“The study of architecture cannot be undertaken without an understanding of the society that produces it.”Guy T. Petherbridge

Tuti island

Khartoum North

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“Architecture of the Islamic World”

Tuti village

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The Presidential Palace

The friendship Palace Hotel

Roman Catholic Church

The Mahdi Mosque

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and theninth largest in the world, and it is nearly as largeas Western Europe and one third of the UnitedStates.

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Nearly 40 percent is Arabic, up to 20percent are from other ethnic groups,but follow the Arabic customs and livein the North or central regions, andabout 25 percent is purely African andlive mainly in the South.

Sudan is situated in the Northeast ofAfrica, it has common boundaries withEgypt and Libya in the North, 500 milesof Red Sea coastline and Ethiopia inthe East, Kenya, Uganda and Zaire inthe South, Chad and the Empire ofCentral African Republic in the West.

Arabic is the official language, but it isthe primary language only in the Northand the center. More than 100 lan-guages are spoken in the country.English is the second spoken languagein Sudan, although it was the officiallanguage in the South until 1956, whenSudan gained its independence.

The climate is tropical and continental.In the South, it is equatorial while in theNorth the desert is dry and warm mostof the year.The country is generally flat with hillsand mountains in the east and West.The River Nile is a dominant physicalfeature, which is formed by the WhiteNile, which begins at Lake Victoria inUganda, and the Blue Nile, whichbegins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia.Sudan’s population is estimated at30,120,420 (July 1995).

The distance from the North to South isapproximately 1,275 miles and East toWest 1,000 miles.

The people are as diverse as their landand climate. Most of them live near theNile River and its tributaries. The Sudanmay well become a “ food basket” ofthe world with its 200 million acres offertile soil.

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The country sprawls across 967,500square miles of desert in the North,grassy plains in the central part andtropical rain forests in the South.

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