Sudan is a nation in Northeast Africa. Its official name is the Republic of Sudan. It is bordered to the southwest by the Central African Republic, to the west by Chad, to the north by Egypt, to the northeast by Eritrea, to the southeast by Ethiopia, to the northwest by Libya, to the south by South Sudan, and to the Red Sea. It has a population of 45.70 million people as of 2022 and an area of 1,886,068 square kilometers (728,215 square miles), making it Africa's third-largest nation by size and the Arab League's third-largest by area. It was the biggest nation by area in Africa and the Arab League until South Sudan's separation in 2011, when Algeria took up both titles. Its capital is Khartoum, and its largest city is Omdurman (part of the metropolitan area of Khartoum).
Sudan's history dates back to the Pharaonic era when it saw the Kingdom of Kerma (c. 2500–1500 BC), the Egyptian New Kingdom's dominion (c. 1500 BC–1070 BC), and the advent of the Kingdom of Kush (c. 785 BC–350 AD), which would govern Egypt for almost a century. Following the collapse of Kush, the Nubians established the three Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia, the latter two of which lasted until roughly 1500. The majority of Sudan was progressively populated by Arab nomads throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. The Funj sultanate governed central and eastern Sudan from the 16th to the 19th century, while Darfur ruled the west and the Ottomans the east.
The Slave trade was important throughout the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, and it was requested by Sudanese Kashif as a monthly payment of tribute. Mamluks formed a kingdom at Dunqulah in 1811 as a platform for their slave trafficking. The Slave trade was established along a north-south axis in Sudan after the 1820s, with slave raids taking place in southern portions of the nation and slaves being carried to Egypt and the Ottoman empire.
Egypt's Muhammad Ali dynasty controlled all of Sudan beginning in the early nineteenth century. Sudan's existing boundaries were established under the Egyptian administration, and the process of political, agricultural, and economic growth started. Nationalist feelings in Egypt sparked the Orabi Revolt in 1881, "weakening" the Egyptian monarchy and ultimately culminating to the United Kingdom's annexation of Egypt. Simultaneously, religious-nationalist fervor rose in Sudan, culminating in the Mahdist Uprising headed by the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad and the formation of the Caliphate of Omdurman. The Mahdist troops were finally destroyed by a combination Egyptian-British military forces, restoring the Egyptian monarch's power. Egyptian sovereignty in Sudan, however, would now be just nominal, since the actual authority in both Egypt and Sudan was now the United Kingdom. Under British coercion, Egypt agreed to share sovereignty over Sudan as a condominium with the United Kingdom in 1899. Sudan was effectively administered as a British colony. The twentieth century witnessed the rise of Egyptian and Sudanese nationalism aimed at removing the British presence. The Egyptian revolution of 1952 overthrew the monarchy and demanded that British soldiers evacuate from Egypt and Sudan. Muhammad Naguib, one of the revolution's two co-leaders and Egypt's first President, who was half-Sudanese and reared in Sudan, made Sudanese independence a priority of the revolutionary administration. Under Egyptian and Sudanese pressure, the United Kingdom agreed to Egypt's proposal that both nations discontinue their joint authority over Sudan and give Sudan independence the next year. Sudan was proclaimed an independent state on January 1, 1956.
Following Sudan's independence, the Jaafar Nimeiry administration established Islamist governance. This widened the schism between the Islamic North, which serves as the seat of administration, and the Animists and Christians of the South. Differences in language, religion, and political power erupted into a civil war between government troops supported by the National Islamic Front (NIF) and southern rebels whose most significant unit was the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), resulting in South Sudan's independence in 2011. Between 1989 and 2019, Sudan was ruled by a 30-year-long military dictatorship led by Omar al-Bashir, who was accused of human rights violations such as torture, persecution of minorities, sponsorship of global terrorism, and ethnic genocide as a result of its actions in the Darfur region, which erupted in 2003. The regime's acts murdered between 300,000 and 400,000 individuals. Protests demanding Bashir's resignation erupted in 2018, resulting in a coup on 11 April 2019 and Bashir's incarceration.
Sudan's national religion was Islam, and Islamic laws were in effect from 1983 until 2020 when the country became a secular state. The economy has been described as lower-middle-income, relying primarily on agriculture and, to a lesser extent, on oil production in South Sudan's oil fields. Sudan is a member of the United Nations, the Arab League, the African Union, COMESA, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.