History of Sudan
The modern Republic of Sudan was formed in 1956 and inherited its boundaries from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, established in 1899. For times predating 1899, usage of the term "Sudan" for the territory of the Republic of Sudan was somewhat anachronistic, and may have referred to the more diffuse concept of the Sudan.
Democratic Unionist Party (Sudan)
The party emerged in 1952 from the historic approach of the Khatmiyya Sufi order, founded in the first half of the 19th century by Mohammed Uthman al-Mirghani, and Ismail al-Azhari's urban nationalist Ashigga Party, established in 1943. In Sudan's first parliamentary election the NUP won a legislative majority, making al-Azhari the first Sudanese Prime Minister under British–Egytptian colonial rule. On 19 December 1955, shortly after the First Sudanese Civil War had broken out, al-Azhari, declared the Independence of Sudan. Internal divisions between the al-Azhari faction and the Khatmiyya order however led to a split in 1956, with the Khatmiyya order founding the new People's Democratic Party (PDP). The party subsequently lost its majority, but remained a major political force even after General Abboud's short-lived 1958 coup d'état.