ABSTRACT
With 2.5 million square kilometres, extreme ethnic and linguistic diversity, neighbouring nine countries and sharing with them a number of ethnic groups, Sudan’s history can be presented either in terms of diversity, an unviable extensity that cannot be harnessed to accommodate a single cohesive national unit, or as a slow build up of such a unit. The long history of the civil wars in Southern Sudan which started on the eve of independence (1955-1972) and the second war (1983-2005) tends to support such a static view of the long history of nation building in Sudan.Alternatively, the history of Sudan can be seen as a long process, albeit incomplete, of incorporating and integrating diverse groups and cultures, in which riverain Sudan acted as a melting point for over two thousand years. Such processes have been marked by never ending migratory flows from all geographical and cultural directions dating back to the ancient Nubian Kingdom.
