Soudan, or SUDAN, the Arabic equivalent (Beled es-Sudan—i.e. 'Land of the Blacks') of Negroland or Nigritia, a geographical term which in its widest sense embraces the vast region of Africa that stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and the Abyssinian highlands, and from the Sahara and Egypt proper in the north to the Gulf of Guinea, the central equatorial regions, and the Albert and Victoria Nyanzas in the south. This is the home of the true Negro race, though there are various other pure and mixed elements in the population derived principally from Hamitic and Semitic (Arab) stocks. The Soudan in this sense falls naturally into three divisions: (1) Western Soudan, comprising the basins of the Senegal, Niger, Benue, and other rivers draining to the Atlantic, and including the political regions known as the French Soudan (see SENEGAMBIA), Sokoto (q.v.), and others; (2) Central Soudan, including the basins of the rivers draining into Lake Tsad, and covering the countries of Bornu (q.v.), Bagirmi (q.v.), Kanem, Wadai; (3) Eastern Soudan, the rest of the Soudan area east of Wadai, mainly the basin of the Middle and Upper Nile. This portion of the Soudan is also frequently styled the Egyptian Soudan.
Until 1882 the Egyptian Soudan formed one ill-organised province, with its capital at Khartoum. But in that year it was subdivided into four sections: (1) West Soudan, including Dar-Fûr (q.v.), Kordofan (q.v.), Bahr-el-Ghazal (the province on a western tributary of the White Nile, south of Kordofan), and Dongola (q.v.); (2) Central Soudan, comprising Khartoum (q.v.), Sennaar (q.v.), Berber, Fashoda (south-east of Kordofan), and the Equatorial Province, stretching along the Upper Nile to the great lakes; (3) East Soudan, along the Red Sea, including Taka, Suakin, and Massowah; (4) Harar, east of Abyssinia and north of the Somali country, abutting on the Gulf of Aden. This wide region differs considerably in physical features in its different parts. All the regions watered by the Nile and its tributaries (Taka, Sennaar, Fashoda, Bahr-el-Ghazal, and the Equatorial Province) possess highly fertile soil, capable of yielding immense quantities of cotton, durra, indigo, sugar, rice, maize, tobacco, fruits; while Kordofan and Dar-Fûr are bare and waterless, except in the rainy season, after which their wide grassy steppes give sustenance to numerous herds of camels, cattle, sheep, and goats. Besides the products mentioned, ivory, ostrich-feathers, caoutchouc, salt, cloth, guns, iron, gold, honey, wax, and hides are important articles of internal traffic and foreign trade. The area of this portion of the Soudan has been estimated at 2½ million sq. m., and the total population at about 15,000,000. Of these three-fourths are of Negro descent, and mostly pagans or nominal Mohammedans; the rest are of Hamitic or Semitic origin and are fanatical in their adherence to Islam. The Egyptians established themselves at Khartoum in 1819, and during the next fifty years gradually extended their power over the provinces lying west and south of that city, and were more especially active during the third quarter of the century. In 1874 Dar-Fûr was conquered with help of Zebehr Pasha, a noted slave-hunter. Not receiving, however, the reward he conceived himself entitled to, he provoked insurrections in that district and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal province (1877-79), which were successively crushed by Gordon and Gessi. But in 1882 the Mahdi (q.v.) again raised the flag of revolt, and preaching a religious crusade overpowered the distant Egyptian garrisons, annihilated the Egyptian forces led by Hicks Pasha, cut off Emin Bey in the Equatorial Province, and shut up in Khartoum Gordon (q.v.), whom the English government had sent out to restore peace by friendly means; while his lieutenant, Osman Digna, after defeating the Egyptian army commanded by Baker Pasha, prevented the English from penetrating into the interior from Suakin and the Red Sea. Gordon's mission ended in disaster, and with the fall of Khartoum, Egyptian influence in the Soudan seemed at an end. Anarchy prevailed, the Sheik Senussi (q.v.) became a power, and to the Mahdi succeeded the Khalifa.
But, after the English reorganisation of Egypt, in 1896 an Anglo-Egyptian army forced its way to Dongola; and in 1898 the Sirdar (see KITCHENER) completed the reconquest of the Soudan by totally defeating the Khalifa's forces at Omdurman and occupying Khartoum. The discovery that Fashoda had been occupied by Major Marchand with a French force caused strained relations between Britain and France; but the question was amicably settled by the departure of Marchand in November 1898. The Sirdar was in January 1899 appointed Governor-general of the Soudan, 'by decree of the Khedive with the sanction of the British government.' His first official act was the founding of a college at Khartoum with funds (£120,000) raised by subscription in England.
See Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa (1874); Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan (3 vols. 1879-89); James, The Wild Tribes of the Soudan (1884); the War Office Report on the Egyptian Provinces of the Sudan (1884); Felkin and Wilson, Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan (1881); Paulitzschke, Die Sudanländer (1884); A. H. Keane in Nature (1884); Junker, Travels in Africa (Eng. trans. 1890-91); numerous papers by Emin Pasha in divers periodicals; Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Soudan (1891); H. Russell, The Ruin of the Soudan (1892); Ohrwalder, Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp (1892); Bennet Burleigh, Sirdar and Khalifah (1898); Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum (1898); Alford and Sword, The Egyptian Soudan, its Loss and Recovery (1898). See also the articles EGYPT (with Map), NUBIA, NILE, FULAH, HAUSSA, KHARTOUM, MAHDI, and SCHNITZER.