Language: Arabic, English
Currency: Sudanese pound (SDG)
Calling code: 249
Sudan, whose official name is the Republic of the
Sudan (Arabic: جمهورية السودان, Yumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), colloquially
called North Sudan (as opposed to South Sudan), is one of the
fifty-four countries that make up the African continent . Its
capital and most populated city is Khartoum. It is located in
the northeast of Africa and shares a border with Egypt to the north,
with the Red Sea to the northeast, with Eritrea and Ethiopia to the
east, with South Sudan to the south, with the Central African
Republic to the southwest, with Chad to the west and with Libya at
West. Until 2011, when the southern region of the country separated
(forming the new Republic of South Sudan) was the African state that
shared the border with a greater number of countries (nine),
including Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The
population of Sudan is a combination of indigenous Africans with a
Nilo-Saharan mother tongue and descendants of migrants from the
Arabian peninsula. Due to a process of Arabization, common to the
rest of the Muslim world, today Arab culture predominates in Sudan.
The majority of the population professes Islam. The Nile River
crosses the country from south to north.
The country has a
long history, dating back to the Ancient Age, where it is deeply
intertwined with the history of Egypt, belonging successively to
various states until its independence in the mid-twentieth century.
Sudan suffered seventeen years of war during the First Sudanese
Civil War (1955-1972), followed by ethnic, religious and economic
conflicts between the population of the Arab-Muslim north and the
population of the animistic, nilotic-Christian and black South that
led to the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005).
Due to the
continuous political and military imbalance, a coup d'état was
carried out in 1989 led by the then Brigadier Omar Hassan Ahmad
al-Bashir, who ended up proclaiming himself, in 1993, President of
Sudan since currently (May 2018) continues to occupy. The second
civil war ended after the signing, in 2005, of the General Peace
Agreement that led to the drafting of a new constitution and gave
autonomy to what was then the southern region of the country. In a
referendum carried out in January 2011, that region obtained the
votes necessary to become independent so that on July 9, 2011
it did so, becoming known as the Republic of South Sudan.
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Ancient Pyramids of Meroe consists of three royal cemeteries that were used to bury royalty as well as their family and servants. |
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
In Sudan, finds of the Khartoum
culture of the Stone Age were discovered. In the 4th-3rd millennium
BC. e. in northern Sudan there is a culture close to the culture of
Egypt at that time. In antiquity, a significant part of the
territory of modern Sudan (known as Nubia) was inhabited by
Semitic-Hamitic and Kushite tribes, akin to the ancient Egyptians.
From the 2nd millennium BC e. Negroids from the south also moved
here. In the south of modern territory lived the ancestors of modern
Nilots. Locals traded with ancient Egypt and were subjected to
predatory raids on his part. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium
BC. e. here the state of Kerma arises, which is later replaced by
the kingdom of Kush.
At the beginning of the 4th century AD
e. most of the territory entered the kingdom of Aksum. Over the next
centuries, several independent kingdoms arose in the region. The
most powerful of them, the Christian state of Mukurra, founded in
the VI century BC. e., existed for almost 900 years, until in the
XIV century it was not captured by the Egyptian Mamelukes. Another
state of Aloa, was conquered around 1500 by the people of the fungi.
In the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries on the territory of
present Sudan there were independent states with developed
agriculture, crafts and trade. The most important of them are the
Sultanate of Sennar and the Sultanate of Darfur. However, by the
middle of the XVIII century, they broke up into separate feudal
principalities and independent nomadic tribes.
XIX century
In 1819-1822, Egypt captured most of the territory of Sudan. In
accordance with the firm of the High Port in 1841, the
administration of these administrative units, called "Egyptian
Sudan", was transferred to the Viceroy of Egypt, thus Sudan became
part of the Ottoman Empire, but in fact became the possession of
Egypt.
In the second half of the 19th century, the influence
of Great Britain increased in Sudan. Cruel exploitation and national
oppression (combined with traditionalist reaction) led to the
emergence of a powerful popular protest movement with a religious
and reactionary orientation. Religious leader Muhammad ibn Abdullah,
proclaimed himself in 1881 the "Mahdi" (messiah) and tried to unite
the tribes of western and central Sudan against the Ottomans. The
uprising ended with the capture of Khartoum in 1885 and the
expulsion of European, Turkish and Egyptian officials from the
country. Mehmed Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer 1840–1892) - Governor
of the Sudan region and Russian explorer of Africa Vasily Yunker
(1840–1892) left the region with an expedition led by Henry Morton
Stanley. The leader of the uprising soon died, but the despotic
state he created, headed by Abdullah ibn al-Said, lasted another
fifteen years, and only in 1898 the uprising was crushed by
Anglo-Egyptian troops.
On January 19, 1899, Great Britain and
Egypt signed an agreement on the establishment of joint management
in the Sudan (Anglo-Egyptian condominium). The top officials were
the British, and the middle were the Egyptians. In fact, Sudan was
turned into a colony of Great Britain.
XX century
After
the end of World War I, the British colonialists headed for the
transformation of Sudan into a cotton producing country. The Sudan
began to form a national bourgeoisie.
To strengthen its
power, the British administration, in particular, encouraged the
anti-Islamic and anti-Arab sentiments of the people of the Sudanese
south, adhering to traditional beliefs and professing Christianity.
In 1921, an officer of the 9th Sudanese battalion, the son of a
Dinka slave, Ali Abd al-Latif created the first political
organization, the Sudanese United Tribal Society, which demanded
independence. She issued a manifesto calling on Sudanese to armed
uprising.
During World War II, in June 1940, the Italian
army, operating from the territory of Abyssinia, occupied part of
the territory of Sudan, but already in 1941 the Italians were forced
to leave, and Sudan became an important base for the British armed
forces in Africa. Military units recruited from the local population
participated in hostilities in Eritrea, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia.
Participation in the war had positive consequences for Sudan -
the growth of national industry, the activation of political life,
the emergence of political parties, trade unions, and the
strengthening of aspirations for independence.
On October 15, 1951, the Egyptian Parliament approved the law on
the termination of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 and the
Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1899, the Egyptian King Farouk was
proclaimed King of Egypt and Sudan.
After the July Revolution
of 1952, Egypt recognized the right of the Sudanese people to
self-determination. In November 1953, parliamentary elections were
held in Sudan, and in 1954 a government of transitional
self-government was created. In August 1955, the Sudanese parliament
decided on the final termination of the condominium, and in the same
year the British and Egyptian troops were withdrawn from Sudan.
On January 1, 1956, Sudan was proclaimed an independent state.