Face of the Truth: Sennar Revives the Memory of the State
Ibrahim Shiglawi
Khartoum witnessed on Saturday the signing of a Charter for Reconciliation and Peaceful Coexistence among the components of Sennar State under the patronage of President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with the participation of Prime Minister Dr. Kamil Idris, and attended by a large gathering of native administration leaders, Sufi orders, religious figures, and community representatives from the state. The step aimed at restoring the social fabric and strengthening stability in the aftermath of the war.
When we speak of Sennar State, we are speaking of one of the most important founding moments in Sudan’s history. It was there that the Sennar Sultanate (1504–1821), the first Islamic state in the country, emerged. It succeeded in accommodating ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity within a single political framework through the alliance between the Funj and the Abdallab. For this reason, Sennar has remained in the national memory as a symbol of the inclusive state, one built more upon coexistence and balance than upon domination.
In this sense, the idea of a “Return to Sennar” in Sudanese political and cultural discourse—as expressed in Mohamed Abdel Hai’s poem Return to Sennar—acquires a meaning that transcends historical nostalgia for the past, becoming instead a search for a foundational model of identity, state, and society. Abdel Hai was not invoking a city as much as he was recalling the first formative moment of the Sudanese self, where memory, myth, and history converge to construct the meaning of belonging to the homeland.
Today, after the April 15 war ushered in an exceptionally complex reality in our country, the invocation of Sennar emerges in a different context, yet one deeply connected to the state’s original idea. The war was not merely a military confrontation; it was a moment that dismantled the social and political fabric, reproduced divisions within society, widened the gaps among its components, and threatened the very principle upon which the Sudanese state was founded—the principle of unity in diversity. In such a context, the central question becomes: how can the Sudanese society that has been damaged by the war be rebuilt?
From this perspective, the launch of the community reconciliation project in Sennar State can be understood as an event that goes beyond its local character. Because of its historical symbolism, Sennar becomes a starting point carrying a clear political significance: reconnecting the torn Sudanese social fabric by recalling the memory of the first state that historically succeeded in managing diversity within a unified and stable political framework. It is as though the choice of Sennar carries an implicit message that rebuilding Sudan after the war does not begin from a vacuum, but from reclaiming the models that first shaped its political consciousness.
This approach also reflects the state’s recognition that the current crisis is not merely a security crisis, but rather a crisis of a social contract that collapsed under the pressure of war. Community reconciliations are thus viewed as part of a serious effort to rebuild trust among the components of society after the war reshaped social relations along the lines of polarization and alignment. Within this framework, reconciliation becomes a profoundly political act because it touches the very essence of the state: its relationship with its citizens, its social structure, and its capacity to generate internal cohesion.
The importance of Sennar today also stems from the fact that it was not outside the sphere of the war’s impact. Rather, it became part of the transformations that affected Sudanese society, whether in terms of economic pressures, social tensions, or the reshaping of human relationships. Yet choosing it as the starting point for reconciliations gives it an even greater symbolic dimension, transforming it into the idea of returning people to the original platform of foundation in order to rebuild the political and social meaning of the state.
Here, politics and history intersect in a remarkable way. The current scene reproduces what Mohamed Abdel Hai expressed poetically when he portrayed the return to Sennar as a return to the earliest roots of Sudanese identity, rich in values, and to the formative moment when the boundaries between the cultural and the political had not yet been separated. What was once a symbolic vision in the poem has now become a practical political question: how can historical memory be transformed into a tool for rebuilding the state?
The real challenge does not lie in the success of a local reconciliation here or there, but in the ability of this experience to evolve into a national model capable of being replicated. The Sudanese state after the war faces not only the challenge of reconstruction but also a greater challenge related to redefining itself and rebuilding the relationship between the state and its social components. Accordingly, community reconciliations become one of the most important instruments for reproducing political and social legitimacy because they address the war’s most immediate wound at the level of everyday life, where trust is either built or destroyed.
According to #Face_of_the_Truth, peace after wars is not built through the absence of weapons, but through the restoration of trust among people. Thus, the reconciliation in Sennar is not the end of a dispute but the beginning of a national project that places upon the state the responsibility of transforming reconciliations into national cohesion, upon society the responsibility of overcoming the divisions created by war, and upon the political, cultural, and media elites the responsibility of producing a discourse that unites rather than divides. If Sennar once witnessed the birth of the Sudanese state, today it possesses the opportunity to begin the journey of recovery, for Sudan will not regain its state until it regains its society.
Wishing you continued good health and well-being.
Monday, July 6, 2026
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