Sudan (region)

:"For the country in north-east Africa see Sudan".

The Sudan, from the Arabic "bilâd as-sûdân" or "land of the Blacks" (an expression denoting West and Central Africa [International Association for the History of Religions, "Numen", (E.J. Brill: 1959), p.131: "West Africa may be taken as the country stretching from Senegal in the west, to the Cameroons in the east; sometimes it has been called the central and western Sudan, the Bilad as-Sūdan, "Land of the Blacks", of the Arabs."] ), 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 Sudan, the savanna of which forms much of the larger region.

The Sudan extends in a band across Africa from Mali (formerly known as French Sudan when it was a French colony) in the west to the western edge of the Ethiopian Highlands in the east. To the north lies the Sahel, a more arid Acacia savanna region which in turn borders the Sahara 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 Sudd flooded grasslands, and to the south the Northern Congolian forest-savanna mosaic.

ee also

*Sudanian Savanna

Notes