Sudan

Deriving its name from Balad as-Sdn (“Land of the Blacks”), the Republic of the Sudan (Jumhryat as-Sdn) was until 2011 the largest country in Africa and is distinguished by historically multivariate regimes and civilizations. Encompassing the ancient northern kingdoms of Kush and Christian Nubia, Sudan's ethnically diverse population includes the Furs in western Sudan, and it also included the Nubians and the Dinkas in the region that became the country of South Sudan in 2011. In 640 CE, the Rashidun caliphate brought Islam to northern Africa and left Sudan overwhelmingly Muslim and ethnically Arab (with Arabic remaining Sudan's lingua franca).

In 1821, Egypt's Muhammad Ali Pasha's invasion of Sudan marked the beginning of the Turkiyah (1821–1885) or Turco-Egyptian rule, which was challenged in May 1881 by ...