Wadi Al-Nil (Nile Valley) University is a state university based in Atbara, the main city of the River Nile State, north of Khartoum. The university was established in 1990 and is now one of the biggest universities in Sudan. The university currently has 13 colleges, in addition to research centres, and is a member of a number of scientific institutions and groups. These memberships include the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World and the Association of African Universities.

The Nile Valley is one of the centres of the ancient kingdom civilisations in Sudan, including archaeological heritages spanning various historical periods. More recently, Atbara provided an important corridor for the Sudan railroads, linking central, eastern and northern Sudan, resulting in a vibrant trade and industrial heritage.

Nile Valley University has a long term interest and established connections with a number of private family and religious centre collections throughout the Nile Valley region. This includes those held within Atbara itself, once a major cosmopolitan and industrial hub, and those in the surrounding ancient towns and villages, such as Berber, and Al-Damer. These private collections range from old trading family documents, held in the private collection of these families, to large volumes of historic religious documents, held in the collections of the village mosques and khalwas. Despite the importance of these collection materials, they are increasingly vulnerable to deterioration from climate and storage conditions, and are inaccessible to researchers, scholars and interested public.

Nile Valley University has worked for a number of years to develop plans to preserve the legacy of these collections, establishing an early communication with Sudan Memory through the Sudanese Association for Archiving Knowledge (SUDAAK) since 2013.  Since 2020 Sudan Memory has collaborated with Nile Valley University to provide equipment, training in scanning and metadata, and to support the university’s ongoing programme of assessment, recording and conservation of these incredibly rich Nile Valley collections.

What is presented here is a selection of scanned materials that showcases this collection. For more information on the collection, please contact the collection contributor.