Sudan Africa

Soon after the uniting of the kingdoms of Egypt, in about 3100 BC, the pharaohs extend their control as far up the Nile as a boat can easily travel. This brings them to the first cataract (or rapid), in the region of modern Aswan.

The area between the first and fourth cataracts is known to the Egyptians as Cush. To the Greeks, from Homer onwards, all the known people living south of Egypt are called Ethiopians (inhabiting the areas of modern Sudan and Ethiopia). Later again Sudan as far south as Khartoum becomes widely familiar under the Latin name Nubia. The whole region is rich in gold mines, and the name probably derives from the word for gold (nub in Mahasi, though this is only one among the many dialects of Nubia past and present).

Thutmose I, in about 1520 BC, penetrates further south than any of his predecessors and leaves an inscription some fifty miles upstream of Abu Hamad. In the north the most flamboyant statement of possession is the four colossal statues of Ramses II, carved in the sandstone cliff at Abu Simbel in about 1250 BC.

Indeed Kashta, the king of Cush in the early 8th century, maintains a court so authentic in its Egyptian manner that his descendants, after conquering Egypt, are willingly accepted as a dynasty of pharaohs.

After this achievement Piye retires to his capital at Napata, where be builds a great temple to Amen-Re. But it is impossible to remain in control of Egypt from as far south as Napata. The final establishment of the Cushite or 25th dynasty is therefore the work of Piye’s brother, Shabaka, who succeeds him in about 719 BC.

Here he and and his descendants might well have ruled peacefully for some time, since they are widely welcomed for their pious safeguarding of the cult of Amen-Re. But it is their misfortune to coincide with the greatest external threat yet to confront the Nile civilization. The new power in the middle east is the formidable state of Assyria, now brutally subduing the many small states and cities of Palestine and Phoenicia.

In 663 the Assyrian king (Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib) captures Memphis, seizes the royal treasure and harem and claims the title ‘king of Egypt’. When the Assyrian army withdraws, leaving Egypt under the control of vassal rulers, the Cushites briefly recover Memphis. But another Assyrian expedition, in 663, settles the issue. This time Thebes is reached and plundered.

The move further up the Nile to Meroe is made after an Egyptian expedition sacks Napata in about 590 BC. Over the centuries, living in remote isolation (as Persians, Greeks and Romans follow each other in control of Egypt itself), this southern outpost of Egyptian culture gradually fades away. Pyramids begin to be built in brick instead of stone. The knowledge of writing is forgotten. Finally, in the 4th century AD, Meroe is sacked by an army from neighbouring Aksum.

In about543 the king of Dongola is converted to the monophysite version of Christanity, associated in particular with the Coptic church of Egypt and Ethiopia. A few years later, in about 569, the orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine empire reaches Mukarra, a neighbouring kingdom to the south.

The treaty holds for more than six centuries, during which the trade routes bring many Muslims south into Nubia. But Muslim raids begin in earnest in the 1270s during the reign of Baybars, the energetic Mameluke sultan of Egypt. In 1315 the annual tribute is finally abolished and a Muslim is placed on the throne of Dongola.

This changes in 1821, when the the region is forcefully taken in hand by the most aggressive ruler of Egypt since the time of Baybars – the Ottoman viceroy Mohammed Ali.

A few years later Khartoum is made the administrative centre of an Egyptian province in the Sudan, acquiring the status of a capital which it and Omdurman, on the opposite bank, have retained ever since.

From 1846 there are Egyptian officials in the Red Sea ports of Suakin and Mits’iwa. And in 1869 Samuel Baker returns to the southern Sudan, this time with an army, to annexe the vast region known as Equatoria on behalf of the khedive of Egypt (now Ismail, a grandson of Mohammed Ali). But Egyptian control remains tenuous in much of this region. And it is made particularly unwelcome by the western influences to which Ismail inclines.

When Baker marches south into Equatoria, as the khedive’s governor general, the suppression of the slave trade is part of his brief – together with the imposition of order in some very unruly regions. Four years later the same two tasks still confront his rather more effective successor in this role, Charles Gordon.

On his return to England, in 1880, he appears to leave a Sudan in which the Egyptian garrisons have the province well under control. But the situation is tranformed a year later by the emergence of a charismatic religious leader who takes advantage of the widespread discontent of the local Muslims.

The fervour of the faithful, combined with the Mahdi’s own skills, results during 1883 in a series of astonishing victories – the rapid defeat of three Egyptian armies (the last of them under a British general) and the capture of several key towns, including El Obeid.

Gordon reaches Khartoum on 18 February 1884 and begins to organize an evacuation. Some 2000 people – mainly women, children and the sick – have escaped by the time the Mahdi’s forces close in, on March 13, to begin the siege of the city.

The unknown but all too imaginable fate of Gordon, already a hero from past campaigns, galvanizes public opinion in Britain and eventually forces a vacillating government to plan for the relief of Khartoum. In September 1884 Garnet Wolseley sails from London to lead an expedition up the Nile. His vanguard reaches Khartoum on 28 January 1885 – too late by just two days.

The Mahdi has made his camp around the small village of Omdurman, on the left bank of the Nile a short way downstream from the confluence of the two rivers. This now becomes the capital of a Sudan administered as an Islamic state in imitation of the early caliphate. The Mahdi rules until his death in June 1885, when he is succeeded by the man whom he has appointed as caliph – Abdullahi ibn Mohammed, usually known simply as the Khalifa.

But in the long run the Anglo-Egyptian alliance to the north has an irresistible military advantage. The death of Gordon is finally avenged in 1898 when Herbert Kitchener (a member as a young man of Wolseley’s failed expedition) mows down the Khalifa’s forces at Omdurman with artillery and machine-gun fire. This victory restores British and Egyptian control in the Sudan – though it is challenged two weeks later by France in the dangerous confrontation known as the Fashoda Incident.

But cooperation does not prove easy, particularly when politicians in Cairo after World War I begin to demand the incorporation of Sudan within Egypt – a policy vigorously opposed by Britain.

There are further disputes. In 1951 Egypt’s king Farouk, indignant that Britain has facilitated the first steps towards Sudanese independence (in the form of a legislative council), unilaterally declares himself ruler of a united kingdom of Egypt and the Sudan.

Naguib immediately recognizes Sudan’s right to self-determination, and in 1953 Britain and Egypt jointly agree to facilitate the transitional period. Elections in 1954 are won by the National Unionist Party, led by Ismail al-Azhari who has campaigned on a policy of merging Sudan with Egypt to achieve the ‘unity of the Nile Valley’. However his views are altered by the experience of office as prime minister. Contrary to his campaign rhetoric, he leads the nation into a separate independence at the start of 1956.

With hindsight this event can be seen as a disastrous omen for the new nation. For the rest of the century the recurrent feature of the troubled political life of the area is the attempt by northern Muslim groups to transform the Sudan into a fundamentalist Islamic state.

The political ambitions of the Muslim community fuel two separate long-running conflicts. One, in the north, is between religious and secular rivals, with the secular side at first advocating a Marxist economic policy. The other, between north and south, is a civil war in which insurgent groups in Equatoria fight for independence and freedom from the threat of Muslim domination.

Nimeri aligns himself internationally with the socialist bloc, but at home he is a pragmatic ruler. This enables him in 1972 to end a 17-year-civil war in the rebellious southern province by signing the Addis Ababa Agreement, allowing for the internal autonomy of Equatoria.

The result is an escalation of rebellion in the south and protest everywhere by moderates at the harsh application of the sharia. Nimeri vacillates, in an apparently hopeless situation. In 1985 he is toppled in a bloodless coup by his chief of staff.

The general in command of the coup is Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. He rules at first through a Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, a body closely linked to the NIF (National Islamic Front) which is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1996 elections are held. Bashir is confirmed in the presidency. The NIF, the only permitted party, wins all 400 seats in the national assembly.

These developments add a new intensity to the civil war in the south, vigorously renewed by the SPLA (Sudanese People’s Liberation Army) after the collapse of the Addis Ababa Agreement. It now acquires the profile of a holy war with ethnic undertones. Impassioned Arab mujaheddin move south to confront the African infidels.

In the second half of the 1990s there are steps towards peace, culminating in an agreement in 1998 between the government and the SPLA to hold a referendum on self-determination. No date has been set. But there are other signs that Bashir and the NIF wish to take tentative steps in the direction of democracy. Rival political parties are allowed legal existence from the start of 1999.