White Nile
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White Nile
White Nile
or Bahr al-Abyad (Arabic, bahr, river, and abyad, white), name of the Nile River in the territory of Sudan, for a distance extending from the river’s convergence with its left tributary, al-Ghazal, up to the mouth of the Blue Nile. The White Nile is 957 km long, and its bed is 1–2 km wide. Its most important tributary is the Sobat on the right; at high water, the Sobat brings much suspended matter into the White Nile, giving the water a whitish appearance, hence its name. From the mouth of the Sobat to the mouth of the Blue Nile the current is slow. In the upper reaches the discharge of water is uniform, averaging 453 m3/sec year round; below the confluence with the Sobat the discharge increases considerably and reaches a year-round average of 808 m3/sec near Khartoum (with a maximum of 1,354 m3/sec in October). The Jabal al-Awliya dam, created to regulate the flow of the lower Nile, is 40 kilometers above Khartoum. The waters of the White Nile are used for irrigation. There is fishing. The river is navigable along its entire expanse. There is a railroad drawbridge near the city of Kusti.
REFERENCES
Hurst, H. Nil. Moscow, 1954. (Translated from English.)Dmitrevskii, Iu. D. Vnutrennie vody Afriki i ikh ispoizovanie. Leningrad, 1967.