, Bilād al- , literally “land of the blacks”, the general name in pre-modern Arabic sources for the Saharo-Sahelian sector of Africa, that lying south of the Mag̲h̲rib, Libya and Egypt and stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. 1. The eastern part of the Sūdān. See for this, čad in Suppl; dārfūr ; kordofān ; nūba ; wādāy ; and for the modern period, sūdān , the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the modern Republic of Sudan. 2. History of the Western Sūdān. It is by the name Bilād al-Sūdān al-G̲h̲arbī (although the “western” qualification is n…