The Sudan Handbook

land &  WateR    51

as the water recedes. For people who live by combining cattle-herding,

fishing and seasonal agriculture, as many do in southern Sudan, the

particular flow of the White Nile shapes their livelihoods.

The Sudd soaks up seasonal changes and the White Nile emerges

from it, south of Malakal, as a relatively predictable river, with a fairly

constant flow of water through the year. At Khartoum, it joins with

another, very different Nile. The Blue Nile has a shorter journey than

the White; it rushes down to Khartoum from the highlands of Ethiopia,

crossing mostly hard ground, with no meandering along the way. It is a

very changeable river. When there is no rain in the Ethiopian highlands,

there is little water in the Blue Nile; when the rains fall, the river swells

rapidly and dramatically. Between May and August, its volume rises by

around 1,000 per cent; by February, it is back to its lowest point. Because

of this rapid flow, it does not create a vast wetland like the Sudd; there

are some local, minor changes in its course, but the fertile alluvial soils

which it deposits – the jerif – lie closely along the course of the river

itself.

It is the waters of the Blue Nile – and those of its smaller sibling,

the Atbara – which make the Nile north of Khartoum swell and recede

with the seasons each year. North of Khartoum, the river goes down a

series of steps in the landscape, which produce the cataracts, long an

obstruction to river traffic. Along this stretch of river, as along the Blue

Nile, the seasonal generosity of the river was closely bound to its banks,

and settlement and farming have always clung closely to the edge of the

water. In Egypt, the seasonality of the Nile was the basis of the annual

inundation from which Egypt’s agriculture was developed.

It was Egypt’s reliance on the waters of the Nile which helped to create

Sudan; in the late nineteenth century, Egypt’s British masters could not

countenance the thought that any other European power might control

the flood which made Egypt’s fields fruitful, and so they insisted on

the need for a campaign to defeat the Mahdist state. It was also Egypt’s

reliance on the Nile which was to set in train the succession of grand

hydraulic schemes, planned under the condominium, some of which are

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors finally^ being^ built^ today.^ Shortly^ after^ the^ defeat^ of^ the^ Mahdists,^ the^

(www.riftvalley.net).