In the last four articles on the issue above I have discussed the roots of the background of the formation of the Sudanese identity with regard to the Middle East and Africa.
So, the present diverse identity of the Sudan can be viewed as an outcome of a long process of socialization and acculturation developed through a process of historical, political and socio-economic adaptation. The most notable of this diverse socio-cultural fabric of the Sudan was a product of peaceful mutual co-existence and religious tolerance between Muslim Arabs and Sudanese indigenous groups. This process has always been the backbone and social fabric of the Sudanese culture and identity because it enabled different groups to mix and merge wishfully, thus forming wider groupings.
However, the roots of the Sudanic culture could be traced further back to ancient times. This Sudanic culture came into existence in the land which lies between Aswan and Khartoum. “This area is the centre of the Sudanese civilization and the cradle of human civilization. The Nubian civilization interacted with the civilization of Egypt since the time of Ibrahim.
Prior to the Arab migaration to the Nilotic Sudan this area was largely inhabited by Hametic-speaking poeples in the north and negroid tribes in the south and south-west. The nomadic tribes who overran the country over centuries settled and intermarried with the Sudanese peoples, many of whom adopted Islam, assimilated Arab genealogies, customs, and Arabic language. So the country witnessed much ethnic interaction between the Arabs, Hamites and negroids and cultural between Islam, Christianity and pagan beliefs.
Islam had first entered the northern Sudan (known as eastern Sudan) since mid seventh century through the emigrant Muslim merchants. Other waves of influx followed in mid fourteenth century as the political influence of the Nubia began to decline. With the increase of the Arab-Islamic influence, the ruling family gradually became Muslim with Arab blood.
Under the Funj kingdom(1504 –1820) the active process of Islamization in the Sudan was spearheaded by the religious orders. The Funj and Abdallab rulers welcomed and encouraged the holy men who came from the Islamic heartlands: Egypt, the Hijaz, the Yemen, and – later on – Morocco. Islamized Funj gave the country “a measure of unity and political stability that paved the way and marked the beginning of the proper Islamization.” This was carried out by individual scholars who brought Islamic learning and propagated sufi mysticism. Also traders and nomadic tribes accelerated the spread of Islam.
The Turko-Egyptian period in the Sudan marked the first sings of modernization where the Tukish ruling elite constituted a colonialistic instrument not only in the Sudan but also all over the Islamic world. However, this early phase of modernization promulgated the western style but without any spiritual content. It sought to “integrate the Sudan in the European modernity and opened the country for slave trade, Christianization and alien rule.” This process was obstructed by the Mahdist revolution which managed to restore the continuity and revival of the Islamic dimension of the country’s cultural identity. The British rule also failed to block the flow of this current of the Arab-Islamic culture, though they hindered it from going deep into the South by adopting the policy of ‘closed-districts’.
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