page_title: White Nile
section_title: Mountain Nile
hierarchical_section_title: White Nile / In South Sudan and Sudan / Mountain Nile
caption_attribution_description: English: Khartoum with White and Blue Niles
context_page_description: The White Nile is a river in Africa, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile; the other is the Blue Nile. The name comes from colouring due to clay carried in the water.
  In the strict meaning, "White Nile" refers to the river formed at Lake No, at the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal Rivers. In the wider sense, "White Nile" refers to all the stretches of river draining from Lake Victoria through to the merger with the Blue Nile. These higher stretches being named the "Victoria Nile", the "Albert Nile" and then the "Mountain Nile" or "Bahr-al-Jabal". "White Nile" may sometimes include the headwaters of Lake Victoria, the most remote of which being 2,300 miles from the Blue Nile.
  The 19th-century search by Europeans for the source of the Nile was mainly focused on the White Nile, which disappeared into the depths of what was then known as "Darkest Africa". The White Nile's true source was not discovered until 1937, when the German explorer Burkhart Waldecker traced it to a stream in Rutovu, at the base of Mount Kikizi.
context_section_description: From Nimule in South Sudan, close to the border with Uganda, the river becomes known as the "Mountain Nile" or "Baḥr al-Jabal" (also "Baḥr el-Jebel", بحر الجبل), literally Mountain River" or "River of the Mountain". The Southern Sudanese state of Central Equatoria through which the river flows was known as Bahr al-Jabal until 2006.
  The southern stretch of the river encounters several rapids before reaching the Sudan plain and the vast swamp of the Sudd. It makes its way to Lake No, where it merges with the Bahr el Ghazal and there forms the White Nile. An anabranch river called Bahr el Zeraf flows out of the Bahr al-Jabal at and flows through the Sudd, to eventually join the White Nile. This Mountain Nile cascades through narrow gorges and over a series of rapids that includes the Fula (Fola) Rapids.
caption: The White and Blue Niles merge at Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
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