in this region of Africa. This shift toward deliberate food production allowed for larger, more permanent settlements. People built more substantial dwellings, such as the fortified mud-brick villages that have been found in some areas. Life was becoming more organized, more complex, and more tied to the annual rhythms of planting, harvesting, and moving herds to pasture.

These changes are reflected in the archaeological record. Pottery became more refined and varied in shape and decoration. Polished stone axes for clearing land, adzes for woodworking, and a greater variety of personal ornaments like beads and bracelets appear. Graves from this period often contain more elaborate goods than before, suggesting the beginnings of social differentiation—the idea that some individuals or families held a higher status or possessed greater wealth than others. Society was becoming more hierarchical.

This increasing social complexity is most evident in the cultures that emerged in Nubia, the stretch of the Nile Valley between modern-day Aswan in Egypt and the region south of Khartoum. Around 3800 BCE, a powerful and sophisticated culture known as the A-Group arose in Lower Nubia. The A-Group people were contemporaries of the Predynastic cultures of Upper Egypt, and the two societies engaged in extensive trade and cultural exchange. Egyptian pottery, cosmetic palettes, and other goods have been found in A-Group tombs, while Nubian products like gold, ivory, and ebony flowed north.

The A-Group were not just a loose collection of villages; they appear to have been organized into a powerful chiefdom, or perhaps even an early kingdom. Their leaders were buried in lavish tombs, most spectacularly at the cemetery of Qustul. Here, rulers were interred with a wealth of grave goods, including finely crafted pottery, jewelry, and imported Egyptian luxury items. The scale of these tombs, and the richness of their contents, points to a society with a clear and powerful elite, capable of commanding significant resources and labor.

One of the most fascinating and debated artifacts from Qustul is a carved stone incense burner. It is decorated with images that are strikingly similar to the royal iconography of early Egypt: a king-like figure wearing a tall crown, seated in a boat, with a falcon deity hovering above. Some scholars have argued that these images predate similar royal symbols in Egypt, suggesting that the concept of pharaonic kingship may have originated in Nubia. While this remains a minority view, the Qustul incense burner is a powerful testament to the sophistication and political development of the A-Group.

The rise of a unified Egyptian state under the First Dynasty around 3100 BCE seems to have had a devastating impact on the A-Group. Egyptian pharaohs launched military campaigns into Lower Nubia, and for several centuries, the archaeological record of a distinct local population almost disappears. It is unclear if the A-Group people were driven out, assimilated, or simply became impoverished, but their vibrant culture came to an end, seemingly crushed by the expansionist ambitions of their northern neighbor.

After this hiatus, a new culture, known as the C-Group, appeared in Lower Nubia around 2400 BCE. They were primarily a pastoral people, and their graves are distinctively marked by stone circles, beneath which the deceased were buried. Their pottery is also unique, often black-topped with incised geometric patterns filled with white pigment. For much of their history, the C-Group coexisted with the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom, who built a series of massive mud-brick fortresses along the Nile in Lower Nubia to control trade routes and protect their southern frontier.

While the C-Group flourished in Lower Nubia, a far more powerful indigenous state was beginning to coalesce further south, in the fertile Dongola Reach of Upper Nubia. This was the Kerma culture, which would eventually give rise to the great Kingdom of Kush, the subject of our next chapter. The origins of Kerma can be an traced back to at least 2500 BCE. Early settlements and cemeteries show a culture that was growing in wealth and power, based on a combination of agriculture and pastoralism, and profiting from its strategic position on the trade routes connecting central Africa with Egypt.

Away from the Nile Valley, in the grasslands and semi-deserts of eastern Sudan, other societies were following their own distinct paths of development. Around 4000 BCE, the Butana Group emerged. These people lived in round huts and were likely herdsmen and hunters who also cultivated sorghum, representing one of the earliest sites for the domestication of this crucial crop. They were succeeded around 3000 BCE by the Gash Group, who practiced farming and cattle breeding and established large settlements like Mahal Teglinos. The presence of seals and seal impressions at this site points to a level of administrative organization, suggesting it was a hub for regional trade, perhaps connecting the Nile Valley with the Red Sea coast and the Horn of Africa.

By the end of this long prehistoric period, the land of the Sudans was far from an empty quarter. It was a mosaic of diverse cultures, each with its own economy, social structure, and artistic traditions. Along the Nile, the foundations for urbanism and statehood had been laid, first by the A-Group and now, more enduringly, by the nascent power of Kerma. In the east, organized societies controlled important trade networks. And across the savannas, pastoralist groups had developed a way of life deeply attuned to the rhythms of the environment. The stage was now set for the rise of the region's first great indigenous empire, a Nubian power that would challenge the might of Egypt and forge a civilization of its own.