SUDAN, THE

officially Republic of The Sudan, Arabic As-Sudan, or Jumhuriyat As-Sudan, country located in northeastern Africa. It is bounded on the north by Egypt; on the east by the Red Sea and Ethiopia; on the south by Kenya, Uganda, and Zaire; on the west by the Central African Republic and Chad; and on the northwest by Libya. The largest African country, The Sudan has an area of 966,757 square miles (2,503,890 square kilometres), which represents more than 8 percent of the African continent and almost 2 percent of the world's total land area. Khartoum, the national capital, is located in the northern half of the country at the junction of the Blue and White Nile rivers. The name Sudan derives from the Arabic expression bilad as-Sudan (land of the blacks), by which medieval Arab geographers referred to the settled African countries that began at the southern edge of the Sahara. Mohy el Din Sabr Jay L. Spaulding Since ancient times the Sudan has been an arena for interaction between the cultural traditions of Africa and those of the Mediterranean world. In recent centuries Islam and the Arabic language have achieved ascendancy in many northern parts of the country, while older African languages and cultures predominate in the south. Large parts of the country continue to rely on an agricultural and pastoral subsistence economy, but commercial agriculturetogether with more limited mining and industrial developmentplays a central role in the northern districts and in the national economy as a whole. The country has had numerous changes in government since independence in 1956. Successive regimes found it difficult to win general acceptance from the country's diverse political constituencies, a situation symbolized by the lack of a formal constitution until 1973. An early conflict arose between those northern leaders who hoped to impose unity upon the nation through the vigorous extension of Islamic law and culture to all parts of the country and those who opposed this policy; the latter included the majority of southerners and those northerners who favoured a secular government. From independence until 1972 there prevailed a costly and divisive civil war, fought largely in the south but punctuated by violent incidents in the capital. The Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 ended the conflict only temporarily, and in 1983 the civil war resumed. By this time the comparative lack of economic development in the south had become a new source of regional grievance, and northern leaders' continuing attempts to Islamize the Sudanese legal system proved an even more potent source of discord. The failure in the 1970s of an array of costly development projects in commercial agriculture left the national economy stagnant and debt-ridden. As a result, many Sudanese began to experience a signficant decline in living standards in the late 1970s that has continued to the present. Jay L. Spaulding Ethnic structure Ethnic composition of The Sudan. One of the most striking characteristics of The Sudan is the diversity of its people. The Sudanese are divided among 19 major ethnic groups and about 597 subgroups and speak more than 100 languages and dialects. Muslim peoples A major cleavage exists between the northern and the southern parts of the country. The north is dominated by Muslims, most of whom speak Arabic and identify themselves as Arabs, while the people of the south are Africans (i.e., blacks) who for the most part follow traditional African religions, though there are also some Christians among them. Those who identify themselves as Arabs were estimated at 39 percent of the total population in 1956. The largest non-Arab ethnic group is that of the Dinka, who constituted 12 percent of the population, followed by the Beja at 7 percent. (These figures are estimates, since the only census that recorded ethnicity was taken in 1956.) Moreover, ethnic identity may not actually coincide with a particular racial character. Those Sudanese who consider themselves Arabs are, for the most part, racially mixed, and many of them are indistinguishable from black southerners. Despite a common language and religion, the Arabs do not constitute a cohesive group: they are highly differentiated in their mode of livelihood and comprise city dwellers, village farmers, and pastoral nomads. The Arabs have historically been divided into tribes based on presumed descent from a common ancestor. The tribal system has largely disintegrated in urban areas and settled villages, however, and retains its strength only among the nomads of the plains who raise cattle, sheep, and camels. Each Arab tribe or cluster of tribes is in turn assigned to a larger tribal grouping, of which the two largest are the Jalayin and the Juhaynah. The Jalayin encompasses the sedentary agriculturalists along the middle Nile from Dunqulah south to Khartoum and includes such tribes as the Jalayin tribe proper, the Shayqiyah, and the Rubtab. The Juhaynah, by contrast, traditionally consisted of nomadic tribes, although some of them have now become settled. Among the major tribes in the Juhaynah grouping are the Shukriyah, the Kababish, and the Baqqarah. All three of these tribes are camel- or cattle-herders of the semiarid plains of the western and northeastern Sudan. Besides Arabs, there are several Muslim but non-Arab groups in the north. The most notable of these are the Nubians, who live along the Nile in the far north and in southern Egypt. Most Nubians speak Arabic as a second language. The same applies to the Beja, who inhabit the Red Sea Hills. Although they adopted Islam, these pastoral nomads have retained their Bedawiye language, which belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Another non-Arabized Muslim people is the Fur; these sedentary agriculturalists live in or near the Marra Mountains in the far west. North of the Fur are the Zaghawa, who are scattered in the border region between The Sudan and Chad. officially Republic of the Sudan, Arabic As-Sudan, or Jumhuriyat As-Sudan, Africa's largest country, located in northeast Africa. The Sudan is about 1,270 miles (2,040 km) long from north to south and is about 980 miles (1,577 km) at its widest from west to east. It is bordered to the north by Egypt; to the northeast by the Red Sea; to the east by Ethiopia; to the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa), Uganda, and Kenya; to the west by Chad and the Central African Republic; and to the northwest by Libya. The capital is Khartoum. Area 966,757 square miles (2,503,890 square km). Pop. (1993) 24,940,683; (1997 est.) 32,594,000. Additional reading General works Harold D. Nelson (ed.), Sudan, a Country Study, 3rd ed. (1983); and John Obert Voll and Sarah Potts Voll, The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State (1985), provide basic information on the land, people, economy, and history. John Mack and Peter Robertshaw, Culture History in the Southern Sudan (1982), is a collection of articles on history, archaeology, language, and culture. Further sources on all aspects of the country may be found in M.W. Daly (comp.), Sudan (1983), an annotated bibliography. Physical and human geography A standard text on the physical and human geography of The Sudan is K.M. Barbour, The Republic of the Sudan: A Regional Geography (1961). A.J. Whiteman, The Geology of the Sudan Republic (1971), is a comprehensive and systematic account of The Sudan's geology. Studies of the people of Sudan include Abd-al (abdel) Ghaffar Muhammad Ahmad, Shaykhs and Followers: Political Struggle in the Rufa'a al-Hoi Nazirate in the Sudan (1974), an excellent analysis of the political and social structure of this nomadic community in the southern Funj region; Francis Mading Deng, Africans of Two Worlds: The Dinka in Afro-Arab Sudan (1978), a historical and social study of the Dinka people in the southern Sudan; Mark R. Duffield, Maiurno: Capitalism & Rural Life in Sudan (1981), a pioneering study of a West African migrant community on the Blue Nile; Wendy James, 'Kwanim Pa: The Making of the Uduk People (1979), an anthropological study of the Uduk people in the upper Blue Nile; B.A. Lewis, The Murle: Red Chiefs and Black Commoners (1972), an anthropological investigation of these southern Sudan people; and Fatima (Fatma) Babiker Mahmoud, The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? (1984), a study that traces the roots and the development of the modern Sudanese bourgeoisie.Essays on the economy are collected in Ali Mohamed El-Hassan (ed.), An Introduction to the Sudan Economy (1976); and in Norman O'neill and Jay O'brien (eds.), Economy and Class in Sudan (1988), on political economy, emphasizing the process of class formation. On agriculture, see Tony Barnett, The Gezira Scheme: An Illusion of Development (1977), a critical socioeconomic analysis of the Gezira cotton scheme; A.B. Zahlan (ed.), The Agricultural Sector of Sudan: Policy & Systems Studies (1986); and G.M. Craig (ed.), The Agriculture of the Sudan (1991), a regional survey that also includes much information on the country's physical geography, people, economy, administrative and social conditions, and cultural life. Robert O. Collins, The Waters of the Nile: Hydropolitics and the Jonglei Canal, 19001988 (1990), describes the critical and sensitive relations of the riverine states over the vital Nile water. Tim Niblock, Class and Power in Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 18981985 (1987); and Peter Woodward, Sudan, 18981989: The Unstable State (1990), analyze the country's government. Cultural life is explored in Muhammad 'Abdul-Hai (Muhammad 'Abd al-Hayy), Conflict and Identity: The Cultural Poetics of Contemporary Sudanese Poetry (1976), which traces the development and analyzes the different schools of modern Sudanese poetry; and Sayyid (Sayed) eamid eurreiz and Herman Bell (eds.), Directions in Sudanese Linguistics and Folklore (1975), an introductory work on language and folklore in The Sudan, part of a conference proceedings. Ahmad Alawad Sikainga Administration and social conditions Government After 16 years in power, the military government of Gaafar Mohamed el-Nimeiri was overthrown by his senior army officers in April 1985 and was replaced by a Transitional Military Council led by the chief of staff, General 'Abd ar-Rahman Siwar ad-Dahab. After one year, the new military government held general elections. Sadiq al-Mahdi's Ummah Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and the National Islamic Front (NIF) together won more than 70 percent of the seats in the National Assembly, with the Ummah Party emerging as the largest voting bloc. Sadiq al-Mahdi became prime minister, but his government was plagued by a continuing civil war between the Muslim north and the non-Muslim south, the still-worsening financial crisis, and prolonged drought and accompanying famine over much of the country. On June 30, 1989, the government was overthrown by the army, and a new military government, led by General 'Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, was formed. Since then a Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) for National Salvation headed by Bashir has ruled the country in increasingly close coordination with the NIF, which is itself the party of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. On seizing power, the Revolutionary Command Council abolished the transitional constitution of 1985 and ruled by decree. The RCC immediately declared a state of emergency in the entire country. It abolished the National Assembly and all political parties and trade unions. The civilian judiciary was dissolved, and civilian newspapers were closed. All demonstrations, work stoppages, and public meetings were prohibited. Organizing a strike was made an offense punishable by death. Civil justice is administered through the Supreme Court, courts of appeal, and lower courts. The criminal code is dispensed in major, minor, and magistrate's courts. Muslims remain subject to the Shari'ah, the religious law of Islam, in questions of inheritance, marriage, divorce, family relationship, and charitable trusts. The RCC has declared its intention to establish an Islamic state in The Sudan and change the justice system accordingly. This would involve the imposition of a penal code based on the Shari'ah over the entire country, including the animist-Christian population of the south. The Sudan's armed forces have been greatly expanded since 1969, mainly to cope with the continuing rebellion in the south. By the early 1980s the forces consisted of an army, a navy, and an air force. In 199091 the government began to establish a militia and also instituted a military draft to furnish recruits to conduct the war. Education A modern educational system was established in The Sudan in the 1970s when the government reorganized a haphazard system of schools inherited from the British colonial government. In the Muslim areas of the north, boys were long instructed in religious subjects according to traditional methods. Primary education was begun by the British in the northern Sudan after 1898, and secondary education began in 1913. The University of Khartoum was formally established in 1956 from the University College of Khartoum, which itself dated from the merger in 1951 of two smaller colleges founded by the British. Christian missionaries assumed responsibility for formal education in the south prior to independence. Southern education has suffered during the subsequent civil war; the national authorities curtailed missionary activities, attempted to Arabize the southern schools, and, failing that, closed them in 1962. The southern partisans operate schools in the areas they control, but their resources are extremely limited. In 1969 the Sudanese government extensively reorganized the nation's system of education. A new six-year elementary school program was uniformly introduced, with more attention paid to technical and vocational training. By the late 1970s the entire national educational system had been reorganized. It now consists of a six-year curriculum for primary (or elementary) schools and a three-year curriculum for junior secondary schools, from which students can progress to any of three types of schools: a three-year higher secondary school to prepare students for higher education; a four-year commercial, agricultural, or other technical school; or a four-year teacher-training school. The primary language of instruction in the nation's primary schools, in both the north and south, is Arabic. The Sudan has a low rate of literacy; in 1990 about 40 percent of men and only 11 percent of women could read. The south remains the most educationally deprived region of the country, with less than one-seventh of the total number of primary schools, despite having one-fourth to one-third of the country's total population. The University of Khartoum is the most prestigious institution of higher education in The Sudan. The Khartoum branch of the University of Cairo is larger but less prestigious. The smallest of the three universities in the capital is the Islamic University of Omdurman, which trains Muslim clerics and scholars. New national universities that emphasize scientific and technical training were opened in the 1970s at Wad Madan i in the Gezira and at Juba in the southern region. English was formerly the medium of instruction in the nation's universities and secondary schools but has now been largely replaced by Arabic. Despite the government's continuing emphasis on technical education, The Sudan continues to suffer from a shortage of trained graduates in agricultural science, veterinary science, and other useful technical fields. Cultural life The key to an understanding of contemporary Sudanese culture is diversity. Each major ethnic group and historical region has its own special forms of cultural expression, and the linguistic diversity of the country provides the basis for a richly varied written and oral literature. One of the most important forms of cultural expression among nonliterate groups is oral tradition. The major language with a written literature in traditional Sudanese society is Arabic. The most widely known Sudanese literary works in this language are associated with Islam and its scholarship and include a large body of literature describing the lives and virtue of holy men. These works are best known through recitations on special anniversaries associated with pious persons. In the 20th century, the combination of oral and written literature remains of major importance to both traditional and Westernized segments of Sudanese society. Perhaps the best-known Sudanese novelist is at-Tayyib Salih, whose books Season of Migration to the North and The Wedding of Zein have been translated into foreign languages. Poetry is another important form of literary expression. Modern Sudanese poetry reflects the mixed African and Arab cultural heritage of the country, as expressed in the works of Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Majdhub and many others. In such arts as painting, weaving, and pottery making, each locality has developed unique forms and styles. However, in the 20th century, more unified national styles have emerged under the influence of artists in the cities. The College of Fine and Applied Arts within the Khartoum Polytechnic has served as the home of graphic arts in The Sudan, and a number of Sudanese printmakers, calligraphers, and photographers have achieved international recognition. Ibrahim as-Salahi, who is proficient in all three mediums, is perhaps the most widely known such artist. Song plays an important role in all the cultural traditions of The Sudan and ranges from the unique cosmopolitan traditions of Qur'anic recitation in a melodramatic manner to tribal songs. A characteristically national style of music is emerging out of this diversity, as reflected in the music heard in Khartoum. The Sudan is one of the richest African countries in terms of archaeological sites. The Sudan Antiquities Service manages the National Museum, a magnificent Khartoum landmark, and smaller archaeological exhibits in Marawi and Al-Ubbayid. The Ethnographical Museum and the Sudan Natural History Museum are affiliated with the University of Khartoum. Drama flourishes at the National Theatre and elsewhere in Khartoum. In view of its religious diversity, The Sudan observes both Muslim and Christian holidays. One of the most popular religious festivals is that of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. Perhaps the most popular form of sports is football (soccer), and a number of clubs exist all over the country. There are two broadcasting stations: the oldest is in Omdurman, and the other was established in Juba, the capital of the southern region, after the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement. Between 1986 and 1989 The Sudan had one of the freest presses in Africa, with more than 40 independent newspapers, but, after the June 1989 military takeover, civilian newspapers were banned, and today there are only a few state-controlled papers. Ahmad Alawad Sikainga The economy The Sudan is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with most of its inhabitants dependent on farming and animal husbandry for their livelihoods. Though its role in the economy has declined in the decades since independence, agriculture still accounts for one-third of The Sudan's gross domestic product (GDP) and more than nine-tenths of its exports, while providing the livelihood of two-thirds of the population. The economy has steadily declined since the late 1970s, when the failure of an ambitious development program left the country with both stagnating agricultural production and a large foreign debt. Agriculture The Sudan's main crops are cotton, peanuts (groundnuts), sesame, gum arabic, durra (a type of sorghum), sugarcane, coffee, and dates. The main subsistence crops are durra and millet, with smaller amounts of wheat, corn, and barley. There are four distinct subsectors in Sudanese agriculture: modern irrigated farming, most of which is carried out with mechanized equipment on a large scale with the help of government investment; mechanized rain-fed crop production; traditional rain-fed farming; and livestock raising. The land Relief The Sudan is mainly composed of vast plains and plateaus that are drained by the middle and upper Nile River and its tributaries. This river system runs from south to north across the entire length of the east-central part of the country. The immense plain of which The Sudan is composed is bounded on the west by the Nile-Congo watershed and the highlands of Darfur and on the east by the Ethiopian Plateau and the Red Sea Hills ('Atbay). This plain can be divided into a northern area of rock desert that is part of the Sahara; the western Qawz, an area of undulating sand dunes that merges northward into the rock desert; and a central and southern clay plain, the centre of which is occupied by an enormous swampy region known as As-Sudd (the Sudd). Most of the northern Sudan is a sand- or gravel-covered desert, diversified by flat-topped mesas of Nubian sandstone and islandlike steep-sided granite hills. In the central Sudan the clay plain is marked by inselbergs (isolated hills rising abruptly from the plains), the largest group of which forms the Nuba Mountains (Jibal An-Nubah). The western plain is composed primarily of Nubian sandstones, which form a dissected plateau region with flat-topped mesas and buttes. The volcanic highlands of the Marra Mountains rise out of the Darfur Plateau farther west to altitudes of between approximately 3,000 and 10,000 feet (900 and 3,000 metres) above sea level. These mountains form the Nile-Congo watershed and the western boundary of the central plain. In the northeastern Sudan, the Red Sea Hills region is an uplifted escarpment. The scarp slope facing the Red Sea forms rugged hills that are deeply incised by streams. The escarpment overlooks a narrow coastal plain that is 10 to 25 miles (16 to 40 kilometres) wide and festooned with dunes and coral reefs. Farther south the eastern uplands constitute the foothills of the Ethiopian highland massif. In the southern Sudan there are two contrasting upland areas. The Ironstone Plateau lies between the Nile-Congo watershed and the southern clay plain; its level country is marked with inselbergs. On the Uganda border there are massive ranges with peaks rising to more than 10,000 feet. The Imatong Mountains contain Mount Kinyeti (10,456 feet), the highest in The Sudan. Drainage and soils The Nile River system is the dominant physical feature, and all streams and rivers of The Sudan drain either into or toward the Nile. The White Nile (Bahr Al-Abyad) enters the country as the Mountain Nile (Bahr Al-Jabal) from the south through rapids at Nimule on the Uganda border. After its confluence with the left- (west-) bank tributary known as the Bahr Al-Ghazal, the Mountain Nile becomes the White Nile. A little farther north along its course, the White Nile receives much of its water from the right-bank Sobat River, which flows from the Ethiopian Plateau to join the Nile near Malakal. The White Nile then loses much of its water in the swampy As-Sudd region as it flows northward to Khartoum. The White Nile continues to maintain an extremely low gradient until it is joined by the Blue Nile (Bahr Al-Azraq) at Khartoum. The Blue Nile, which, like the Sobat, rises in the Ethiopian Plateau, contributes much of the floodwaters of the White Nile. After the confluence of the White and Blue Niles at Khartoum, the river flows in a great, curving northward course and is known simply as the Nile (Nahr An-Nil). Throughout much of the country drainage does not reach the Nile rivers; the rivers of the southwest infrequently reach the Bahr Al-Ghazal system, and to the north most hill groups initiate seasonal watercourses that are lost in the surrounding plains. The surface of the deserts in the north and northeast are either bare rock, a mantle of bare waste, or sandy expanses of mobile dunes known as ergs. In the semiarid zone of the north-central Sudan, the layer of rock waste is slightly modified to form immature soils; in the Qawz region, soils are brownish red and of low fertility. Alluvial soils occur at the desert deltas of Al-Qash (the Gash) and Barakah rivers, along the White and Blue Niles, and in the alluvial plains of the many small rivers radiating from the Marra Mountains. The alkaline soils of the central and southern plains are heavy cracking clays. The soil of the Gezira (Al-Jazirah) plain south of Khartoum is deep-cracking, uniform clay that has been deposited during the annual inundations of the Blue Nile, while the clays of As-Sudd were deposited in the area of impeded drainage.