Sudd

Sudd
Sudd Swamp from space, May 1993. This photograph was taken during the driest time of year
Location of the Sudd in South Sudan
Geography
Area	57,000 km2 (22,000 sq mi)
Country	South Sudan
Climate type
Ramsar Wetland
Designated	June 05, 2006

The Sudd (a s-Sudd or al-Sudd) is a vast swamp in South Sudan, formed by the White Nile's Baḥr al-Jabal section. The Arabic word sudd is derived from sadd (), meaning "barrier" or "obstruction". The term "the sudd" has come to refer to any large solid floating vegetation island or mat. The area which the swamp covers is one of the world's largest wetlands and the largest freshwater wetland in the Nile basin.

For many years the swamp, and especially its thicket of vegetation, proved an impenetrable barrier to navigation along the Nile. In 61 AD, a party of Roman soldiers sent by the Emperor Nero proceeded up the White Nile but were not able to get beyond the Sudd, which marked the limit of Roman penetration into equatorial Africa. For the same reasons in later times the search for the source of the Nile was particularly difficult; it eventually involved overland expeditions from the central African coast, so as to avoid having to travel through the Sudd.

The Sudd stretches from Mongalla to just outside the Sobat confluence with the White Nile just upstream of Malakal as well as westwards along the Bahr el Ghazal. The shallow and flat inland delta lies between 5.5 and 9.5 degrees latitude North and covers an area of 500 kilometres (310 mi) south to north and 200 kilometres (120 mi) east to west between Mongalla in the south and Malakal in the north.