The party emerged in 1952 from the historic approach of the Khatmiyya Sufi order, founded in the first half of the 19th century by Mohammed Uthman al-Mirghani II, and Ismail al-Azhari's urban nationalist Ashigga Party, established in 1943. In Sudan's first parliamentary election the NUP won a legislative majority, making al-Azhari the first Sudanese Prime Minister under British–Egyptian colonial rule. On 19 December 1955, shortly after the First Sudanese Civil War had broken out, al-Azhari, declared the Independence of Sudan. Internal divisions between the al-Azhari faction and the Khatmiyya order however led to a split in 1956, with the Khatmiyya order founding the new People's Democratic Party (PDP). The party subsequently lost its majority, but remained a major political force even after General Abboud's short-lived 1958 coup d'état.