Black Americans are not strangers to Sudan. In the summer of 1963, a Sudanese student named Ahmed Osman walked into Temple No. 7 in Harlem, heard Malcolm preach the Nation’s doctrine that the white man was the devil, and rose during the question-and-answer session to challenge him directly. They argued but then they became friends. Osman sent him orthodox literature from the Islamic Centre in Geneva, which Malcolm was grateful for and asked for more of, and corresponded with him steadily.¹ When Malcolm broke with the Nation and made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, it was Osman who helped arrange the hajj. And when Malcolm was murdered in 1965, it was Osman — then only twenty-two — who rose, after Ossie Davis, to deliver a eulogy for his friend.²

This was not the first time the Sudanese current ran through a Black American movement. Two generations earlier, when a young Marcus Garvey arrived in London in 1912 and found work at the African Times and Orient Review, the man who employed and shaped him was its editor, Dusé Mohamed Ali. He was the son of an Egyptian army officer and a Nubian mother who was a national of Sudan, a Pan-Africanist of the Nile world who carried the currents of the Muslim East into the Black Atlantic. Garvey wrote for Ali’s paper.³

The bond is older and wider than its famous names. For a quarter-century, from roughly 1904 to 1929, the Sudanese missionary Satti Majid criss-crossed the United States building Muslim welfare societies and giving da’wah in Black communities, winning converts and laying institutional roots; his foremost student, Daoud Ahmed Faisal, became the premier Sunni leader of postwar New York.⁴ For more than a century, Sudanese teachers and organizers have helped build Black American Islam.

Which is exactly why it should trouble us to watch how Sudan is spoken about today. As war consumes the country, a generation of online commentators has discovered Sudan as content — and too many speak about it in ways that threaten both this hard-won bond and the truth itself. To date, all I have found is content creators and half-baked scholars from our tribe who think they are smart but cannot speak in an unbigoted and intelligent manner about the history and the current crisis facing Sudan. The likes of Molefi Asante, Marquett Burton, and other pseudo-intellectual influencers — emboldened by the algorithm — have either reduced it to an Arab vs. African conflict or some sort of religious conflict. But few have taken the time to properly analyze Sudan’s history and current situation. Why can’t our Pan-Afrikan, Afrocentric, conscious, and woke counterparts offer an honest analysis of Sudan? Are they really that blinded by their ignorance and American-centric perspectives? Or are they being manipulated by some nefarious forces behind the scenes? Whatever the case may be, they are part of the psyops and disinformation campaign designed to prolong the conflict and siphon off the resources of Sudan. Their efforts only fuel the conflict and add to the confusion, making the crisis more difficult to resolve. It has always been the Black Muslim ethos to embrace truth and justice no matter who it is for or against. In this article, I will address some of the main axes of confusion that misinformed Black influencers and scholars belabor without accurate knowledge. Although I have direct experience living in Sudan, I will not rely solely on my subjective experience. In this article, you will find verified sources that anyone who seriously wants to understand the Sudan can also access and read.

Error No. 1Where is Sudan?

When I told people I lived in Sudan, most Americans had no idea where it was located. Even so-called conscious people had very little knowledge of Sudan. Their only frame of reference was Egypt, Kemet, or in rare cases, ancient Kush. The location, geography, and agriculture of Sudan are very important to understanding its history and current conflict. However, before speaking about the ancient kingdoms of Kemet and Kush or the late antiquity to medieval kingdom of Nubia, we must understand the time and space we are speaking of. The nation-state of Sudan is not the historical region of Bilād al-Sūdān (land of the blacks). Bilād al-Sūdān usually referred to lands in west and central Africa south of the Sahara that embraced Islam. They were set apart from the Bayḍān, “the whites,” who embraced Islam in the so-called Berber or Moorish lands (both are problematic terms). Saharan people and the “indigenous” people of North Africa were never one people and never spoke a single language. They were from Bilād al-Shinqīṭ, which Europeans renamed the greater Mauritania. Similarly, current-day Sudan was never one land and the people never spoke one single language.

The borders of the Sudanese nation-state were created by the Ottoman-led Egyptian regime in the 1820s under the Albania-born Muhammad ʿAlī Pāshā and the British. They wanted to procure slaves and exploit the gold. Before that, the area consisted of different kingdoms, the most famous of which was Nubia, but also included the Funj and the Fur kingdoms. The Nubian lands extended from South Egypt (Luxor through Aswan) into current-day North Sudan to around Khartoum. This area also consisted of what we know to be the ancient advanced civilizations of Kemet and Kush. This is a source of confusion for most Americans. They were a single people, united by history, religion, and language, but an imaginary line runs through their lands on our maps causing us to think that this is where they drew the ancient borders as well. These civilizations pre-date the colonial borders Europeans drew for Africans to fight over.

Furthermore, there is a natural border between north Sudan and what we now call South Sudan. It is called the Sadd. The word sadd in Arabic means barrier. The region is called that because the region is a swamp full of thick patches of vegetation that obstructs the White Nile. Likewise, it made the invasion of South Sudan physically impossible in pre-modern times. It was not until 1904 when the British began to clear the water ways to South Sudan, which would need to be repeated every year until World War I when they used mechanical dredgers to navigate through it.⁵

Error No. 2Arabs Are Killing Africans

Yes, Arabs are killing Africans. But also Africans are killing Arabs, Africans are killing Africans, and Arabs are killing Arabs. Anyone who only thinks that Arabs are killing Africans does not know about the complexities of African history, identity, and politics. One should note that both warlords of the current conflict, ʿAbdul Fattāḥ al-Burhān and Hemedti, hail from Afro-Arab tribes (the Jaʿalī and Baggara respectively). Beyond the leaders of the conflict, the situation on the ground has left no room for neutrality. Everyone within the borders of Sudan must choose a side, either with Burhan’s official Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or with Hemedti’s so-called Peace and Unity government and its armed faction the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). That means that “Africans” must join forces with “Arabs” to fight against other “Africans” and “Arabs.” Such a scenario may not compute to American sensibilities, but Sudan is not America and need not follow our way of thinking about race.

This is not to say that the Sudanese ways of thinking about identity are not problematic. Indeed, Arab identity remains a huge source of debate within Sudanese society. Some Arab identities in Sudan are real and some are imagined or at the very least unverifiable. It is no different than African Americans claiming to have Native American blood. Some of these lineages are real and others are imagined or unverified. Perhaps Mandour El Mahdi put it more succinctly:

As Islam was propagated by Arab tribes, it became desirable for all tribes in the Sudan to claim Arab origin. But it is accepted, now, that no tribe in the north, centre, east or west derives from pure Arab origin. They all represent different scales of mixtures of Negroid, Arab, Beja and Nubian elements. The use of the term Arabic, to describe a tribe or a section of people means no more than a tribe or section of people speaking the Arabic language, practising Islam, and carrying in its veins Arab blood.⁶

Error No. 3Arabs Control the Sudan

Black Americans are quick to believe that Africans have no agency over their countries. With regards to Egypt and Sudan, there is a tendency to think that they were colonized by the Arabs and that’s just how they have been ever since. In this view, indigenous Africans are just perpetual victims and cannot have adopted Islam on their own accord. Furthermore, they think that indigenous Africans have no culpability in the current problems facing their country. As someone who has lived in both Egypt and Sudan, I can acknowledge both their agency to make their own choices as well as the negative consequences for their choices.

If we look at the current conflict, we know that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been implicated as one of the major supporters of the RSF and as a country with major economic interests in the country. While their actions have been deplorable and they happen to be Arabs, there has been little talk about Abu Dharr Ahmed, the Sudanese national based in the UAE on whom the US Department of Treasury put sanctions and his affiliate companies due to his support of the RSF.⁷ There is also very little talk about the multitude of African countries that have allowed weapons to be shipped into RSF-controlled territories from Somalia to Chad. There is little talk about the fact that the RSF actually made their declaration of independence and set up their parallel government in Kenya, another complicit African country. Even more, the conflict is not religious as both sides are Muslims but interestingly enough, the RSF rebels brand themselves as Islamic moderates and accuse the government forces of Islamic extremism.⁸ On the side of the SAF, we find Egypt, Iran, China, and Turkey. These countries represent a variety of different ethnic groups making the conflict not solely ethnic or religious, but largely political and economic. Anyone characterizing the conflict in solely ethnic and religious terms has nothing meaningful to say about Sudan.

Error No. 4Islam Was Forced on the Sudan by the Sword

With that said, let’s take a brief look at the history of the first Arab encounters in the Sudan. The first Arabs to enter the land we now know as the Sudan came prior to the advent of Islam. They were not yet known for their religion. Therefore, when they settled in the region, they lived isolated according to their traditional tribal “sheikhdoms.” Islam would eventually spread through various channels throughout the region and not primarily through Arabs. If you read the following list of Arab encounters closely you would understand that Islam spread to several areas prior to their encounters with Arabs. This is because Nuba-land largely resisted Arab Muslim hegemony but over the centuries individuals and families began to embrace Islam and Arab identity.

Of those who claim Arab ancestry in Sudan, they are either Jaʿalīyyūn or Juhaynah. The Jaʿalīyyah are sedentary whereas the Juhaynah are nomadic. They claim descent from al-ʿAbbās, the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, through Ibrāhīm Jaʿal, who supposedly settled in the Shendi region. The most prominent tribe living along the northern part of the Nile river were the Shāyqīyyah, who also claim ʿAbbāsid ancestry. Most historians consider the Shāyqīyyah as Arabized Nubians although their origins and Arab ties remain inconclusive. They consist of four divisions: 1) Ḥannikāb, 2) Kajabī, 3) ʿAdlānāb, and 4) ʿUmārāb.⁹

Arab-Nubian Encounters

Arab Muslims based in Egypt first fought against the Nubians between the years 639 and 641. Under the governor ʿAbdallah ibn Saʿd, the Arab Muslims besieged Dongola but were not able to call it a victory. It appears that both sides decided to call it a draw. This is what led to the Baqt Treaty. Baqt is from the Greek word pakton (Latin pactum), which means “a compact of mutual obligations and its connected payments.” The initial stipulations of this treaty are lost to history. However, there are many different versions of it that offer us a glimpse into what it might have entailed. Not the least of which is al-Maqrīzī’s version which claims that the Nubians must maintain a mosque in Dongola and that the Nubians must send an annual amount of slaves to Egypt.¹⁰

Arab-Beja Encounters

Another group in current-day North Sudan, the Beja, also had conflict with Arabs. Their land in the east was known for its mines and precious metals. As Arab miners ventured to mine the metals, they began to clash with the Beja. In 854, the Arabs, loyal to Baghdad, kidnapped the Beja chief, ʿAlī Bābā. He was treated honorably in Baghdad and returned home with gifts.

One specific conflict between the Arabs and the Beja involves a man named ʿAbdallah al-ʿUmarī, who claimed to be a descendant of the Companion, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. He had sights at becoming rich from the Beja mines. So he purchased a group of slaves and attempted to foment hostilities between Nubian tribes. Then governor of Egypt, Aḥmad ibn Tūlūn had heard of al-ʿUmarī’s antics in Aswan and sent troops to subdue his activities but al-ʿUmarī was initially victorious. Local Nubians would eventually assassinate him and send his head to Aḥmad ibn Tūlūn. However, one tribe who had allied and intermarried with the Beja, the Rabīʿah, had fought against al-ʿUmarī and their chief later became known as Ṣāḥib al-Maʿdan, “the Lord of the Mines.”¹¹

Ibn Sulaym

Ibn Sulaym al-Aswānī is another important figure because, as his name denotes, he was a Nubian Muslim who wrote in Arabic about his travels through the various Nubian lands. As history records, he was invested in both the spread of Islam in his country and rekindling their trade with the outside world, as it had lapsed during the exchange of power between the Abbasids and Fatimids. During his travels, he finds that there were many un-Arabicized Muslims in the Maris province. This would seem to denote that these Nubian Muslims accepted Islam out of conviction, not by force or cultural chauvinism.¹²

Error No. 5Ancient History Tells Us About Current Events

Social media misinformers speak about Sudan as if nothing has happened in the region during the last 4000 years. Their knowledge of Sudan begins with clichés they heard about ancient Egypt, Kush, and Nubia and ends with a newsclip from Fox News. Moreover, many of those speaking in the public sphere claim to be anti-religious but are religiously devoted to their false beliefs about history and dogmatically cling to the religion of American racial categories. Many of this ilk will be surprised to know that quite a bit has happened between then and now and that history does not always follow their logic. While history is necessary to understanding the present, you cannot simply cut off your study of it at some arbitrary point in the ancient past. You have to study the full history.

The history of the Sudan is as old as the earth itself (like every place in the world). One cannot do it justice simply by talking about pyramids and black kings. Rather, you must talk about geography, the people in those places, and the events that happened in between. They must also understand the events from the perspectives of people during those times rather than American standards and hindsight. For instance, prior to colonization, kingdoms were not marked by imaginary lines in the ground but by fortified cities and villages, spheres of influence, common language, and political agreements and alliances. Therefore, when we speak of Nubia, we are speaking of three main capital cities that cover the southern province of current-day Egypt, Aswan, and northern Sudan until the current-day city of Khartoum. Nobadae (from which the word Nuba is derived) was situated before the First Cataract. The next Nubian territory was the Makoritae, whose capital was at Old Dongola. The third territory was that of Alodaei, whose capital was at Soba near the current Sudanese capital.¹³ There was also the more ancient capital of Kerma.

The ancient Nubian religion was Sabianism, which overlapped with the ancient religion of Egypt. That faith, now lost to history, was replaced by Christianity. Christianity first spread to Nubia prior to the 4th century through Egyptian Christians who were being persecuted by the Roman Empire. They fled south into Nubia seeking safety. After the 4th century, Nubia officially became Christian from the missionary work of Emperor Justinian’s wife, Theodora (an Arian Christian) who focused her efforts there.¹⁴

Islam in Sudan has never been centralized. Between 1600 and 1900, Islam in Sudan centered primarily around Sufi orders or ṭuruq. Even under Turco-Egyptian rule, while the scholars were encouraged to study at al-Azhar, there was never an official policy of religion or central Sudanese religious institution. Many Christian apologists, Afrocentrists, and anti-religious pundits carry an erroneous view that Islam spread and was enforced by a single entity or group of people. I do not deny that there were instances of war and coercion in the Sudan and other places. However, in absence of a centralized structure and program of repression a religion cannot take root in a locale and persist in the hearts and minds of a people. There must be a level of conviction involved.¹⁵

Africans Bring Islam to the Sudan

In other regions such as Darfur, Sennar, and South Sudan, Islam spread from other Africans.¹⁶ The Takrur (Takarir or Takarna) were Muslim pilgrims who passed through Darfur on their way east to make the Ḥajj pilgrimage to Mecca. From Darfur, some took the caravans north to Asyut and Cairo. Others traveled to Sennar and Gondar to Massawa on the sea. Another popular route was through Shendi to Suakin. Many of the pilgrims were poor and depended on the charity of the locals. Some eventually settled in the region and became known as Fallata. They usually worked in manual labor such as picking cotton.¹⁷

The indigenous African Funj ruled from about 1504 to 1821. The Qawasma was an Arab tribe that sought to settle in the Jazīrah region. They struck an alliance with the Funj in 1505 to conquer the Christian stronghold of Alwa, whose capital was at Soba. The Qawasma leader was named Abdullah Jamma and the Funj leader was named Umara Dunqus. The native inhabitants of Alwa eventually merged with the Arabs and Funj conquerors forming the tribe now known as Abdullab (after Abdullah Jamma). This alliance would eventually expand further north to Halfa and further south to the current Ethiopian border. This was at the same time the Ottomans were expanding deeper south into Egypt.¹⁸ The Shāyqīyyah fell under their rule for most of this time (under the Dongola province) but began to rebel against the Funj toward the end of this period. The Turco-Egyptians invaded current-day Sudan in 1820. There were those among the Shāyqīyyah who collaborated with them and those who fought against them. Those among the Shāyqīyyah who fought against the Turco-Egyptians eventually moved to Shendi.¹⁹

So it can be said that in spite of the fact that Muslims started to enter the Sudan in the ninth century, Islam did not spread in the Sudan, and the Bedouin Muslims did not acquire a knowledge of their religion until the days of the Funj kingdom.²⁰

Thus, Islam primarily spread to the lands of the Sudan from West Africa and not Egypt or Arabia as many people might think. This is evidenced by the African flavor of Islam in the Sudan, known by their adherence to the Mālikī school of thought and plethora of Sufi orders. While this is not an exhaustive history of the Sudan, it is clear that many things have happened in Sudan since the heyday of Nubia and not always the way we might assume. If we only look at ancient history, we will never come to understand what is happening now in the Sudan.

ClosingConclusion

If you were taught an American curriculum, you were almost certainly miseducated about Africa. Unless you had an intentional means of re-educating yourself on Africa, your ignorance about African history has probably not subsided. Even if you had this intentional means, most of the books we have access to about Africa were written by Europeans or European-thinking people (this includes so-called Afrocentrists). Short of living in Africa (and not as a tourist), interacting with its people, seeing its sites, hearing the stories, you probably have no real concept of Africa. According to the Tourism Analytics website, in 2025 only 0.8% of American citizens have traveled to Africa.²¹ It is probably safe to assume that most of them were probably immigrants from Africa or have parents from the continent. The number of African Americans who travel outside of America is extremely low, let alone those who travel to Africa. Yet many think they can speak on the entirety of the continent without studying it, visiting it, or knowing its people and languages.

We must remember that Black Americans and Sudanese are not strangers. For at least a century, we have had subtle but strong ties between us. Starting with the likes of Dusé Mohamed Ali and Satti Majid to Shaykh Ahmad Hassoun, Dr. Malik Badri, and Dr. Ahmad Osman to Mohamed Nour and Ja’far Shaykh Idris, African American Muslims have seen and felt the presence of the Sudanese diaspora in their communities.

Now our brothers and sisters in Sudan need our support more than ever — and we are well placed to give it. African Americans are the largest and most politically powerful national minority in the United States, with a century-old bond to the Sudanese people already in place. Yet on this war we have been largely silent, in part because the loudest accounts reaching us have flattened a complex conflict into a slogan that explains nothing. The Sudan conflict is genuinely difficult to read, even for the politically astute among us. That is not a reason to look away. It is a reason to do the work — to study it as carefully as our forebears studied everything else they meant to change — so that when we speak, and when we act, we do both with clarity.