HISTORY OF EARLY SUDAN

Adapted from General History of Africa III: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century

The first settlement of Sudan dates from the end of the Stone Age when the flourishing Sahara had become barren and forbidding as slowly became a desert. The Blacks who lived their migrated south to the Sahel where they found other groups of Blacks to form stronger groups and small kingdoms. When the Muslims arrived in the Sudanese Sahara, they found a series of states. The powerful Soninke kingdom of Ghana dominated the extended Mande group in the region between the Senegal and Niger rivers while the nucleus of what would become the Songhay Kingdom took shape in the eastern part of the Inland Niger Delta.

The period from the eighth to the eleventh century was decisive for the peoples of Sudan. Because of sound organization and powerfully centralized structure of their monarchies, they were able to realize the importance of trade with the Mediterranean and Saharan African. Black states succeeded in safeguarding their personality, despite the coming of Islam, and thus ensured the foundations of lasting civilization whose subsequent development found expression in Mali, the Songhay empire and in the city-states of the Hausa.