Imaginary Sudan – Reflections on the Formation of the Notion of Sudan in the Period of European Influences

ABSTRACT The author explores how the images from the colonial past affected what we understand today under the notion of Sudan. He concentrates on the category of the Nile, Sudanese-Egyptian analogies, the history making processes and colonial rule. Moreover points out that the the British used and reproduced a Muslim concept of cultural geography of Africa, and in particular, the notion of Bilad as-Sudan (”Land of the Blacks”), constituting the essence of division into white and black Africa. In this tradition Sudan placed itself at the meeting point between those two worlds and was presented as the civilisation borderland of the Muslim culture. This image was taken over by the Europeans and the British in particular. For them Sudan was an arena of conflict of civilisation with barbarity, good with evil, Europe with primitive culture.