Sudan

Independent from Anglo-Egyptian rule in 1956.

☾ The Coming of Islam

A gradual Islamisation of the Nile and the sultanates

In the Sudan, Islam spread gradually: the Christian Nubian kingdoms endured for centuries under a treaty relationship (the baqṭ) before Arab migration and Muslim holy men brought Islamisation from about the 14th to 16th centuries, and the Funj Sultanate arose as a Muslim power on the Blue Nile.

☾ Religious Composition

A Sunni-Muslim north shaped by Sufi orders

Northern Sudanese are predominantly Sunni Muslim of the Mālikī school, with the Qādiriyya, Tijāniyya and other Sufi orders central to religious life and the memory of the 19th-century Mahdiyya movement still resonant; the largely non-Muslim south became the separate state of South Sudan in 2011.

Demographic shares are approximate.

At a glance