Nilotic Sudan

This region, south of Egypt and watered by the Nile to the south of the Aswan cataract and the Nile’s tributaries, is also divided ethnically into northern Hamitic and southern Negroid regions. The northern region was called Nubia. The percentage Hamitic/Kushitic in both regions also tends to fall, the farther from the Nile and its tributaries one travels. Further south was the Nilote and Negro zone. Apologies for the use of Negro if it offends anyone (I do not intend it to be in any way offensive).

Before Islam, Nubia was a Christian kingdom. It was conquered by Arabs from Egypt in the 7^th Century. The southern kingdom held out for a treaty in 651 CE and began a trading relationship with the Muslim Egyptian Arabs. Around 1250 CE, the Mamluks finally conquered the southern region. The capital of Nubia, Dongala, declined as Nubia became an Arabic state.

The conversion of the population was not extensive until the 14^th to 16^th Centuries and Arabic was still not spoken widely. The southern Christian ‘Alawa State was replaced by the Muslim Funj State by the 16^th Century. The Arab vassals settled their whole tribes in this region and their indigenous fellow countrymen and women spoke Arabic earlier than the northern populations. The slave trade continued there.

Islamic lawyers and mystics were the two major sources of conversions to Islam in Sudan. The Sufis were especially influential early on. While in West Africa the Sufi mystic was called a marabout, in East Africa including in Sudan the term used was fakir (incidentally, a lawyer was and is called a faqih in Arabic). The Sufi orders were well established from around the 12^th Century.

These two styles of Islam, the styles of the mainly Maliki faqih and the, often Qadiri (from the 14^th Century) fakir, became blended in East Africa including in the Sudan.

Briefly, the Ottoman ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, also lorded over Sudan in the 19th Century for a time. This was supported militarily by the British general, Gordon, until the mahdiyya movement (led by a radical Sufi who rather apocalyptically called himself the Mahdi, the Mahdi being the much prophesied Muslim end-times figure) brought about Sudanese independence.

Today, virtually all in both the North and South of Sudan speak Arabic, look alike and are Muslim. The only cause of the fighting there appears to be tribal and ethnic identity. There are now three major relevant ethno-tribal identities: Arab, Kushitic/Hamitic and African.