Qualla: Kordofan

Kordofan: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dromaius Novaehollandiae, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name might come from a Nubian word, Kurta, meaning man. That is one theory. Another traces it to a vanished indigenous tongue whose speakers were pushed into the hills by Arab migrations in the fourteenth century. What is certain is that Kordofan, 376,145 square kilometers of undulating plain stretching across central Sudan, has carried one name while its people have been many. Nubians, Kushites, Arab tribes from Egypt, the Fur, the Nuba in the southeastern hills, gum-arabic traders from every direction. Empires have claimed it, lost it, and claimed it again.

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Image: Dromaius Novaehollandiae | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kordofan: A Plain Between Sahara and Sahel

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Geography dictates everything here. From June to September the rains come, and the dry plain blooms into something fertile enough to support cotton, groundnuts, millet, and the acacia trees whose hardened sap is gum arabic, Kordofan's most famous export. From October to May the l...

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Image: Public domain

Kordofan: Layers of Empire

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emery Walker, Public domain. In antiquity this was Kushite land, part of the civilization whose kings ruled from Napata and Meroe and briefly conquered Egypt. In the Middle Ages it fell within Alodia and Makuria, the Christian Nubian kingdoms. By the fourteenth century Arab migrants from Egypt were moving so...

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Image: Emery Walker | Public domain

Kordofan: The Mahdi at El-Obeid

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. In 1881 a Muslim cleric on Aba Island in the White Nile proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the promised redeemer, and began a revolt against Ottoman-Egyptian rule. In late 1881 he retreated south to Kordofan, a strategic retreat that became a triumphant procession. The Nuba Mountains ...

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Image: Public domain

Kordofan: Divisions and Returning Violence

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Sven-steffen arndt assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. After the British reconquest of 1898, Kordofan was administered as a single province until 1973, when it was split into North and South Kordofan. Further subdivision came in 1994 with the creation of West Kordofan. The provinces became states. In June 2011, months before South Su...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Sven-steffen arndt assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Kordofan: What the Plain Remembers

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Stand in the gum-arabic fields of Kordofan in late September, when the harvesters tap the acacia bark and the hardened sap bleeds out in amber tears, and you are standing on a surface that has carried every story here. The Kushite kings sent their caravans across it. The Dongolav...

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Image: Public domain