The
Sudan, from the
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family...
bilâd as-sûdân (البلاد السودان) or "land of the
BlacksThe term black people usually refers to a racial group of humans with skin colors that range from light brown to nearly black. According to a recent scientific study, human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. It is also used to categorize a number of diverse...
" (an expression denoting
WestWest Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 15 countries & an area of approximately 5 million square km:...
and
Central AfricaCentral Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
), is a geographic region stretching from West to Eastern Africa. The phrase "The Sudan" is also used by some to refer specifically to the modern-day country of
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa, and the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
, the savanna of which forms much of the larger region.
The Sudan extends in a band across Africa from
MaliMali, officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with a...
(formerly known as
French SudanFrench Sudan was a colony in French West Africa that had two separate periods of existence, first from 1890 to 1899, then from 1920 to 1960, when the territory became the independent nation of Mali.-Colonial establishment:...
when it was a French colony) in the west to the western edge of the
Ethiopian HighlandsThe Ethiopian Highlands are a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia, Eritrea , and northern Somalia in the Horn of Africa...
in the east.
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The
Sudan, from the
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family...
bilâd as-sûdân (البلاد السودان) or "land of the
BlacksThe term black people usually refers to a racial group of humans with skin colors that range from light brown to nearly black. According to a recent scientific study, human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. It is also used to categorize a number of diverse...
" (an expression denoting
WestWest Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 15 countries & an area of approximately 5 million square km:...
and
Central AfricaCentral Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
), is a geographic region stretching from West to Eastern Africa. The phrase "The Sudan" is also used by some to refer specifically to the modern-day country of
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa, and the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
, the savanna of which forms much of the larger region.
The Sudan extends in a band across Africa from
MaliMali, officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with a...
(formerly known as
French SudanFrench Sudan was a colony in French West Africa that had two separate periods of existence, first from 1890 to 1899, then from 1920 to 1960, when the territory became the independent nation of Mali.-Colonial establishment:...
when it was a French colony) in the west to the western edge of the
Ethiopian HighlandsThe Ethiopian Highlands are a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia, Eritrea , and northern Somalia in the Horn of Africa...
in the east. To the north lies the
SahelThe Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the North and the Sudanian savannas in the south. It stretches across the north of the African continent between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea...
, a more arid
AcaciaAcacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian Acacias are not. They are pod-bearing,...
savanna region which in turn borders the
SaharaThe Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
desert, and to the east Ethiopia (called
al-Ḥabašah in Arabic). The grass in the Sudan is longer than in the Sahel, and because the region receives more rainfall than the Sahel it is more suitable for farming.
The region is divided by the Cameroon Highlands into eastern and western halves. To the south of the western part is the Guinea forest-savanna mosaic. To the east in Sudan are the
SuddThe Sudd , also known as the Bahr el Jebel, As Sudd or Al Sudd, is a vast swamp in southern Sudan, formed by the White Nile. The word “sudd” is derived from the Arabic word “sadd”, meaning “block” The term has come to refer to any large solid floating vegetation island or mat...
flooded grasslands, and to the south the
Northern Congolian forest-savanna mosaicThe Northern Congolian forest-savanna mosaic is a forest and savanna ecoregion of central Africa, part of the belt of transitional forest-savanna mosaic that lie between Africa's equatorial forests and the tropical dry forests, savannas, and grasslands that lie to the north and south...
.