States of Sudan - History

History

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan had eight mudiriyat, or provinces, which were ambiguous when created but became well defined by the beginning of the Second World War. The eight provinces were: Blue Nile, Darfur, Equatoria, Kassala, Khartoum, Kurdufan, Northern, and Upper Nile. In 1948 Bahr al Ghazal split from Equatoria.

There were numerous new provinces created on 1 July 1973. North and South Darfur were created from Darfur, while Kurdufan divided into North and South Kurdufan. Al Jazirah and White Nile were split off from Blue Nile. River Nile split off from Northern. Red Sea was split off from Kassala.

A further fracturing of provinces occurred in 1976. Lakes split from Bahr al Ghazal, and Jonglei split off from Upper Nile. Equatoria divided into East and Western Equatoria. There were thus eighteen provinces. In 1991, the government reorganized the administrative regions into nine federal states, matching the nine provinces that had existed from 1948 to 1973. On 14 February 1994, the government reorganized yet again, creating twenty-six wilayat (states). The majority of the wilayat were either the old provinces or administrative subregions of a province. As part of the new government structure in South Sudan in 2005, Bahr al Jabal was renamed Central Equatoria. In 2006, West Kurdufan was split and merged with North Kurdufan and South Kurdufan. In January 2012, the new states of Central Darfur and East Darfur were created in the Darfur region, bringing the total number of states to 17.