SUAKIN, a seaport of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan on the Red Sea. It is a coralline islet connected with the suburb of El-Kef on the mainland by a causeway and a viaduct. Access is gained to the harbour through a winding and dangerous passage over 2 m. long, terminating in a deep oval-shaped basin several acres in ex tent, and completely sheltered from all winds. Suakin is to some extent superseded by Port Sudan (q.v.), a harbour 36 m. to the north. The custom-house and government offices present an im posing frontage to the sea, and the principal houses are of white coral stone three storeys high. Here, as at Massawa, traders were attracted by an island site which protected them from the Arabs. The mainland belonged in the middle ages to the Beja (q.v.), but in 1330 Ibn Batuta found a son of the amir of Mecca reign ing in Suakin over the Beja, who were his mother's kin. Makrizi says that the chief inhabitants were nominal Muslims and were called Hadarib. The amir of the Hadarib was still sovereign of
the mainland at the time of J. L. Burckhardt's visit (1814), though the island had been seized in 1517 by the Turks under Selim the Great. Mohammed Ali after the conquest of the Sudan leased Suakin from Turkey. This lease lapsed with the pasha's death, but in 1865 Ismail Pasha reacquired the port for Egypt. It has always been the place of embarcation for Sudan pilgrims to Mecca. Legitimate commerce, rapidly growing before the revolt of the mandi (1881), was greatly crippled during the continuance of the dervish power, though the town itself never fell into their hands. Pearl fishing is an important industry and cotton is culti vated in the neighbourhood.
The port is connected by railway with Berber by submarine cables with Suez and Aden and with Jidda, which lies 200 m. north east on the opposite coast of the Red Sea.