Sudan P-71cr 2 Pounds 2017 UNC—Replacement (Prefix BJ)

This 2017 Sudanese 2 Pounds banknote features a beautiful celebration of the country's material culture, focusing on traditional craftsmanship and the performing arts.

Banknote Characteristics

Variety:

• P-74a 2011
• P-74b 2015 — Signature: Abdelrahman Hassan Abdelrahman Hashim (AHAH)
• P-74c 2017 — Signature: Hazim Albegadir Ahmed Babiker (HAAB)
  • P-74cr — Replacement issue with prefix BJ (this note)

Colors:

• Mustard / Goldenrod: the strongest color, especially in the borders and the "2" denominations
• Terracotta / Ochre: pottery on the front and the musical instruments on the back
• Sand / Cream: the off-white areas have a warm, sandy tint

Front: Traditional Sudanese Pottery

The face of the note displays a collection of pottery and woven items that reflect everyday life and communal traditions:

• Jebena (Coffee Pot): The distinct long-necked coffee pot used in the traditional Sudanese coffee ceremony, accompanied by small ceramic cups.
• Gulla (Water Jugs): Large, porous clay jugs used for cooling water — a staple in Sudanese households, designed to keep water cool through evaporation.
• Bakhour (Incense Burner): The taller, footed ceramic piece used for aromatic woods and resins, a central part of Sudanese hospitality.
• Woven Mats and Baskets: Patterns representing Tabaq (woven food covers) and trays made from palm fronds, often dyed in vibrant reds and purples.
• Wooden Headrest: A traditional carved wooden headrest, used to protect elaborate hairstyles while sleeping.

Back: Traditional Musical Instruments

The reverse illustrates the diversity of Sudan's musical heritage, featuring instruments from various regions:

• Tambour (Lyre): The most prominent instrument — a five-stringed bowl lyre common in northern and eastern Sudan, with a wooden bowl resonator covered in skin, two arms, and a crossbar.
• Waza (Trumpets): Long, curved wooden trumpets played in orchestras by the Berta people of the Blue Nile region, each instrument producing a single note.
• Nogara (Drums): A large, standing cylindrical drum — the heartbeat of many Sudanese folk dances.
• Balafon / Xylophone: A traditional xylophone with wooden slats, played with mallets.
• Thumb Piano (Likembe/Kalimba): Small hand-held instruments with metal tines, common in the southern regions.
• Violin: A modern violin included alongside the traditional instruments — symbolizing the blend of ancient rhythms with classical influences in modern Sudanese music.

Watermark: Bird

Security Thread: Present

Issuing entity: Central Bank of Sudan (Bank of Sudan)

Currency: Sudanese pound (2007–date)

About Sudan

• Capital: Khartoum (city pop ~6 million; metro pop ~8 million, UN 2023) — similar to London or the Dallas–Fort Worth metro
• Population: ~48 million (UN 2023) — similar to Spain or California
• Area: 1,861,484 km² (~718,722 mi²) — post-secession figure (2011); roughly the size of Alaska and Texas combined, comparable to Western Europe
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$4,500 USD (IMF 2023) — ranks ~170th out of 193 globally
• Main exports: Gold, oil (reduced since South Sudan secession), livestock, sesame, cotton
• Borders: Egypt (north), Libya (northwest), Chad (west), Central African Republic (southwest), South Sudan (south), Ethiopia (southeast), Eritrea (east); Red Sea coast (northeast)
• Official languages: Arabic, English
• Spoken Languages: Sudanese Arabic (spoken by ~70%) and over 100 indigenous languages:

• • Nilo-Saharan Family
    • Nubian languages (~8%) — along the Nile (north)
    • Fur (~3%)  in Darfur
    • Zaghawa (~1%) in Darfur (also spoken in Chad)
    • Masalit (~1%) in West Darfur
    • Nuba languages (~1%) in the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan
    • Nilotic Languages (same family as South Sudan's Dinka)
      • Nuer (~2%) in the far south
  • Cushitic Languages (Same family as Somali and Ethiopia's Oromo)
    • Beja (~6%) in the Red Sea Hills and northeast
      
      
• Ethnicity: Sudan is extraordinarily diverse. The population spans:
  • Arab-identifying communities (mostly in the north and center)
  • Black African ethnic groups (Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit, Nuba, Beja, and dozens more), mostly at Sudan's eastern and western edges
  • Nubian peoples whose ancestry predates Arab arrival by millennia
  • The Arab/African distinction is politically charged and often misleading — many Sudanese are both, and identity shifts by region, religion, and context.
• Arab identity vs. Sudanese identity: Northern Sudanese have historically identified with Arab culture and the Arabic language, and Sudan was a founding member of the Arab League. But a distinct Sudanese identity — rooted in Nile Valley civilization, Nubian heritage, and African geography — has always coexisted with and sometimes competed against pan-Arab consciousness. The question of whether Sudan is an Arab country or an African one has never been fully resolved, and the Darfur conflict brought that tension into catastrophic relief.
• Sovereignty:
  • Ancient Nubian kingdoms: Kingdom of Kush (~2500–350 BCE), Meroë (~300 BCE–350 CE), and successor states
  • Islamic sultanates and Funj Sultanate (1504–1821)
  • Ottoman-Egyptian rule (1821–1885)
  • Mahdist State (1885–1899)
  • Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (condominium, 1899–1956)
  • Republic of Sudan (1956–1969)
  • Democratic Republic of Sudan (1969–1985)
  • Republic of Sudan (1985–2019)
    • South Sudan seceded: 9 July 2011 — Sudan lost roughly one-third of its territory and the majority of its oil reserves
  • Current Republic of Sudan after the 2019 Sudanese Revolution and the fall of the Omar Al-Bashir regime

Sudan Unfiltered

• Sudan has more ancient pyramids than Egypt — over 200 Nubian pyramids at Meroë, Nuri, and El-Kurru, built by the Kushite pharaohs who once ruled all of Egypt as the 25th Dynasty. They are steeper, smaller, and almost entirely unvisited by tourists. Most people have never heard of them.
• In 2011, South Sudan voted for independence with 98.83% in favor — one of the most decisive referendums in history. Sudan lost roughly a third of its land and most of its oil. The separation was the culmination of two civil wars that killed an estimated 2.5 million people over five decades.
• The Darfur conflict, which began in 2003, has killed an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people and displaced over 2.5 million. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir for genocide — the first sitting head of state ever indicted by the ICC. He was never extradited. Darfur's status remains volatile; it is not a resolved conflict.
• In 2019, a popular uprising ended 30 years of al-Bashir's rule. A transitional civilian-military government took over — then, in October 2021, the military staged a coup and dissolved it. In April 2023, war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). As of 2026, Sudan has no functioning central government. The conflict has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with over 10 million people displaced.
• The Sudanese dialect of Arabic (Sudanese Arabic) is distinct enough from Egyptian or Gulf Arabic that speakers sometimes struggle to understand each other. It carries heavy Nubian, Beja, and sub-Saharan African vocabulary — a linguistic fingerprint of the country's layered identity.
• Sudan was once called the breadbasket of the Arab world — it has more arable land than any country in the Middle East and North Africa. That potential has never been realized. Decades of war, sanctions, mismanagement, and debt have left it among the poorest countries on earth.

The Clay That Remembers Everything

The pottery on the front of this note isn't decoration. It's a living technology — refined over thousands of years in the Nile Valley, where the same river that built Egypt also built Nubia, Kush, and Meroë. The gulla, that porous clay water jug, works on the same principle as a modern evaporative cooler: water seeps through the unglazed walls, evaporates, and drops the temperature inside by 10–15 degrees. No electricity. No refrigerant. Just physics and fired clay.

The jebena — the long-necked coffee pot — is the center of a ceremony that has no equivalent in Western coffee culture. Coffee in Sudan is spiced with ginger and cardamom, served in tiny cups, and shared in rounds that can last hours. Refusing a cup is a social statement. The pot itself is a signal: someone is home, someone is welcoming you, the fire is on.

Sudanese pottery traditions are among the oldest continuously practiced craft traditions in Africa. Archaeological sites along the Nile have yielded decorated ceramics dating back 7,000 years — predating the Egyptian Old Kingdom. The geometric patterns, the burnished surfaces, the hand-coiled forms: they haven't changed much. That's not stagnation. That's mastery.

The Music Sudan Doesn't Export — But Should

If you've never heard Sudanese music, you're missing one of the most distinctive sounds on the continent. It sits at a crossroads that exists nowhere else: ancient Nile Valley tonality, sub-Saharan rhythm, Arabic maqam scales, and East African percussion — all in the same song, sometimes in the same bar.

The tambour — that five-stringed bowl lyre on the back of this note — is not a folk curiosity. It's one of the oldest stringed instruments in the world, with direct ancestors in ancient Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt. In Sudan it's still played at weddings, ceremonies, and zar rituals — trance healing ceremonies where the music is understood to communicate with spirits. The tambour doesn't accompany the ritual. It is the ritual.

The waza trumpets of the Berta people operate on a principle called hocket — each player produces a single note, and the melody only exists when the ensemble plays together. No one musician can play the tune alone. It's a musical philosophy built into the instrument: the community is the song.

Modern Sudanese music — artists like Mohammed Wardi, Abdel Karim el-Kabli, and the late Khogali Osman — fused these traditions with orchestral arrangements and Arabic poetry into something that was enormously popular across the Arab world in the 1970s and 80s. Sudan had a golden age of music that most of the world never heard. The instruments on this note are where that sound came from.

Own a Note From a Civilization Older Than Its Own Name

This is a replacement note — prefix BJ, issued by the Central Bank of Sudan in 2017, printed to replace damaged or destroyed notes in circulation. Replacements are produced in smaller quantities than standard issues and are consistently harder to find in uncirculated condition.

On one side: pottery that has been made the same way for 7,000 years. On the other: instruments that carry the memory of kingdoms most people have never heard of. Sudan is one of the most historically layered, musically rich, and tragically overlooked countries on earth. This note is two square inches of evidence.