The Silent Language of Dress in Modern Sudan: Authority, Identity, and the Emblematic Toub

The toub, Sudan's most emblematic women's garment, serves as a strong and dynamic medium for expressing identity, signaling hierarchies, and preserving cultural heritage. This study explores the cultural significance of the toub through ethnographic fieldwork in the rural Mahas community of Miseeda and the ethnically diverse suburb of Soba. In Miseeda, the white toub indexes elder authority in Sufi gatherings and ceremonial supervision, while in Soba it marks professional respectability for teachers and health workers as well as solemnity at funerals. Across weddings and domestic contexts, the toub mediates relationships between kin and neighbors, its meanings read through color, fabric quality, and wrapping style. Generational shifts are visible as younger women increasingly adopt the abaya, experiment with synthetic fabrics, and integrate new beauty practices, reframing tradition as fashion. By focusing on the toub as both repository of continuity and site of invention, this research situates women's attire within the longue durée of cultural adaptation in Sudan and contributes to debates on women's agency, material culture, and sartorial authority in Africa.