The area that is now Sudan witnessed the Khormusan (c. 40000โ16000 BC), Halfan culture (c. 20500โ17000 BC), Sebilian (c. 13000โ10000 BC),[citation needed] Qadan culture (c. 13000โ9000 BC), the war of Jebel Sahaba, the earliest known war in the world, around 11500 BC, A-Group culture (c. 3800โ3100 BC), Kingdom of Kerma (c. 2500โ1500 BC), the Egyptian New Kingdom (c. 1500โ1070 BC), and the Kingdom of Kush (c. 785 BC โ 350 AD).
After the fall of Kush, the Nubians formed the three Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia. Between the 14th and 15th centuries, most of Sudan was gradually settled by Arab nomads. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, central and eastern Sudan were dominated by the Funj sultanate, while Darfur ruled the west and the Ottomans the east.
From the 19th century, the entirety of Sudan was conquered by the Egyptians under the Muhammad Ali dynasty. Religious-nationalist fervour erupted in the Mahdist Uprising in which Mahdist forces were eventually defeated by a joint Egyptian-British military force. In 1899, under British pressure, Egypt agreed to share sovereignty over Sudan with the United Kingdom as a condominium.
In effect, Sudan was governed as a British possession. The Egyptian revolution of 1952 toppled the monarchy and demanded the withdrawal of British forces from all of Egypt and Sudan. Muhammad Naguib, one of the two co-leaders of the revolution and Egypt's first President, was half-Sudanese and had been raised in Sudan.
He made securing Sudanese independence a priority of the revolutionary government. On 1 January 1956, Sudan was declared an independent state.
After Sudan became independent, the Gaafar Nimeiry regime began Islamist rule. This exacerbated the rift between the Islamic North, the seat of the government, and the Animists and Christians in the South, who had already waged a civil war from 1955 to 1972. Persistent conflicts over language, religion, and political power erupted in a second civil war between government forces, influenced by the National Islamic Front (NIF), and the southern rebels, whose most influential faction was the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
This eventually led to the independence of South Sudan in 2011. Sudan was the largest country in Africa until the secession of South Sudan, following the referendum.
Between 1989 and 2019, a military dictatorship led by Omar al-Bashir ruled Sudan with the National Congress Party (NCP) and committed widespread human rights abuses, including torture, persecution of minorities, alleged sponsorship of global terrorism, and ethnic genocide in Darfur from 2003–2020. The regime killed an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people.
Protests erupted in 2018, demanding Bashir's resignation, which resulted in a coup d'รฉtat on 11 April 2019 and Bashir's imprisonment. Since 2023, Sudan has been embroiled in a third civil war, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Islam was Sudan's state religion and Sharia law was applied from 1983 until 2020, when the country became a secular state. Sudan is a least developed country and among the poorest countries in the world, ranking 170th on the Human Development Index as of 2024 and 185th by nominal GDP per capita. Its economy largely relies on agriculture due to international sanctions and isolation, as well as a history of internal instability and factional violence.
The large majority of Sudan is dry and over 60% of Sudan's population lives in poverty. Sudan is a member of the United Nations, Arab League, African Union, COMESA, Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Etymology
The country's name Sudan is a name given historically to the large Sahel region of West Africa to the immediate west of modern-day Sudan. Historically, Sudan referred to both the geographical region, stretching from Senegal on the Atlantic Coast to Northeast Africa and the modern Sudan.
The name derives from the Arabic bilฤd as-sลซdฤn (ุจูุงุฏ ุงูุณูุฏุงู), or "The Land of the Blacks". The name is one of various toponyms sharing similar etymologies, in reference to the very dark skin of the indigenous people. Prior to this, Sudan was known as Nubia and Ta Nehesi or Ta Seti by Ancient Egyptians named for the Nubian and Medjay archers or bowmen.
Since 2011, Sudan is also sometimes referred to as North Sudan to distinguish it from South Sudan.
History
Prehistoric Sudan (before c. 8000 BC)
Affad 23 is an archaeological site located in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in northern Sudan, which hosts "the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old".
By the eighth millennium BC, people of a Neolithic culture had settled into a sedentary way of life there in fortified mudbrick villages, where they supplemented hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding. Neolithic peoples created cemeteries such as R12. During the fifth millennium BC, migrations from the drying Sahara brought neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture.
The population that resulted from this cultural and genetic mixing developed a social hierarchy over the next centuries which became the Kingdom of Kerma at 2500 BC. Anthropological and archaeological research indicates that during the predynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were ethnically and culturally nearly identical, and thus, simultaneously evolved systems of pharaonic kingship by 3300 BC.
Kerma culture (2500โ1500 BC)
The Kerma culture was an early civilization centered in Kerma, Sudan. It flourished from around 2500 BC to 1500 BC in ancient Nubia. The Kerma culture was based in the southern part of Nubia, or "Upper Nubia" (in parts of present-day northern and central Sudan), and later extended its reach northward into Lower Nubia and the border of Egypt.
The polity seems to have been one of several Nile Valley states during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. In the Kingdom of Kerma's latest phase, lasting from about 1700โ1500 BC, it absorbed the Sudanese kingdom of Saรฏ and became a sizable, populous empire rivaling Egypt.
Egyptian Nubia (1504โ780 BC)
Mentuhotep II, the 21st century BC founder of the Middle Kingdom, is recorded to have undertaken campaigns against Kush in the 29th and 31st years of his reign. This is the earliest Egyptian reference to Kush; the Nubian region had gone by other names in the Old Kingdom. Under Thutmose I, Egypt made several campaigns south.
The Egyptians ruled Kush in the New kingdom beginning when the Egyptian King Thutmose I occupied Kush and destroyed its capital, Kerma.
This eventually resulted in their annexation of Nubia c. 1504 BC. Around 1500 BC, Nubia was absorbed into the New Kingdom of Egypt, but rebellions continued for centuries. After the conquest, Kerma culture was increasingly Egyptianized, yet rebellions continued for 220 years until c. 1300 BC.
Nubia nevertheless became a key province of the New Kingdom, economically, politically, and spiritually. Indeed, major pharaonic ceremonies were held at Jebel Barkal near Napata. As an Egyptian colony from the 16th century BC, Nubia ("Kush") was governed by an Egyptian Viceroy of Kush.
Resistance to the early eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian rule by neighboring Kush is evidenced in the writings of Ahmose, son of Ebana, an Egyptian warrior who served under Nebpehtrya Ahmose (1539โ1514 BC), Djeserkara Amenhotep I (1514โ1493 BC), and Aakheperkara Thutmose I (1493โ1481 BC). At the end of the Second Intermediate Period (mid-sixteenth century BC), Egypt faced the twin existential threatsโthe Hyksos in the North and the Kushites in the South.
Taken from the autobiographical inscriptions on the walls of his tomb-chapel, the Egyptians undertook campaigns to defeat Kush and conquer Nubia under the rule of Amenhotep I (1514โ1493 BC). In Ahmose's writings, the Kushites are described as archers, "Now after his Majesty had slain the Bedoin of Asia, he sailed upstream to Upper Nubia to destroy the Nubian bowmen." The tomb writings contain two other references to the Nubian bowmen of Kush. By 1200 BC, Egyptian involvement in the Dongola Reach was nonexistent.
Egypt's international prestige had declined considerably towards the end of the Third Intermediate Period. Its historical allies, the inhabitants of Canaan, had fallen to the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365โ1020 BC), and then the resurgent Neo-Assyrian Empire (935โ605 BC). The Assyrians, from the tenth century BC onwards, had once more expanded from northern Mesopotamia, and conquered a vast empire, including the whole of the Near East, and much of Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus and early Iron Age Iran.
According to Josephus Flavius, the biblical Moses led the Egyptian army in a siege of the Kushite city of Meroe. To end the siege Princess Tharbis was given to Moses as a (diplomatic) bride, and thus the Egyptian army retreated back to Egypt.
Kingdom of Kush (c. 780 BCโ350 AD)
The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian state centred on the confluences of the Blue Nile and White Nile, and the Atbarah River and the Nile River. It was established after the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt; it was centred at Napata in its early phase.
After King Kashta ("the Kushite") invaded Egypt in the eighth century BC, the Kushite kings ruled as pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt for nearly a century before being defeated and driven out by the Assyrians. At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan to the Sinai.
Pharaoh Piye attempted to expand the empire into the Near East but was thwarted by the Assyrian king Sargon II.
Between 800 BCE and 100 AD the Nubian pyramids were built, among them can be named El-Kurru, Kashta, Piye, Tantamani, Shabaka, Pyramids of Gebel Barkal, Pyramids of Meroe (Begarawiyah), the Sedeinga pyramids, and Pyramids of Nuri.
The Kingdom of Kush is mentioned in the Bible as having saved the Israelites from the wrath of the Assyrians, although disease among the besiegers might have been one of the reasons for the failure to take the city.[page needed] The war that took place between Pharaoh Taharqa and the Assyrian king Sennacherib was a decisive event in Western history, with the Nubians being defeated in their attempts to gain a foothold in the Near East by Assyria.
Sennacherib's successor Esarhaddon went further and invaded Egypt itself to secure his control of the Levant. This succeeded, as he managed to expel Taharqa from Lower Egypt. Taharqa fled back to Upper Egypt and Nubia, where he died two years later. Lower Egypt came under Assyrian vassalage but proved unruly, unsuccessfully rebelling against the Assyrians.
Then, the king Tantamani, a successor of Taharqa, made a final determined attempt to regain Lower Egypt from the newly reinstated Assyrian vassal Necho I. He managed to retake Memphis killing Necho in the process and besieged cities in the Nile Delta. Ashurbanipal, who had succeeded Esarhaddon, sent a large army in Egypt to regain control.
He routed Tantamani near Memphis and, pursuing him, sacked Thebes. Although the Assyrians immediately departed Upper Egypt after these events, weakened, Thebes peacefully submitted itself to Necho's son Psamtik I less than a decade later. While this brought an end to the expansive Nubian Empire, the state continued on a smaller scale, centered on Napata.
The city was raided by the Egyptian c. 590 BC, and sometime soon after to the late-3rd century BC, the Kushite resettled in Meroรซ.
Medieval Christian Nubian kingdoms (c. 350โ1500)
On the turn of the fifth century the Blemmyes established a short-lived state in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, probably centred around Talmis (Kalabsha), but before 450 they were already driven out of the Nile Valley by the Nobatians. The latter eventually founded a kingdom on their own, Nobatia. By the sixth century there were in total three Nubian kingdoms: Nobatia in the north, which had its capital at Pachoras (Faras); the central kingdom, Makuria centred at Tungul (Old Dongola), about 13 kilometres (8 miles) south of modern Dongola; and Alodia, in the heartland of the old Kushitic kingdom, which had its capital at Soba (now a suburb of modern-day Khartoum).
Still in the sixth century they converted to Christianity. In the seventh century, probably at some point between 628 and 642, Nobatia was incorporated into Makuria.
Between 639 and 641 the Muslim Arabs of the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Byzantine Egypt. In 641 or 642 and again in 652 they invaded Nubia but were repelled, making the Nubians one of the few who managed to defeat the Arabs during the Islamic expansion. According to much later Arab sources, the Makurian king Qalidurut and the Arabs subsequently agreed on a unique non-aggression pact that also included an annual exchange of gifts, acknowledging Makuria's independence.
While the Arabs failed to conquer Nubia they began to settle east of the Nile, where they eventually founded several port towns and intermarried with the local Beja.
From the mid-eighth to mid-eleventh century the political power and cultural development of Christian Nubia peaked. In 747 Makuria invaded Egypt, which at this time belonged to the declining Umayyads and it did so again in the early 960s, when it pushed as far north as Akhmim. Makuria maintained close dynastic ties with Alodia, perhaps resulting in temporary unifications of the two realms as one state or in personal unions.
The culture of the medieval Nubians has been described as "Afro-Byzantine", but was also increasingly influenced by Arab culture. The state organisation was extremely centralised, being based on the Byzantine bureaucracy of the sixth and seventh centuries. Arts flourished in the form of pottery paintings and especially wall paintings.
The Nubians developed an alphabet for their language, Old Nubian, basing it on the Coptic alphabet, while also using Greek, Coptic, and Arabic. Women enjoyed high social status: they had access to education, could own, buy and sell land and often used their wealth to endow churches and church paintings. Even the royal succession was often matrilineal, with the son of the king's sister being the rightful heir.
From the late 11th/12th century, Makuria's capital at Old Dongola was in decline, and Alodia's capital Soba declined in the 12th century as well. In the 14th and 15th centuries Bedouin tribes overran most of Sudan, migrating to the Butana, the Gezira, Kordofan and Darfur. In 1365 a civil war forced the Makurian court to flee to Gebel Adda in Lower Nubia, while Dongola was destroyed and left to the Arabs.
Afterwards Makuria continued to exist only as a petty kingdom. After the prosperous reign of king Joel (fl. 1463โ1484) Makuria collapsed. Coastal areas from southern Sudan up to the port city of Suakin was succeeded by the Adal Sultanate in the fifteenth century.
To the south, the kingdom of Alodia fell to either the Arabs, commanded by tribal leader Abdallah Jamma, or the Funj, an African people originating from the south. Datings range from the 9th century after the Hijra (c. 1396โ1494), the late 15th century, 1504 to 1509. An Alodian rump state might have survived in the form of the kingdom of Fazughli, lasting until 1685.
Islamic kingdoms of Sennar and Darfur (c. 1500โ1820)
In 1504 the Funj are recorded to have founded the Kingdom of Sennar, in which Abdallah Jamma's realm was incorporated. By 1523, when Jewish traveller David Reubeni visited Sudan, the Funj state already extended as far north as Dongola. Meanwhile, Islam began to be preached on the Nile by Sufi holy men who settled there in the 15th and 16th centuries and by David Reubeni's visit king Amara Dunqas, previously a Pagan or nominal Christian, was recorded to be Muslim.
However, the Funj would retain un-Islamic customs like the divine kingship or the consumption of alcohol until the 18th century. Sudanese folk Islam preserved many rituals stemming from Christian traditions until the recent past.
Soon the Funj came in conflict with the Ottomans, who had occupied Suakin c. 1526 and eventually pushed south along the Nile, reaching the third Nile cataract area in 1583/1584. A subsequent Ottoman attempt to capture Dongola was repelled by the Funj in 1585.
Afterwards, Hannik, located just south of the third cataract, would mark the border between the two states. The aftermath of the Ottoman invasion saw the attempted usurpation of Ajib, a minor king of northern Nubia. While the Funj eventually killed him in 1611/1612 his successors, the Abdallab, were granted to govern everything north of the confluence of Blue and White Niles with considerable autonomy.
During the 17th century the Funj state reached its widest extent, but in the following century it began to decline. A coup in 1718 brought a dynastic change, while another one in 1761โ1762 resulted in the Hamaj Regency, where the Hamaj (a people from the Ethiopian borderlands) effectively ruled while the Funj sultans were their mere puppets.
Shortly afterwards the sultanate began to fragment; by the early 19th century it was essentially restricted to the Gezira.
The coup of 1718 kicked off a policy of pursuing a more orthodox Islam, which in turn promoted the Arabisation of the state. To legitimise their rule over their Arab subjects the Funj began to propagate an Umayyad descent narrative. North of the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, as far downstream as Al Dabbah, the Nubians adopted the tribal identity of the Arab Jaalin.
Until the 19th century Arabic had succeeded in becoming the dominant language of central riverine Sudan and most of Kordofan.