Archival films
Archival films
Old Omdurman
Colour and black and white archive film from the Durham University Archive showing footage of Omdurman Market between 1954 and 1955 as well as boat making next to the river Nile and life on the Nile. Omdurman bridge built in 1926 can also be seen. Filmed by. J. Carmichael. A director at Al Jazeera scheme at that time.
Old Khartoum
Archive film from the Durham University Archive showing footage from Khartoum in 1941, featuring many city structures that were removed after independence such as statues and the cathedral bell tower as well as the old market. The film gives a glimpse into city life at the time.
Old Kordofan
Archive film from the Durham University Archive showing films from El Obeid city in 1932 - 1935, showing the market, train stations, and the city water reserve as well as the Mudiriyah building, the oldest lasting governmental building in Sudan, built during the Turkish rule over Sudan. Filmed by Edward Francis
Cover image: Maulid al-Nabi celebrations, Omdurman, 1920/30, picture taken by Wolff, M. E. and G. L. © Durham university Sudan archive
Old Omdurman
Colour and black and white archive film from the Durham University Archive showing footage of Omdurman Market between 1954 and 1955 as well as boat making next to the river Nile and life on the Nile. Omdurman bridge built in 1926 can also be seen. Filmed by. J. Carmichael. A director at Al Jazeera scheme at that time.
Old Khartoum
Archive film from the Durham University Archive showing footage from Khartoum in 1941, featuring many city structures that were removed after independence such as statues and the cathedral bell tower as well as the old market. The film gives a glimpse into city life at the time.
Old Kordofan
Archive film from the Durham University Archive showing films from El Obeid city in 1932 - 1935, showing the market, train stations, and the city water reserve as well as the Mudiriyah building, the oldest lasting governmental building in Sudan, built during the Turkish rule over Sudan. Filmed by Edward Francis
Cover image: Maulid al-Nabi celebrations, Omdurman, 1920/30, picture taken by Wolff, M. E. and G. L. © Durham university Sudan archive
Old Omdurman
Colour and black and white archive film from the Durham University Archive showing footage of Omdurman Market between 1954 and 1955 as well as boat making next to the river Nile and life on the Nile. Omdurman bridge built in 1926 can also be seen. Filmed by. J. Carmichael. A director at Al Jazeera scheme at that time.
Old Khartoum
Archive film from the Durham University Archive showing footage from Khartoum in 1941, featuring many city structures that were removed after independence such as statues and the cathedral bell tower as well as the old market. The film gives a glimpse into city life at the time.
Old Kordofan
Archive film from the Durham University Archive showing films from El Obeid city in 1932 - 1935, showing the market, train stations, and the city water reserve as well as the Mudiriyah building, the oldest lasting governmental building in Sudan, built during the Turkish rule over Sudan. Filmed by Edward Francis
Cover image: Maulid al-Nabi celebrations, Omdurman, 1920/30, picture taken by Wolff, M. E. and G. L. © Durham university Sudan archive
Gordon’s Khartoum
Gordon’s Khartoum
A collection of photographs of the city of Khartoum were part of the first display in the Khalifa House Museum in 1928. They were taken by the Austrian photographer Richard Buchta. He is considered the author of the first documentary trip to the Central African region between 1878 and 1880. Buchta visited Sudan in 1878, accompanied by the Italian traveller and explorer Romolo Jesse. The latter was the ruler of Bahr el-Ghazal and a friend of the General-Governor of Sudan, Gordon Pasha. Buchta's photographs were published in 1881.
The outbreak of the Mahdist revolution in Sudan coincided with Buchta's visit. His pictures represented the only visual reference for Sudan and appeared in many influential publications as news of the revolution spread across the world.
A collection of photographs of the city of Khartoum were part of the first display in the Khalifa House Museum in 1928. They were taken by the Austrian photographer Richard Buchta. He is considered the author of the first documentary trip to the Central African region between 1878 and 1880. Buchta visited Sudan in 1878, accompanied by the Italian traveller and explorer Romolo Jesse. The latter was the ruler of Bahr el-Ghazal and a friend of the General-Governor of Sudan, Gordon Pasha. Buchta's photographs were published in 1881.
The outbreak of the Mahdist revolution in Sudan coincided with Buchta's visit. His pictures represented the only visual reference for Sudan and appeared in many influential publications as news of the revolution spread across the world.
A collection of photographs of the city of Khartoum were part of the first display in the Khalifa House Museum in 1928. They were taken by the Austrian photographer Richard Buchta. He is considered the author of the first documentary trip to the Central African region between 1878 and 1880. Buchta visited Sudan in 1878, accompanied by the Italian traveller and explorer Romolo Jesse. The latter was the ruler of Bahr el-Ghazal and a friend of the General-Governor of Sudan, Gordon Pasha. Buchta's photographs were published in 1881.
The outbreak of the Mahdist revolution in Sudan coincided with Buchta's visit. His pictures represented the only visual reference for Sudan and appeared in many influential publications as news of the revolution spread across the world.
How cities grow
How cities grow
Omdurman is known for its image as the national capital, Sudan’s microcosm, an image that is associated with a long history of cultural, social and political movement revolving around the city. The image of Omdurman is the central topic of this episode, but how did this image come to be formed? And is it imagined or real?
We discuss Omdurman’s early beginnings during the Mahadist state and how the Khalifa planned the city as his capital by looking at the socio-political factors that influenced the shaping of the city. With the rise of the Condominium rule, the seat of power shifted to Khartoum, allowing Omdurman to enter a new era known for its social, cultural and political production that culminated in the nationalist movement.
Since independence, the multiple waves of migration, as well as displacement to the city, has impacted and challenged its cultural identity. We discuss how these recent developments affect the image and identity of the city as a whole.
This is episode one of Khartoum Podcast. Khartoum Podcast is a series produced by Studio Urban of episodes that explore the city of Khartoum and different social, cultural, and political aspects through the lenses of specialists, urbanists, artists, and other inhabitants of the city. The podcast discusses the relationship between people, culture and history to get a better understanding of how the city is continuously being shaped on the everyday.
This episode was produced for Sudan Moves, a project initiated and funded by the Goethe-Institut Sudan.
Guests:
Dr. Hashim Khalifa is a professor, researcher, and architectural analyst. He has previously worked at the Architectural Design Section at the Ministry of Public Works, as well as the Department of Architecture in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Khartoum in addition to his work at several other Sudanese Universities.
Prof. Idris Salim ElHassan is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the International University of Africa. He has previously worked as an associate professor at the University of Khartoum at the Department of Anthropology for more than 25 years where he was the Dean for University Projects for Community Development as well as the Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Technological and Developmental Studies.
Prof. Munzoul Assal, is a professor of Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Economics and Social Studies, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum. He was previously the Director of the Graduates Affairs Administration and the Peace Research Institute at the University of Khartoum.
Tasneem Nagi, is an urban researcher and the founder of the Urban Project. She has previously worked as a Lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Khartoum.
The production team for this episode are:
Researcher and Producer: Mai Abusalih
Presenter: Azza Mohamed
Script: Husam Hilali and Mai Abusalih
Music: Zain Records
Narration and audio mixing: Tariq Suliman
Project Manager: Zainab Gaafar
Equipment and technical assistance: elMastabaTV
Recording studio: Rift Digital Lab
Omdurman is known for its image as the national capital, Sudan’s microcosm, an image that is associated with a long history of cultural, social and political movement revolving around the city. The image of Omdurman is the central topic of this episode, but how did this image come to be formed? And is it imagined or real?
We discuss Omdurman’s early beginnings during the Mahadist state and how the Khalifa planned the city as his capital by looking at the socio-political factors that influenced the shaping of the city. With the rise of the Condominium rule, the seat of power shifted to Khartoum, allowing Omdurman to enter a new era known for its social, cultural and political production that culminated in the nationalist movement.
Since independence, the multiple waves of migration, as well as displacement to the city, has impacted and challenged its cultural identity. We discuss how these recent developments affect the image and identity of the city as a whole.
This is episode one of Khartoum Podcast. Khartoum Podcast is a series produced by Studio Urban of episodes that explore the city of Khartoum and different social, cultural, and political aspects through the lenses of specialists, urbanists, artists, and other inhabitants of the city. The podcast discusses the relationship between people, culture and history to get a better understanding of how the city is continuously being shaped on the everyday.
This episode was produced for Sudan Moves, a project initiated and funded by the Goethe-Institut Sudan.
Guests:
Dr. Hashim Khalifa is a professor, researcher, and architectural analyst. He has previously worked at the Architectural Design Section at the Ministry of Public Works, as well as the Department of Architecture in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Khartoum in addition to his work at several other Sudanese Universities.
Prof. Idris Salim ElHassan is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the International University of Africa. He has previously worked as an associate professor at the University of Khartoum at the Department of Anthropology for more than 25 years where he was the Dean for University Projects for Community Development as well as the Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Technological and Developmental Studies.
Prof. Munzoul Assal, is a professor of Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Economics and Social Studies, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum. He was previously the Director of the Graduates Affairs Administration and the Peace Research Institute at the University of Khartoum.
Tasneem Nagi, is an urban researcher and the founder of the Urban Project. She has previously worked as a Lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Khartoum.
The production team for this episode are:
Researcher and Producer: Mai Abusalih
Presenter: Azza Mohamed
Script: Husam Hilali and Mai Abusalih
Music: Zain Records
Narration and audio mixing: Tariq Suliman
Project Manager: Zainab Gaafar
Equipment and technical assistance: elMastabaTV
Recording studio: Rift Digital Lab
Omdurman is known for its image as the national capital, Sudan’s microcosm, an image that is associated with a long history of cultural, social and political movement revolving around the city. The image of Omdurman is the central topic of this episode, but how did this image come to be formed? And is it imagined or real?
We discuss Omdurman’s early beginnings during the Mahadist state and how the Khalifa planned the city as his capital by looking at the socio-political factors that influenced the shaping of the city. With the rise of the Condominium rule, the seat of power shifted to Khartoum, allowing Omdurman to enter a new era known for its social, cultural and political production that culminated in the nationalist movement.
Since independence, the multiple waves of migration, as well as displacement to the city, has impacted and challenged its cultural identity. We discuss how these recent developments affect the image and identity of the city as a whole.
This is episode one of Khartoum Podcast. Khartoum Podcast is a series produced by Studio Urban of episodes that explore the city of Khartoum and different social, cultural, and political aspects through the lenses of specialists, urbanists, artists, and other inhabitants of the city. The podcast discusses the relationship between people, culture and history to get a better understanding of how the city is continuously being shaped on the everyday.
This episode was produced for Sudan Moves, a project initiated and funded by the Goethe-Institut Sudan.
Guests:
Dr. Hashim Khalifa is a professor, researcher, and architectural analyst. He has previously worked at the Architectural Design Section at the Ministry of Public Works, as well as the Department of Architecture in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Khartoum in addition to his work at several other Sudanese Universities.
Prof. Idris Salim ElHassan is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the International University of Africa. He has previously worked as an associate professor at the University of Khartoum at the Department of Anthropology for more than 25 years where he was the Dean for University Projects for Community Development as well as the Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Technological and Developmental Studies.
Prof. Munzoul Assal, is a professor of Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Economics and Social Studies, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum. He was previously the Director of the Graduates Affairs Administration and the Peace Research Institute at the University of Khartoum.
Tasneem Nagi, is an urban researcher and the founder of the Urban Project. She has previously worked as a Lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Khartoum.
The production team for this episode are:
Researcher and Producer: Mai Abusalih
Presenter: Azza Mohamed
Script: Husam Hilali and Mai Abusalih
Music: Zain Records
Narration and audio mixing: Tariq Suliman
Project Manager: Zainab Gaafar
Equipment and technical assistance: elMastabaTV
Recording studio: Rift Digital Lab
Forces of power
Forces of power
Omdurman pre-Mahdiya
There is archaeological evidence of Omdurman’s existence dating back to the Stone Age. In the 17th century it was mentioned in the writings of travellers and the manuscripts of Tabaqat Wad Dayf-Allah (1646-1730), who recorded Omdurman as a village of the mystic Hamad Wad Um Maryum. The Jamoiyyah and other tribes lived in Omdurman as merchants as it was on one of the most important trade routes in Africa (note the arrow’s direction). The route connected West Africa and Western and Eastern Sudan, and from there, to the rest of the world. Following Mohamed Ali Pasha’s invasion in 1821, Omdurman became a small military base and river crossing to Khartoum.
Siege and liberation of Khartoum
The Imam Al Mahdi wanted to expel the colonisers and announce a new era for the Islamic Umma, so he planned to liberate Khartoum in two stages. The first stage was to isolate it from the rest of Sudan and the outside world. He appointed Amir Osman Digna to barricade the Barbar-Suakin road and ordered Amir Mohamad Al Khair Abdullah to cut the telegraph lines between Barbar and Khartoum as well as between Egypt and Barbar. The second stage was to besiege Khartoum. The siege lasted an entire year. Shiekh Al Obeid Wad Badr besieged the eastern side and Abdulrahman Al Nujumi fortified the siege after the defeat of the Ansar in Burri and western Jirayf. Amir Hamdan Abu Anja besieged the Omdurman garrison until its surrender, and Al Mahdi liberated Khartoum on the 26th of January 1885.
Omdurman during Al Khalifa Abdullah’s rule
After the Imam Al Mahdi's death in 1885, his successor, Al Khalifa Abdullah, ordered the citizens of Khartoum to evacuate the city and move to Omdurman. This move followed Al Mahdi's wish to move away from the enemy’s capital, Khartoum, and turn Omdurman into a national capital. Al Khalifa also ordered his fellow tribesmen and other tribes to migrate to Omdurman to help him manage the new state.
End of Mahdiya State (Battle of Karari) 1898
The British conquered Sudan as part of Europe’s Scramble for Africa and because Britain had interest in ending the Mahdiya state and avenging the killing of Gordon Pasha. The capture of Omdurman, achieved through victory at the Battle of Karari, was crucial as it would secure Anglo-Egyptian colonisers as the undisputed rulers of Sudan.
The Ansar stood their ground and fought well at Karari, showing a great deal of valour and courage, but they were no match for the barrage of modern firearms they were up against. After their triumph at Karari, the British continued southward to follow Al Khalifa Abdullah’s retreating forces, until his martyrdom at the Battle of Um Dibaykrat.
Omdurman during the Condominium
At the beginning of the Condominium, the Anglo-Egyptian government managed the country from Omdurman, before later moving to Khartoum. Khartoum became the new capital and focus of the ruling forces and allies. Omdurman became a national city and shipping port.
Omdurman pre-Mahdiya
There is archaeological evidence of Omdurman’s existence dating back to the Stone Age. In the 17th century it was mentioned in the writings of travellers and the manuscripts of Tabaqat Wad Dayf-Allah (1646-1730), who recorded Omdurman as a village of the mystic Hamad Wad Um Maryum. The Jamoiyyah and other tribes lived in Omdurman as merchants as it was on one of the most important trade routes in Africa (note the arrow’s direction). The route connected West Africa and Western and Eastern Sudan, and from there, to the rest of the world. Following Mohamed Ali Pasha’s invasion in 1821, Omdurman became a small military base and river crossing to Khartoum.
Siege and liberation of Khartoum
The Imam Al Mahdi wanted to expel the colonisers and announce a new era for the Islamic Umma, so he planned to liberate Khartoum in two stages. The first stage was to isolate it from the rest of Sudan and the outside world. He appointed Amir Osman Digna to barricade the Barbar-Suakin road and ordered Amir Mohamad Al Khair Abdullah to cut the telegraph lines between Barbar and Khartoum as well as between Egypt and Barbar. The second stage was to besiege Khartoum. The siege lasted an entire year. Shiekh Al Obeid Wad Badr besieged the eastern side and Abdulrahman Al Nujumi fortified the siege after the defeat of the Ansar in Burri and western Jirayf. Amir Hamdan Abu Anja besieged the Omdurman garrison until its surrender, and Al Mahdi liberated Khartoum on the 26th of January 1885.
Omdurman during Al Khalifa Abdullah’s rule
After the Imam Al Mahdi's death in 1885, his successor, Al Khalifa Abdullah, ordered the citizens of Khartoum to evacuate the city and move to Omdurman. This move followed Al Mahdi's wish to move away from the enemy’s capital, Khartoum, and turn Omdurman into a national capital. Al Khalifa also ordered his fellow tribesmen and other tribes to migrate to Omdurman to help him manage the new state.
End of Mahdiya State (Battle of Karari) 1898
The British conquered Sudan as part of Europe’s Scramble for Africa and because Britain had interest in ending the Mahdiya state and avenging the killing of Gordon Pasha. The capture of Omdurman, achieved through victory at the Battle of Karari, was crucial as it would secure Anglo-Egyptian colonisers as the undisputed rulers of Sudan.
The Ansar stood their ground and fought well at Karari, showing a great deal of valour and courage, but they were no match for the barrage of modern firearms they were up against. After their triumph at Karari, the British continued southward to follow Al Khalifa Abdullah’s retreating forces, until his martyrdom at the Battle of Um Dibaykrat.
Omdurman during the Condominium
At the beginning of the Condominium, the Anglo-Egyptian government managed the country from Omdurman, before later moving to Khartoum. Khartoum became the new capital and focus of the ruling forces and allies. Omdurman became a national city and shipping port.
Omdurman pre-Mahdiya
There is archaeological evidence of Omdurman’s existence dating back to the Stone Age. In the 17th century it was mentioned in the writings of travellers and the manuscripts of Tabaqat Wad Dayf-Allah (1646-1730), who recorded Omdurman as a village of the mystic Hamad Wad Um Maryum. The Jamoiyyah and other tribes lived in Omdurman as merchants as it was on one of the most important trade routes in Africa (note the arrow’s direction). The route connected West Africa and Western and Eastern Sudan, and from there, to the rest of the world. Following Mohamed Ali Pasha’s invasion in 1821, Omdurman became a small military base and river crossing to Khartoum.
Siege and liberation of Khartoum
The Imam Al Mahdi wanted to expel the colonisers and announce a new era for the Islamic Umma, so he planned to liberate Khartoum in two stages. The first stage was to isolate it from the rest of Sudan and the outside world. He appointed Amir Osman Digna to barricade the Barbar-Suakin road and ordered Amir Mohamad Al Khair Abdullah to cut the telegraph lines between Barbar and Khartoum as well as between Egypt and Barbar. The second stage was to besiege Khartoum. The siege lasted an entire year. Shiekh Al Obeid Wad Badr besieged the eastern side and Abdulrahman Al Nujumi fortified the siege after the defeat of the Ansar in Burri and western Jirayf. Amir Hamdan Abu Anja besieged the Omdurman garrison until its surrender, and Al Mahdi liberated Khartoum on the 26th of January 1885.
Omdurman during Al Khalifa Abdullah’s rule
After the Imam Al Mahdi's death in 1885, his successor, Al Khalifa Abdullah, ordered the citizens of Khartoum to evacuate the city and move to Omdurman. This move followed Al Mahdi's wish to move away from the enemy’s capital, Khartoum, and turn Omdurman into a national capital. Al Khalifa also ordered his fellow tribesmen and other tribes to migrate to Omdurman to help him manage the new state.
End of Mahdiya State (Battle of Karari) 1898
The British conquered Sudan as part of Europe’s Scramble for Africa and because Britain had interest in ending the Mahdiya state and avenging the killing of Gordon Pasha. The capture of Omdurman, achieved through victory at the Battle of Karari, was crucial as it would secure Anglo-Egyptian colonisers as the undisputed rulers of Sudan.
The Ansar stood their ground and fought well at Karari, showing a great deal of valour and courage, but they were no match for the barrage of modern firearms they were up against. After their triumph at Karari, the British continued southward to follow Al Khalifa Abdullah’s retreating forces, until his martyrdom at the Battle of Um Dibaykrat.
Omdurman during the Condominium
At the beginning of the Condominium, the Anglo-Egyptian government managed the country from Omdurman, before later moving to Khartoum. Khartoum became the new capital and focus of the ruling forces and allies. Omdurman became a national city and shipping port.
Neighbourhoods of Omdurman
Neighbourhoods of Omdurman
Omdurman was the place the Imam Al Mahdi chose as a camp before the siege of Khartoum on 26th of January 1885, while his followers moved there after the liberation of Khartoum. Al Mahdi lived in a small room next to the Grand Mosque in Omdurman which later became the site of his burial tomb.
During Al Khalifa Abdullah’s rule, the mosque where Al Mahdi was buried became the nucleus around which the city of Omdurman formed. Al Khalifa built a domed shrine for Al Mahdi and built his own house next to it. Others followed suit, building their homes out of mud and bricks around the tomb hoping that proximity would bestow blessings upon them.
Members of the same tribe preferred to live in adjacent houses which led to the creation of various neighbourhoods in four directions. Each neighbourhood developed around a particular tribe, and related tribes settled in specific areas of the city. The city then expanded north and south along the length of the Nile with daily life and activities revolving around the ports.
Omdurman was the place the Imam Al Mahdi chose as a camp before the siege of Khartoum on 26th of January 1885, while his followers moved there after the liberation of Khartoum. Al Mahdi lived in a small room next to the Grand Mosque in Omdurman which later became the site of his burial tomb.
During Al Khalifa Abdullah’s rule, the mosque where Al Mahdi was buried became the nucleus around which the city of Omdurman formed. Al Khalifa built a domed shrine for Al Mahdi and built his own house next to it. Others followed suit, building their homes out of mud and bricks around the tomb hoping that proximity would bestow blessings upon them.
Members of the same tribe preferred to live in adjacent houses which led to the creation of various neighbourhoods in four directions. Each neighbourhood developed around a particular tribe, and related tribes settled in specific areas of the city. The city then expanded north and south along the length of the Nile with daily life and activities revolving around the ports.
Omdurman was the place the Imam Al Mahdi chose as a camp before the siege of Khartoum on 26th of January 1885, while his followers moved there after the liberation of Khartoum. Al Mahdi lived in a small room next to the Grand Mosque in Omdurman which later became the site of his burial tomb.
During Al Khalifa Abdullah’s rule, the mosque where Al Mahdi was buried became the nucleus around which the city of Omdurman formed. Al Khalifa built a domed shrine for Al Mahdi and built his own house next to it. Others followed suit, building their homes out of mud and bricks around the tomb hoping that proximity would bestow blessings upon them.
Members of the same tribe preferred to live in adjacent houses which led to the creation of various neighbourhoods in four directions. Each neighbourhood developed around a particular tribe, and related tribes settled in specific areas of the city. The city then expanded north and south along the length of the Nile with daily life and activities revolving around the ports.
Omdurman Through the Times
Omdurman Through the Times
“I am Omdurman, I Am the Nation
Its voice, and its feelings
I am the foundation
I… the one who brought together the dispersed
Melded north with south
Poured east into west
And planted kindness on the roads
May I remain the pride of our homelands”
- Abdullah Mohammed Zain
“From Futaih, through the creek to Al Maghalig
From the highlands of Aburof to the lowlands
A stride, my lord, barefoot and clean-shaven
Following the route of the Tram”
- Khalil Farah
Omdurman has always been known as the national city, the melting pot that comprises all ethnicities, tribes, geographies and cultures, despite the internal political and economic differences. The opinions seem to vary between supporters and critics of this national identity it represents, or maybe was intended to. In our exploration of the urban history of the city, we will discuss the settings and circumstances that have contributed to the foundation of the city, taking in consideration the issue of migration and its impact on the urban fabric, as one of the most important factors, if not the most important at all, that contributed to the making of today’s Omdurman. The issue of migration will not be discussed in isolation from all the political, economic, and social factors that influenced or was influenced by the city throughout the different time periods.
***
A first time visitor of Omdurman will unmistakable take notice of the particularity of the site, as it lays between the arid western desert that extends as far as the eye can see, and the Nile, the source of life, as it slowly flows northwards toward the Mediterranean, and with its vast skies and rock-strewn ground. All these factors have shaped it into an excellent location, chosen carefully for erecting the camp of Al-Mahdi in his war against the Turco-Egyptian colonization. Nevertheless, these characteristics became ideal for the creation of a city distinguished with its unique history and culture.
The history of settlement in Omdurman highlights the importance of the location, as the excavations around Abu Anja Creek revealed remains that date back to the Lower Paleolithic era, and ever since, the area has remained inhabited by different groups of peoples throughout time. However, Omdurman as we know it today might have been founded by mere chance, as it was originally established as a camp for the armies of Al-Mahdi. Following that, we cannot say that the development of the city that happened afterwards was by mere chance as well, as the planning processes of the city were intentional, including the natural and spontaneous nature of the city’s architecture.
Muhammad Ahmad Al-Mahdi is a very intruiging and controversial character. He had a deep faith that he was “the Mahdi” (the rightly guided one), which greatly motivated him to launch his revolutionary movement. He set Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as his role model which can be observed in the various similarities that exist between the characters of Al-Mahdi and Prophet Muhammad. Understanding the relation between these two figures will aid in comprehending the objectives of Al-Mahdi’s message and the establishment of the Mahdist State later. Al-Mahdi’s objective was to free the lands of the Muslims and the Sudanese, and to continue to “liberating” other states –such as Egypt- similar to the first message of Islam. One of the most important stories in the history of Omdurman that displays the mirroring between Al-Mahdi and Prophet Muhammad is how he chose the location of his house, as he left the matter to his horse until it stood, and that is how the location was decided. His house was made of mud, and following his death, he was buried there and a domed shrine was built above it in that same location where it remains to this day.
Al-Mahdi left Ar-Rahad and headed towards Khartoum in August 1884, after ordering his followers to march to the east to free the capital city –Khartoum– from the colonizers. A great number of people responded to his call and a mass migration began that marked the beginning of the migration towards Omdurman. Omdurman’s sanctity for the Mahdi and his supporters could be recognized in the numerous names that were given to the city, such as Al-Buq’ah, Al-Buq’ah Al-Tahira (the Immaculate Spot) and Dar Al-Hijrah (the Land of Migration), the latter was engraved on the coins made during his reign. In addition to that existed the military advantages, as this spontaneous area had turned into a huge camp as Al-Mahdi’s supporters flocked towards that area and built houses with straw, leather and logs, then the city came to life.
Al-Mahdi’s wars against the Turco-Egyptian colonial rule in Sudan was crowned by liberating Khartoum in January 1885. However, Al-Mahdi died shortly after moving to Omdurman, and Al-Khalifa Abdullahi –his successor– ruled after him. Al-Khalifa’s reign witnessed the writing of a new history for Omdurman, starting from the moment Al-Khalifa announced Omdurman as the capital city for the Mahdist state. So how did the city grow over such a short period of time to spread over an area of more than 20 square miles?
In May 1885, Al-Khalifa ordered the evacuation of Khartoum and all its residents were to relocate to Omdurman. His aim was to eradicate any competition to his new capital city, thus began the destruction of the buildings of Khartoum, as their building materials were dismantled and moved to Omdurman to build new houses there. The fusion of different ethnic groups and cultures became a signature of Mahdist Omdurman as the city contained representatives of all Sudanese tribes that coexisted with Egyptians, Indians, Mecca Arabs, Syrians, Greeks, Italians, Turks, Ethiopians, Jews, in addition to groups of West African origins, such as Fulani, Borno, and Borgu peoples. The population of Mahdist Omdurman was estimated to be over 150,000, and some speculate that it even reached 400,000.
The policies of Al-Khalifa required the settlement of as many tribal groups near him as possible, as he needed a huge military force at hand, not only to conquer other states, but also to protect the borders of his city that was surrounded with dangers from all directions. Al-Khalifa turned Omdurman to a city that adopted Khartoum’s former functions as the administrative and bureaucratic center, carrying out the various administrative and military functions of the state.
Omdurman began to slowly form according to the strategies of Al-Khalifa, as he was the mastermind behind the city’s planning decisions that turned the scattered villages –which previously comprised Omdurman– into the capital city of his state. This planning process resulted in the creation of the main roads and yards, the market, the mosque, the barracks and other facilities in the city. The construction materials utilized were chosen to emphasized the power of Al-Khalifa, as the red bricks seized from the houses of the Turks in Khartoum were used, with the help of skilled engineers and technicians, to build the domed shrine of Al-Mahdi and the quarters of Al-Khalifa. Also, the center of the city, which consisted of the official facilities –beside the house of Al-Khalifa and the houses of his guards and family– was surrounded by a great stone wall. Some parts of this wall remain till this day, as it’s construction took almost as many years as the Mahdist state remained in power.
Between the years 1885 and 1898, the residential areas around Omdurman began to form in an Arab-Islamic style, with vast interior yards (hosh) as a distinctive characteristic. The city followed an organic traditional style that is labyrinth-like and quite difficult to understand, as Al-Khalifa built Omdurman in a network-like style that resembles the religious voids in classical Islamic cities. This spontaneous nature to the city can be noticed in the seemingly disorganized growth of the social fabric of its population, which follows social norms and traditions that follow the principles of vernacular architecture.
The Salafist method of Al-Khalifa and his animosity towards Sufi sects was reflected on architecture, as he prohibited any form of ornaments, except for Quranic verses. The Nubian style of house with its ornamented facades, for example, didn’t find a place in the mono-cultural Mahdist Omdurman, despite the settlement of Nubians in the city. In contrast to the houses of Al-Khalifa with their fortified materials, the houses of Mahdist Omdurman were mostly simple, as the houses of Nilotic peoples were built of fragile materials, such as straw and mud, that being the reason why not much of them remained. Also, the people of nomadic tribes from the west, due to their lifestyle, built semi-permanent houses that also got destroyed with time.
Omdurman had very narrow streets and closed alleys with a distinctive characteristic of being intimate and private. People got around the city walking and rode donkeys, horses, or carts as means of transportation between houses and neighborhoods, which impacted the planning and organic design of the road network.
The main urban element of Omdurman was the market; in fact, the establishment of Omdurman Market boosted trade movement in the city, as the small seasonal markets that mainly depended on agricultural products turned into a permanent market in the era of Al-Khalifa. It also became a destination for the different Sudanese groups and tribes, so it attracted more people from the north, south, west and east. It also attracted merchants and skilled craftsmen from neighboring countries.
Hajj caravans, traveling all the way from West Africa, had to stop at Omdurman Market, and it became their regular route. Also merchants arrived from Egypt and India and settled in Omdurman so they can work in its market. The river traffic was also very active because of the boat manufacturing industry that was popular at the time, so Omdurman became the destination of many tribes that lived on the banks of Blue Nile, White Nile, and River Nile. Most of the roads in old Omdurman, and especially in the northwestern side, led to the Market. Because of these factors, Omdurman Market became a key pillar for the city, and the focal point of intersection that drew people from all directions.
Travelers from West Africa used to depart heading eastwards to Mecca. They embarked on their journey usually without enough funds to sustain their travel expenses, therefore they stayed and worked in places along their route in order to afford their journey. Omdurman, which was already on their pilgrimage route to Mecca, welcomed and sheltered them, although the Mahdist state and Al-Khalifa regularly recruited them in his army.
***
The newly formed Mahdist state faced many battles against different states, as it was threatened on its borders with both Egypt and Ethiopia, in addition to having internal conflicts. In order to strengthen and increase his armies, and because of his distrust towards the other tribes that were against his succession and sovereignty, Al-Khalifa ordered the tribes of Ta’aisha and Baggara to forcefully migrate from Darfur to Omdurman. This decision had a huge impact on the economic and political state of Omdurman, and perhaps the country in its entirety.
It is important to note that the Ta’aisha and Baggara are nomads who worked in agriculture or cattle grazing, but by forcibly displacing them to Omdurman, Al-Khalifa turned them from a productive group for the state to soldiers in his army. On their way through Kordofan, they consumed their sorghum stock, and when they reached Omdurman became a privileged elite. Their status and kinship to Al-Khalifa saw that they were provided with all types of supplies and foods, which impacted the state’s reserve. Their migration coincided with a year of very low harvest, due to the droughts in the past season. Because of these conditions, the country underwent one of its worst famines, the famine of “the year 6” (1306/1890).
The failure of the Mahdist state to relieve the famine that hit its citizens due to the militarization and the calls for Jihad, put the state in a dilemma. The state was completely unable to meet the needs of its population as well as maintain it’s war economy which was imposed on it since its inception. The economic policy of the state, the boycott of Egypt, and the decrease of trade movement were all factors that worsened the situation. Al-Khalifa did not foresee the impact of his policies on his economically weak state. Also, the migration of Ta’aisha and Baggara had great political and economic consequences, as the citizens of Omdurman, particularly those of Nilotic origins (Awlad Al-Bahar) and relatives of Al-Mahdi –who thought they were more entitled to become successors of Al-Mahdi– did not see any reason to be welcoming of the newcomers, as Al-Khalifa didn’t even try to disguise his dependence on his kin (Awlad AlGharib) and used them to suppress the opposition to his rule and by forming a new personal military force.
***
Although plenty of women worked in the market of the city to the extent that they had an entire section dedicated to them, there is general ambiguity in how women lived their lives in Mahdist Omdurman. Women’s presence in the city wasn’t sufficiently documented, as the Mahdist state had policies that required them to stay at home, and these policies reflected in the residential architecture in old Omdurman. For example, we can look at “Al-Naffaj”, which is a passage that connects the houses of the families in Omdurman, as an architectural element that encouraged women stay at home, thus avoiding the need to go out in the streets.
It is interesting that at times Omdurman was considered a “Women’s City,” particularly because the men had to go to war for long periods of time, which revived the women’s role in trade and crafts in the market. After the bloody Karari Battle (Battle of Omdurman), where 11,000 men of Al-Khalifa’s army died, Omdurman was almost entirely under women’s rule. However, the british policies changed that later and only dealt with men, as they did not acknowledge women’s rule even in their homeland. These circumstances did not deter the women’s movement in Omdurman, which continued to grow and flourish.
***
After The Mahdist state was conquered by the Anglo-Egyptian invasion in 1898, many of the tribes migrated back to their lands, following the colonial policy to “empty the capital area of useless mouths.” Due to these policies, towns in Kordofan and Al-Jazirah flourished once more, as many of their inhabitants were formerly forced to stay in Omdurman by Al-Khalifa. Some were forced out of the city after the battle of Karari, while others stayed in Omdurman and made it their home. On the other bank of the Nile, Khartoum, the colonial capital city, for the second time, arose from its rubble. However, it’s new map did not include national citizens, who resided at the outskirts, which did not bother the colonizers at all.
The planning process of Khartoum was primarily concerned with foreign elites, who resided in the Nile-neighboring areas in the north and center of the city. The colonial presence was prolific in the city’s diagonal roads that were overlaid on a gridiron pattern in an imitation of the Union Jack, the national flag of the United Kingdom. These diagonal roads were created first and foremost for security, as they eased the military control over the city against any kind of resistance, meanwhile the locals were left to inhabit shantytowns beyond the railroad bridge and Al-Sunut Forest. Khartoum in this manner was designed and planned to resemble a European city, while Omdurman was ignored and disregarded by the British as a discriminatory policy and became with –its organic nature– the primitive model that broke out of control, contrasting the modernity of Khartoum, at least in the eyes of colonizers. Paradoxically, Khartoum was seen as an ugly artificial city by Europeans who were more fascinated by Omdurman in true orientalist fashion and showed interest in visiting the city because of the “authentic” and “exotic” experience it offered.
When the British finally began to think of planning Omdurman which –despite the out-migrations from the city– maintained an enormous population (43,000 in the year 1910). This proved to be quite difficult as the British couldn’t organize the meandering labyrinthine alleyways of the city. Also, Omdurmanis were adamant in holding onto their rights as owners of property, forcing the British to take a more conservative route than that of Khartoum. Henceforth, most of the city replanning concerned the road network as well as the neighborhoods that weren’t heavily populated or those that were demolished during the Anglo-Egyptian invasion. One such example is the old Mulazmeen quarter that was destroyed in the battle of Karari, which was then replanned and laid out decades later.
After assigning the British James Bramble as inspector of Omdurman, he converted the House of Al-Khalifa into a museum in 1928 and added a few exhibitions from the Mahdist era. That marked the beginning of the modernization process of the cultural identity of Omdurman. In that era, the British worked on diversifying activities as cultural, educational, health, and recreational activities were introduced to Omdurman, such as the Grand Mosque, Omdurman’s General Hospital and the Teacher’s Institute. The older location of Omdurman Radio was also constructed in 1940 in the Post Office Buildings, in addition to Bramble Cinema and National Cinema.
Since Khartoum was constructed as a colonial city during that period, Omdurman was considered the national capital, which transformed it into the nationalists refuge as well as anyone who wished to rebel against colonialist Khartoum. Therefore during the Condominium rule, the headquarters of the Graduates General Congress, and later the headquarters of most of the national political parties were established in Omdurman. Nearby, Omdurman’s Market flourished after it had undergone a process of expansion and replanned of its road network as well as the reorganization of the market itself. Omdurman’s market famously contained important cafes, such as George Mashriqi, Wad Al-Agha, Al-Zeibaq, and Yousuf Al-Faki Cafés. These cafes were considered the beating heart of the city with their literary and artistic forums that hosted artists and poets –especially Haqeeba poets– and it became the center for an intellectual and political revolution in the past century; the national movement.
Colonial policies were restrictive on mass migrations, therefore after Sudan’s independence and the lifting of these restrictions, there was considerable accerlation in the rate of migration. Omdurman continued to expand after Sudan’s independence, leading to the emergence of new neighborhoods, such as Al-Thawrat, Um Badda, Al-Muhandiseen, Al-Rawda, and Madinat Al-Neel, which with their vast extensions became cities in their own right. However, the city’s expansion became increasingly more rapid in the following decades that the planning process changed and the city entered a new era of urbanization.
Waves of migration from rural areas to Omdurman due to the attraction of the capital were motivated mostly by economic reasons. However, the largest development in the pattern of migration to the capital occurred when internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled to the capital and settled on the outskirts of the city. There are numerous drivers of displacement in Sudan that forced people to flee to the capital. The country faced many natural disasters in the beginning of the 1980s, including droughts and famines in the west and the east, which forced thousands to flee internally to the capital city. 120,000 persons have fled to Khartoum from Darfur and Kordofan alone. In parallel, the second civil war which took place between 1983 and 2005, forced many people to flee to Khartoum and Omdurman to escape war. Also the conflict in Darfur, which began in 2003, forced more people to be displaced. Because of these reasons, Sudan was ranked as the country with the highest number of IDPs in the world in the 1990s and 2000s, and in the year 2005, the number of IDPs reached its peak with 6.1 million IDPs in the country. Despite the decrease of this number through the years, Sudan’s ranking remains high in the list with 2 million IDPs.
These enormous numbers of IDPs that arrived in the capital –in what is referred to as “the black belt”– faced denial and indifference as well as outright hostility from successive governments since the 1980s. IDPs were viewed as a threat to political stability, a burden to the economy, and a source of social and cultural tension, all of which created hardships for them in securing housing and services. President Nimeri (1969-1985) went as far as enforcing the (Kesha) policy: “the displaced who trekked to Khartoum from western and southern Sudan were randomly picked up by security forces and relocated either back to their places of origin or to production sites in the districts of the central region.”
In late 1990s and early 2000s, Inqaz government (1989-2019) started some initiatives to fight poverty and marginalization, and huge numbers of low income citizens were integrated in working class districts around Khartoum, but these initiatives were interrupted by frequent random and inhumane evacuations which resulted in many human rights complaints.
Most IDPs settled in informal housing (slums) on the outskirts of cities. Planning initiatives since the 1990s were limited to the provision of lands on the outskirts of cities, and they were ostensibly designed to decrease the pressure on the overpopulated slums, so their houses were destroyed by security forces, and they were forcibly moved to new areas known as IDP camps. Such as Dar Al-Salam and Wad Al-Bashir camps in Omdurman. The urban researcher Dr. Hanaa Mutasim conducted interviews with IDPs who settled in Dar Al-Salam camp and found out that most of them used to live in Al-Gamayir neighborhood in the center of Omdurman. When Dar Al-Salam camp was built, the government destroyed their houses without providing any compensations, and Al-Gamayir was re-planned into first class land plots and was named Al-Thawra, Block 6).
Those who flee to the city are the ones who suffer the most from the lack of services and inaccessibility to livelihoods, because authorities always try to place them in the margins, out of the sight of city inhabitants. This painful reality of these camps in Omdurman was reflected in the names given by the locals who live in them. Of the examples of these names is Al-Salam camp, which is also named “Jabarona” (meaning they forced us). The government tried to change these names in an attempt to conceal the truth, for example the camp named “Zagalona” (meaning we were thrown out), was renamed to be “Al-Tharwa 15.”
While the government has tried to enable IDPs to own land when it established Al-Fatih resettlement sites 40km north of Omdurman, these sites have significantly decreased the quality of life for IDPs since they are very far from the city center and provide no access to services and livelihoods for them. Due to these difficult circumstances, IDPs were forced to leave Al-Fatih and be displaced once more.
We must view IDP camps, relocation sites, and even informal settlements in a critical eye and how the issues of the margin are transported into the city. It’s important to consider the city’s position and acknowledgement to IDPs, since through their different architectures, have become inseparable parts of the formation of our capital, Khartoum. It is without a doubt that urbanization is a global phenomenon today, and because of that, cities must be able to predict, accommodate and be resilient towards this growth particularly towards vulnerable groups who have been displaced, marginalized and forced into cruel circumstances that encloses them in a continuous cycle of poverty and displacement.
***
The ethnic and cultural homogeneity of Omdurman that was created during the colonial era was a result of painful experiences that the inhabitants of the city have experienced. The city had its fair share of tribal tensions that rattled the city between Al-Khalifa and his relatives from the western Sudan tribes, and the relatives of Al-Mahdi and the Nilotic tribes. The fall of the Mahdist state and the painful defeat in the Karari Battle, however, united the citizens of Omdurman against colonial rule, propelling the city into an era of social cohesion and integration. These factors led to launching the national movement inorder to liberate the country from under the colonizer’s rule, thus giving birth to Omdurman’s identity as Sudan’s microcosm, the nationalists’ refuge.
However, if Omdurman is indeed seen as a model of national integration and the melting pot that shaped the Sudanese national identity through the prevailing cultural movement which started during the colonial period, some consider that this statement is not accurate, and in fact misleading. The culture of Omdurman has rejected and alienated other groups and individuals with the argument that they are not true Omdurmanis. Some even claim that the many migrations in the 1970s and 1980s, was the beginning of losing the image of “national identity.”
In fact, this statement calls for questioning this image; did it truly reflect the national integration that allegedly envelopes the entirety of Sudan? Professor Idris Salim says that Omdurmanis will say yes, because the image of Omdurman as Sudan's microcosm exists only in their minds.
That national identity of Omdurman has certainly been put to the test since the 1980s and onwards. “I am Omdurman, I am Sudan” now has new meanings, as Sudan since its independence, hasn’t witnessed stability in all of its parts that were marginalized at the expense of developing the center. These displaced people have brought their grievances and destabilized Khartoum’s -and therefore, Omdurman’s- manufactured image of stability and social harmony. In fact, the image of Omdurman as microcosm of Sudan did not become a reality until it actually included people from all parts of Sudan, who were once again marginalized at city level in the midst of social elimination by native Omdurmanis.
In the face of this new challenge to the Omdurmani identity, there is no common enemy that unites Omdurmanis, as the enemy has become one another once more, similar to that of the Mahdist state. It is without a doubt that the best and ideal solution for the issue of displacement is through finding radical solutions at the root causes. However, it seems that the current complexity of the political and economic situation in Sudan makes it more challenging to achieve radical solutions in the near future. In the midst of these complexities, one may argue that one of the few options available is to address the issues of IDPs on a city level, if at the very least by changing the state’s marginalizing and discriminatory policies against them. Omdurman today is presented with a unique opportunity, since it’s image as Sudan’s microcosm has the capacity to be utilized as a realistic example to achieve social cohesion and real change, instead of utilizing its image for othering people. If Omdurman becomes able to achieve true equality on all social, cultural and economic aspects to all of its inhabitants in the future, perhaps that might carve the path towards finding actual solutions to the problems that have divided Sudan since its independence.
“I am Omdurman, I Am the Nation
Its voice, and its feelings
I am the foundation
I… the one who brought together the dispersed
Melded north with south
Poured east into west
And planted kindness on the roads
May I remain the pride of our homelands”
- Abdullah Mohammed Zain
“From Futaih, through the creek to Al Maghalig
From the highlands of Aburof to the lowlands
A stride, my lord, barefoot and clean-shaven
Following the route of the Tram”
- Khalil Farah
Omdurman has always been known as the national city, the melting pot that comprises all ethnicities, tribes, geographies and cultures, despite the internal political and economic differences. The opinions seem to vary between supporters and critics of this national identity it represents, or maybe was intended to. In our exploration of the urban history of the city, we will discuss the settings and circumstances that have contributed to the foundation of the city, taking in consideration the issue of migration and its impact on the urban fabric, as one of the most important factors, if not the most important at all, that contributed to the making of today’s Omdurman. The issue of migration will not be discussed in isolation from all the political, economic, and social factors that influenced or was influenced by the city throughout the different time periods.
***
A first time visitor of Omdurman will unmistakable take notice of the particularity of the site, as it lays between the arid western desert that extends as far as the eye can see, and the Nile, the source of life, as it slowly flows northwards toward the Mediterranean, and with its vast skies and rock-strewn ground. All these factors have shaped it into an excellent location, chosen carefully for erecting the camp of Al-Mahdi in his war against the Turco-Egyptian colonization. Nevertheless, these characteristics became ideal for the creation of a city distinguished with its unique history and culture.
The history of settlement in Omdurman highlights the importance of the location, as the excavations around Abu Anja Creek revealed remains that date back to the Lower Paleolithic era, and ever since, the area has remained inhabited by different groups of peoples throughout time. However, Omdurman as we know it today might have been founded by mere chance, as it was originally established as a camp for the armies of Al-Mahdi. Following that, we cannot say that the development of the city that happened afterwards was by mere chance as well, as the planning processes of the city were intentional, including the natural and spontaneous nature of the city’s architecture.
Muhammad Ahmad Al-Mahdi is a very intruiging and controversial character. He had a deep faith that he was “the Mahdi” (the rightly guided one), which greatly motivated him to launch his revolutionary movement. He set Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as his role model which can be observed in the various similarities that exist between the characters of Al-Mahdi and Prophet Muhammad. Understanding the relation between these two figures will aid in comprehending the objectives of Al-Mahdi’s message and the establishment of the Mahdist State later. Al-Mahdi’s objective was to free the lands of the Muslims and the Sudanese, and to continue to “liberating” other states –such as Egypt- similar to the first message of Islam. One of the most important stories in the history of Omdurman that displays the mirroring between Al-Mahdi and Prophet Muhammad is how he chose the location of his house, as he left the matter to his horse until it stood, and that is how the location was decided. His house was made of mud, and following his death, he was buried there and a domed shrine was built above it in that same location where it remains to this day.
Al-Mahdi left Ar-Rahad and headed towards Khartoum in August 1884, after ordering his followers to march to the east to free the capital city –Khartoum– from the colonizers. A great number of people responded to his call and a mass migration began that marked the beginning of the migration towards Omdurman. Omdurman’s sanctity for the Mahdi and his supporters could be recognized in the numerous names that were given to the city, such as Al-Buq’ah, Al-Buq’ah Al-Tahira (the Immaculate Spot) and Dar Al-Hijrah (the Land of Migration), the latter was engraved on the coins made during his reign. In addition to that existed the military advantages, as this spontaneous area had turned into a huge camp as Al-Mahdi’s supporters flocked towards that area and built houses with straw, leather and logs, then the city came to life.
Al-Mahdi’s wars against the Turco-Egyptian colonial rule in Sudan was crowned by liberating Khartoum in January 1885. However, Al-Mahdi died shortly after moving to Omdurman, and Al-Khalifa Abdullahi –his successor– ruled after him. Al-Khalifa’s reign witnessed the writing of a new history for Omdurman, starting from the moment Al-Khalifa announced Omdurman as the capital city for the Mahdist state. So how did the city grow over such a short period of time to spread over an area of more than 20 square miles?
In May 1885, Al-Khalifa ordered the evacuation of Khartoum and all its residents were to relocate to Omdurman. His aim was to eradicate any competition to his new capital city, thus began the destruction of the buildings of Khartoum, as their building materials were dismantled and moved to Omdurman to build new houses there. The fusion of different ethnic groups and cultures became a signature of Mahdist Omdurman as the city contained representatives of all Sudanese tribes that coexisted with Egyptians, Indians, Mecca Arabs, Syrians, Greeks, Italians, Turks, Ethiopians, Jews, in addition to groups of West African origins, such as Fulani, Borno, and Borgu peoples. The population of Mahdist Omdurman was estimated to be over 150,000, and some speculate that it even reached 400,000.
The policies of Al-Khalifa required the settlement of as many tribal groups near him as possible, as he needed a huge military force at hand, not only to conquer other states, but also to protect the borders of his city that was surrounded with dangers from all directions. Al-Khalifa turned Omdurman to a city that adopted Khartoum’s former functions as the administrative and bureaucratic center, carrying out the various administrative and military functions of the state.
Omdurman began to slowly form according to the strategies of Al-Khalifa, as he was the mastermind behind the city’s planning decisions that turned the scattered villages –which previously comprised Omdurman– into the capital city of his state. This planning process resulted in the creation of the main roads and yards, the market, the mosque, the barracks and other facilities in the city. The construction materials utilized were chosen to emphasized the power of Al-Khalifa, as the red bricks seized from the houses of the Turks in Khartoum were used, with the help of skilled engineers and technicians, to build the domed shrine of Al-Mahdi and the quarters of Al-Khalifa. Also, the center of the city, which consisted of the official facilities –beside the house of Al-Khalifa and the houses of his guards and family– was surrounded by a great stone wall. Some parts of this wall remain till this day, as it’s construction took almost as many years as the Mahdist state remained in power.
Between the years 1885 and 1898, the residential areas around Omdurman began to form in an Arab-Islamic style, with vast interior yards (hosh) as a distinctive characteristic. The city followed an organic traditional style that is labyrinth-like and quite difficult to understand, as Al-Khalifa built Omdurman in a network-like style that resembles the religious voids in classical Islamic cities. This spontaneous nature to the city can be noticed in the seemingly disorganized growth of the social fabric of its population, which follows social norms and traditions that follow the principles of vernacular architecture.
The Salafist method of Al-Khalifa and his animosity towards Sufi sects was reflected on architecture, as he prohibited any form of ornaments, except for Quranic verses. The Nubian style of house with its ornamented facades, for example, didn’t find a place in the mono-cultural Mahdist Omdurman, despite the settlement of Nubians in the city. In contrast to the houses of Al-Khalifa with their fortified materials, the houses of Mahdist Omdurman were mostly simple, as the houses of Nilotic peoples were built of fragile materials, such as straw and mud, that being the reason why not much of them remained. Also, the people of nomadic tribes from the west, due to their lifestyle, built semi-permanent houses that also got destroyed with time.
Omdurman had very narrow streets and closed alleys with a distinctive characteristic of being intimate and private. People got around the city walking and rode donkeys, horses, or carts as means of transportation between houses and neighborhoods, which impacted the planning and organic design of the road network.
The main urban element of Omdurman was the market; in fact, the establishment of Omdurman Market boosted trade movement in the city, as the small seasonal markets that mainly depended on agricultural products turned into a permanent market in the era of Al-Khalifa. It also became a destination for the different Sudanese groups and tribes, so it attracted more people from the north, south, west and east. It also attracted merchants and skilled craftsmen from neighboring countries.
Hajj caravans, traveling all the way from West Africa, had to stop at Omdurman Market, and it became their regular route. Also merchants arrived from Egypt and India and settled in Omdurman so they can work in its market. The river traffic was also very active because of the boat manufacturing industry that was popular at the time, so Omdurman became the destination of many tribes that lived on the banks of Blue Nile, White Nile, and River Nile. Most of the roads in old Omdurman, and especially in the northwestern side, led to the Market. Because of these factors, Omdurman Market became a key pillar for the city, and the focal point of intersection that drew people from all directions.
Travelers from West Africa used to depart heading eastwards to Mecca. They embarked on their journey usually without enough funds to sustain their travel expenses, therefore they stayed and worked in places along their route in order to afford their journey. Omdurman, which was already on their pilgrimage route to Mecca, welcomed and sheltered them, although the Mahdist state and Al-Khalifa regularly recruited them in his army.
***
The newly formed Mahdist state faced many battles against different states, as it was threatened on its borders with both Egypt and Ethiopia, in addition to having internal conflicts. In order to strengthen and increase his armies, and because of his distrust towards the other tribes that were against his succession and sovereignty, Al-Khalifa ordered the tribes of Ta’aisha and Baggara to forcefully migrate from Darfur to Omdurman. This decision had a huge impact on the economic and political state of Omdurman, and perhaps the country in its entirety.
It is important to note that the Ta’aisha and Baggara are nomads who worked in agriculture or cattle grazing, but by forcibly displacing them to Omdurman, Al-Khalifa turned them from a productive group for the state to soldiers in his army. On their way through Kordofan, they consumed their sorghum stock, and when they reached Omdurman became a privileged elite. Their status and kinship to Al-Khalifa saw that they were provided with all types of supplies and foods, which impacted the state’s reserve. Their migration coincided with a year of very low harvest, due to the droughts in the past season. Because of these conditions, the country underwent one of its worst famines, the famine of “the year 6” (1306/1890).
The failure of the Mahdist state to relieve the famine that hit its citizens due to the militarization and the calls for Jihad, put the state in a dilemma. The state was completely unable to meet the needs of its population as well as maintain it’s war economy which was imposed on it since its inception. The economic policy of the state, the boycott of Egypt, and the decrease of trade movement were all factors that worsened the situation. Al-Khalifa did not foresee the impact of his policies on his economically weak state. Also, the migration of Ta’aisha and Baggara had great political and economic consequences, as the citizens of Omdurman, particularly those of Nilotic origins (Awlad Al-Bahar) and relatives of Al-Mahdi –who thought they were more entitled to become successors of Al-Mahdi– did not see any reason to be welcoming of the newcomers, as Al-Khalifa didn’t even try to disguise his dependence on his kin (Awlad AlGharib) and used them to suppress the opposition to his rule and by forming a new personal military force.
***
Although plenty of women worked in the market of the city to the extent that they had an entire section dedicated to them, there is general ambiguity in how women lived their lives in Mahdist Omdurman. Women’s presence in the city wasn’t sufficiently documented, as the Mahdist state had policies that required them to stay at home, and these policies reflected in the residential architecture in old Omdurman. For example, we can look at “Al-Naffaj”, which is a passage that connects the houses of the families in Omdurman, as an architectural element that encouraged women stay at home, thus avoiding the need to go out in the streets.
It is interesting that at times Omdurman was considered a “Women’s City,” particularly because the men had to go to war for long periods of time, which revived the women’s role in trade and crafts in the market. After the bloody Karari Battle (Battle of Omdurman), where 11,000 men of Al-Khalifa’s army died, Omdurman was almost entirely under women’s rule. However, the british policies changed that later and only dealt with men, as they did not acknowledge women’s rule even in their homeland. These circumstances did not deter the women’s movement in Omdurman, which continued to grow and flourish.
***
After The Mahdist state was conquered by the Anglo-Egyptian invasion in 1898, many of the tribes migrated back to their lands, following the colonial policy to “empty the capital area of useless mouths.” Due to these policies, towns in Kordofan and Al-Jazirah flourished once more, as many of their inhabitants were formerly forced to stay in Omdurman by Al-Khalifa. Some were forced out of the city after the battle of Karari, while others stayed in Omdurman and made it their home. On the other bank of the Nile, Khartoum, the colonial capital city, for the second time, arose from its rubble. However, it’s new map did not include national citizens, who resided at the outskirts, which did not bother the colonizers at all.
The planning process of Khartoum was primarily concerned with foreign elites, who resided in the Nile-neighboring areas in the north and center of the city. The colonial presence was prolific in the city’s diagonal roads that were overlaid on a gridiron pattern in an imitation of the Union Jack, the national flag of the United Kingdom. These diagonal roads were created first and foremost for security, as they eased the military control over the city against any kind of resistance, meanwhile the locals were left to inhabit shantytowns beyond the railroad bridge and Al-Sunut Forest. Khartoum in this manner was designed and planned to resemble a European city, while Omdurman was ignored and disregarded by the British as a discriminatory policy and became with –its organic nature– the primitive model that broke out of control, contrasting the modernity of Khartoum, at least in the eyes of colonizers. Paradoxically, Khartoum was seen as an ugly artificial city by Europeans who were more fascinated by Omdurman in true orientalist fashion and showed interest in visiting the city because of the “authentic” and “exotic” experience it offered.
When the British finally began to think of planning Omdurman which –despite the out-migrations from the city– maintained an enormous population (43,000 in the year 1910). This proved to be quite difficult as the British couldn’t organize the meandering labyrinthine alleyways of the city. Also, Omdurmanis were adamant in holding onto their rights as owners of property, forcing the British to take a more conservative route than that of Khartoum. Henceforth, most of the city replanning concerned the road network as well as the neighborhoods that weren’t heavily populated or those that were demolished during the Anglo-Egyptian invasion. One such example is the old Mulazmeen quarter that was destroyed in the battle of Karari, which was then replanned and laid out decades later.
After assigning the British James Bramble as inspector of Omdurman, he converted the House of Al-Khalifa into a museum in 1928 and added a few exhibitions from the Mahdist era. That marked the beginning of the modernization process of the cultural identity of Omdurman. In that era, the British worked on diversifying activities as cultural, educational, health, and recreational activities were introduced to Omdurman, such as the Grand Mosque, Omdurman’s General Hospital and the Teacher’s Institute. The older location of Omdurman Radio was also constructed in 1940 in the Post Office Buildings, in addition to Bramble Cinema and National Cinema.
Since Khartoum was constructed as a colonial city during that period, Omdurman was considered the national capital, which transformed it into the nationalists refuge as well as anyone who wished to rebel against colonialist Khartoum. Therefore during the Condominium rule, the headquarters of the Graduates General Congress, and later the headquarters of most of the national political parties were established in Omdurman. Nearby, Omdurman’s Market flourished after it had undergone a process of expansion and replanned of its road network as well as the reorganization of the market itself. Omdurman’s market famously contained important cafes, such as George Mashriqi, Wad Al-Agha, Al-Zeibaq, and Yousuf Al-Faki Cafés. These cafes were considered the beating heart of the city with their literary and artistic forums that hosted artists and poets –especially Haqeeba poets– and it became the center for an intellectual and political revolution in the past century; the national movement.
Colonial policies were restrictive on mass migrations, therefore after Sudan’s independence and the lifting of these restrictions, there was considerable accerlation in the rate of migration. Omdurman continued to expand after Sudan’s independence, leading to the emergence of new neighborhoods, such as Al-Thawrat, Um Badda, Al-Muhandiseen, Al-Rawda, and Madinat Al-Neel, which with their vast extensions became cities in their own right. However, the city’s expansion became increasingly more rapid in the following decades that the planning process changed and the city entered a new era of urbanization.
Waves of migration from rural areas to Omdurman due to the attraction of the capital were motivated mostly by economic reasons. However, the largest development in the pattern of migration to the capital occurred when internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled to the capital and settled on the outskirts of the city. There are numerous drivers of displacement in Sudan that forced people to flee to the capital. The country faced many natural disasters in the beginning of the 1980s, including droughts and famines in the west and the east, which forced thousands to flee internally to the capital city. 120,000 persons have fled to Khartoum from Darfur and Kordofan alone. In parallel, the second civil war which took place between 1983 and 2005, forced many people to flee to Khartoum and Omdurman to escape war. Also the conflict in Darfur, which began in 2003, forced more people to be displaced. Because of these reasons, Sudan was ranked as the country with the highest number of IDPs in the world in the 1990s and 2000s, and in the year 2005, the number of IDPs reached its peak with 6.1 million IDPs in the country. Despite the decrease of this number through the years, Sudan’s ranking remains high in the list with 2 million IDPs.
These enormous numbers of IDPs that arrived in the capital –in what is referred to as “the black belt”– faced denial and indifference as well as outright hostility from successive governments since the 1980s. IDPs were viewed as a threat to political stability, a burden to the economy, and a source of social and cultural tension, all of which created hardships for them in securing housing and services. President Nimeri (1969-1985) went as far as enforcing the (Kesha) policy: “the displaced who trekked to Khartoum from western and southern Sudan were randomly picked up by security forces and relocated either back to their places of origin or to production sites in the districts of the central region.”
In late 1990s and early 2000s, Inqaz government (1989-2019) started some initiatives to fight poverty and marginalization, and huge numbers of low income citizens were integrated in working class districts around Khartoum, but these initiatives were interrupted by frequent random and inhumane evacuations which resulted in many human rights complaints.
Most IDPs settled in informal housing (slums) on the outskirts of cities. Planning initiatives since the 1990s were limited to the provision of lands on the outskirts of cities, and they were ostensibly designed to decrease the pressure on the overpopulated slums, so their houses were destroyed by security forces, and they were forcibly moved to new areas known as IDP camps. Such as Dar Al-Salam and Wad Al-Bashir camps in Omdurman. The urban researcher Dr. Hanaa Mutasim conducted interviews with IDPs who settled in Dar Al-Salam camp and found out that most of them used to live in Al-Gamayir neighborhood in the center of Omdurman. When Dar Al-Salam camp was built, the government destroyed their houses without providing any compensations, and Al-Gamayir was re-planned into first class land plots and was named Al-Thawra, Block 6).
Those who flee to the city are the ones who suffer the most from the lack of services and inaccessibility to livelihoods, because authorities always try to place them in the margins, out of the sight of city inhabitants. This painful reality of these camps in Omdurman was reflected in the names given by the locals who live in them. Of the examples of these names is Al-Salam camp, which is also named “Jabarona” (meaning they forced us). The government tried to change these names in an attempt to conceal the truth, for example the camp named “Zagalona” (meaning we were thrown out), was renamed to be “Al-Tharwa 15.”
While the government has tried to enable IDPs to own land when it established Al-Fatih resettlement sites 40km north of Omdurman, these sites have significantly decreased the quality of life for IDPs since they are very far from the city center and provide no access to services and livelihoods for them. Due to these difficult circumstances, IDPs were forced to leave Al-Fatih and be displaced once more.
We must view IDP camps, relocation sites, and even informal settlements in a critical eye and how the issues of the margin are transported into the city. It’s important to consider the city’s position and acknowledgement to IDPs, since through their different architectures, have become inseparable parts of the formation of our capital, Khartoum. It is without a doubt that urbanization is a global phenomenon today, and because of that, cities must be able to predict, accommodate and be resilient towards this growth particularly towards vulnerable groups who have been displaced, marginalized and forced into cruel circumstances that encloses them in a continuous cycle of poverty and displacement.
***
The ethnic and cultural homogeneity of Omdurman that was created during the colonial era was a result of painful experiences that the inhabitants of the city have experienced. The city had its fair share of tribal tensions that rattled the city between Al-Khalifa and his relatives from the western Sudan tribes, and the relatives of Al-Mahdi and the Nilotic tribes. The fall of the Mahdist state and the painful defeat in the Karari Battle, however, united the citizens of Omdurman against colonial rule, propelling the city into an era of social cohesion and integration. These factors led to launching the national movement inorder to liberate the country from under the colonizer’s rule, thus giving birth to Omdurman’s identity as Sudan’s microcosm, the nationalists’ refuge.
However, if Omdurman is indeed seen as a model of national integration and the melting pot that shaped the Sudanese national identity through the prevailing cultural movement which started during the colonial period, some consider that this statement is not accurate, and in fact misleading. The culture of Omdurman has rejected and alienated other groups and individuals with the argument that they are not true Omdurmanis. Some even claim that the many migrations in the 1970s and 1980s, was the beginning of losing the image of “national identity.”
In fact, this statement calls for questioning this image; did it truly reflect the national integration that allegedly envelopes the entirety of Sudan? Professor Idris Salim says that Omdurmanis will say yes, because the image of Omdurman as Sudan's microcosm exists only in their minds.
That national identity of Omdurman has certainly been put to the test since the 1980s and onwards. “I am Omdurman, I am Sudan” now has new meanings, as Sudan since its independence, hasn’t witnessed stability in all of its parts that were marginalized at the expense of developing the center. These displaced people have brought their grievances and destabilized Khartoum’s -and therefore, Omdurman’s- manufactured image of stability and social harmony. In fact, the image of Omdurman as microcosm of Sudan did not become a reality until it actually included people from all parts of Sudan, who were once again marginalized at city level in the midst of social elimination by native Omdurmanis.
In the face of this new challenge to the Omdurmani identity, there is no common enemy that unites Omdurmanis, as the enemy has become one another once more, similar to that of the Mahdist state. It is without a doubt that the best and ideal solution for the issue of displacement is through finding radical solutions at the root causes. However, it seems that the current complexity of the political and economic situation in Sudan makes it more challenging to achieve radical solutions in the near future. In the midst of these complexities, one may argue that one of the few options available is to address the issues of IDPs on a city level, if at the very least by changing the state’s marginalizing and discriminatory policies against them. Omdurman today is presented with a unique opportunity, since it’s image as Sudan’s microcosm has the capacity to be utilized as a realistic example to achieve social cohesion and real change, instead of utilizing its image for othering people. If Omdurman becomes able to achieve true equality on all social, cultural and economic aspects to all of its inhabitants in the future, perhaps that might carve the path towards finding actual solutions to the problems that have divided Sudan since its independence.
“I am Omdurman, I Am the Nation
Its voice, and its feelings
I am the foundation
I… the one who brought together the dispersed
Melded north with south
Poured east into west
And planted kindness on the roads
May I remain the pride of our homelands”
- Abdullah Mohammed Zain
“From Futaih, through the creek to Al Maghalig
From the highlands of Aburof to the lowlands
A stride, my lord, barefoot and clean-shaven
Following the route of the Tram”
- Khalil Farah
Omdurman has always been known as the national city, the melting pot that comprises all ethnicities, tribes, geographies and cultures, despite the internal political and economic differences. The opinions seem to vary between supporters and critics of this national identity it represents, or maybe was intended to. In our exploration of the urban history of the city, we will discuss the settings and circumstances that have contributed to the foundation of the city, taking in consideration the issue of migration and its impact on the urban fabric, as one of the most important factors, if not the most important at all, that contributed to the making of today’s Omdurman. The issue of migration will not be discussed in isolation from all the political, economic, and social factors that influenced or was influenced by the city throughout the different time periods.
***
A first time visitor of Omdurman will unmistakable take notice of the particularity of the site, as it lays between the arid western desert that extends as far as the eye can see, and the Nile, the source of life, as it slowly flows northwards toward the Mediterranean, and with its vast skies and rock-strewn ground. All these factors have shaped it into an excellent location, chosen carefully for erecting the camp of Al-Mahdi in his war against the Turco-Egyptian colonization. Nevertheless, these characteristics became ideal for the creation of a city distinguished with its unique history and culture.
The history of settlement in Omdurman highlights the importance of the location, as the excavations around Abu Anja Creek revealed remains that date back to the Lower Paleolithic era, and ever since, the area has remained inhabited by different groups of peoples throughout time. However, Omdurman as we know it today might have been founded by mere chance, as it was originally established as a camp for the armies of Al-Mahdi. Following that, we cannot say that the development of the city that happened afterwards was by mere chance as well, as the planning processes of the city were intentional, including the natural and spontaneous nature of the city’s architecture.
Muhammad Ahmad Al-Mahdi is a very intruiging and controversial character. He had a deep faith that he was “the Mahdi” (the rightly guided one), which greatly motivated him to launch his revolutionary movement. He set Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as his role model which can be observed in the various similarities that exist between the characters of Al-Mahdi and Prophet Muhammad. Understanding the relation between these two figures will aid in comprehending the objectives of Al-Mahdi’s message and the establishment of the Mahdist State later. Al-Mahdi’s objective was to free the lands of the Muslims and the Sudanese, and to continue to “liberating” other states –such as Egypt- similar to the first message of Islam. One of the most important stories in the history of Omdurman that displays the mirroring between Al-Mahdi and Prophet Muhammad is how he chose the location of his house, as he left the matter to his horse until it stood, and that is how the location was decided. His house was made of mud, and following his death, he was buried there and a domed shrine was built above it in that same location where it remains to this day.
Al-Mahdi left Ar-Rahad and headed towards Khartoum in August 1884, after ordering his followers to march to the east to free the capital city –Khartoum– from the colonizers. A great number of people responded to his call and a mass migration began that marked the beginning of the migration towards Omdurman. Omdurman’s sanctity for the Mahdi and his supporters could be recognized in the numerous names that were given to the city, such as Al-Buq’ah, Al-Buq’ah Al-Tahira (the Immaculate Spot) and Dar Al-Hijrah (the Land of Migration), the latter was engraved on the coins made during his reign. In addition to that existed the military advantages, as this spontaneous area had turned into a huge camp as Al-Mahdi’s supporters flocked towards that area and built houses with straw, leather and logs, then the city came to life.
Al-Mahdi’s wars against the Turco-Egyptian colonial rule in Sudan was crowned by liberating Khartoum in January 1885. However, Al-Mahdi died shortly after moving to Omdurman, and Al-Khalifa Abdullahi –his successor– ruled after him. Al-Khalifa’s reign witnessed the writing of a new history for Omdurman, starting from the moment Al-Khalifa announced Omdurman as the capital city for the Mahdist state. So how did the city grow over such a short period of time to spread over an area of more than 20 square miles?
In May 1885, Al-Khalifa ordered the evacuation of Khartoum and all its residents were to relocate to Omdurman. His aim was to eradicate any competition to his new capital city, thus began the destruction of the buildings of Khartoum, as their building materials were dismantled and moved to Omdurman to build new houses there. The fusion of different ethnic groups and cultures became a signature of Mahdist Omdurman as the city contained representatives of all Sudanese tribes that coexisted with Egyptians, Indians, Mecca Arabs, Syrians, Greeks, Italians, Turks, Ethiopians, Jews, in addition to groups of West African origins, such as Fulani, Borno, and Borgu peoples. The population of Mahdist Omdurman was estimated to be over 150,000, and some speculate that it even reached 400,000.
The policies of Al-Khalifa required the settlement of as many tribal groups near him as possible, as he needed a huge military force at hand, not only to conquer other states, but also to protect the borders of his city that was surrounded with dangers from all directions. Al-Khalifa turned Omdurman to a city that adopted Khartoum’s former functions as the administrative and bureaucratic center, carrying out the various administrative and military functions of the state.
Omdurman began to slowly form according to the strategies of Al-Khalifa, as he was the mastermind behind the city’s planning decisions that turned the scattered villages –which previously comprised Omdurman– into the capital city of his state. This planning process resulted in the creation of the main roads and yards, the market, the mosque, the barracks and other facilities in the city. The construction materials utilized were chosen to emphasized the power of Al-Khalifa, as the red bricks seized from the houses of the Turks in Khartoum were used, with the help of skilled engineers and technicians, to build the domed shrine of Al-Mahdi and the quarters of Al-Khalifa. Also, the center of the city, which consisted of the official facilities –beside the house of Al-Khalifa and the houses of his guards and family– was surrounded by a great stone wall. Some parts of this wall remain till this day, as it’s construction took almost as many years as the Mahdist state remained in power.
Between the years 1885 and 1898, the residential areas around Omdurman began to form in an Arab-Islamic style, with vast interior yards (hosh) as a distinctive characteristic. The city followed an organic traditional style that is labyrinth-like and quite difficult to understand, as Al-Khalifa built Omdurman in a network-like style that resembles the religious voids in classical Islamic cities. This spontaneous nature to the city can be noticed in the seemingly disorganized growth of the social fabric of its population, which follows social norms and traditions that follow the principles of vernacular architecture.
The Salafist method of Al-Khalifa and his animosity towards Sufi sects was reflected on architecture, as he prohibited any form of ornaments, except for Quranic verses. The Nubian style of house with its ornamented facades, for example, didn’t find a place in the mono-cultural Mahdist Omdurman, despite the settlement of Nubians in the city. In contrast to the houses of Al-Khalifa with their fortified materials, the houses of Mahdist Omdurman were mostly simple, as the houses of Nilotic peoples were built of fragile materials, such as straw and mud, that being the reason why not much of them remained. Also, the people of nomadic tribes from the west, due to their lifestyle, built semi-permanent houses that also got destroyed with time.
Omdurman had very narrow streets and closed alleys with a distinctive characteristic of being intimate and private. People got around the city walking and rode donkeys, horses, or carts as means of transportation between houses and neighborhoods, which impacted the planning and organic design of the road network.
The main urban element of Omdurman was the market; in fact, the establishment of Omdurman Market boosted trade movement in the city, as the small seasonal markets that mainly depended on agricultural products turned into a permanent market in the era of Al-Khalifa. It also became a destination for the different Sudanese groups and tribes, so it attracted more people from the north, south, west and east. It also attracted merchants and skilled craftsmen from neighboring countries.
Hajj caravans, traveling all the way from West Africa, had to stop at Omdurman Market, and it became their regular route. Also merchants arrived from Egypt and India and settled in Omdurman so they can work in its market. The river traffic was also very active because of the boat manufacturing industry that was popular at the time, so Omdurman became the destination of many tribes that lived on the banks of Blue Nile, White Nile, and River Nile. Most of the roads in old Omdurman, and especially in the northwestern side, led to the Market. Because of these factors, Omdurman Market became a key pillar for the city, and the focal point of intersection that drew people from all directions.
Travelers from West Africa used to depart heading eastwards to Mecca. They embarked on their journey usually without enough funds to sustain their travel expenses, therefore they stayed and worked in places along their route in order to afford their journey. Omdurman, which was already on their pilgrimage route to Mecca, welcomed and sheltered them, although the Mahdist state and Al-Khalifa regularly recruited them in his army.
***
The newly formed Mahdist state faced many battles against different states, as it was threatened on its borders with both Egypt and Ethiopia, in addition to having internal conflicts. In order to strengthen and increase his armies, and because of his distrust towards the other tribes that were against his succession and sovereignty, Al-Khalifa ordered the tribes of Ta’aisha and Baggara to forcefully migrate from Darfur to Omdurman. This decision had a huge impact on the economic and political state of Omdurman, and perhaps the country in its entirety.
It is important to note that the Ta’aisha and Baggara are nomads who worked in agriculture or cattle grazing, but by forcibly displacing them to Omdurman, Al-Khalifa turned them from a productive group for the state to soldiers in his army. On their way through Kordofan, they consumed their sorghum stock, and when they reached Omdurman became a privileged elite. Their status and kinship to Al-Khalifa saw that they were provided with all types of supplies and foods, which impacted the state’s reserve. Their migration coincided with a year of very low harvest, due to the droughts in the past season. Because of these conditions, the country underwent one of its worst famines, the famine of “the year 6” (1306/1890).
The failure of the Mahdist state to relieve the famine that hit its citizens due to the militarization and the calls for Jihad, put the state in a dilemma. The state was completely unable to meet the needs of its population as well as maintain it’s war economy which was imposed on it since its inception. The economic policy of the state, the boycott of Egypt, and the decrease of trade movement were all factors that worsened the situation. Al-Khalifa did not foresee the impact of his policies on his economically weak state. Also, the migration of Ta’aisha and Baggara had great political and economic consequences, as the citizens of Omdurman, particularly those of Nilotic origins (Awlad Al-Bahar) and relatives of Al-Mahdi –who thought they were more entitled to become successors of Al-Mahdi– did not see any reason to be welcoming of the newcomers, as Al-Khalifa didn’t even try to disguise his dependence on his kin (Awlad AlGharib) and used them to suppress the opposition to his rule and by forming a new personal military force.
***
Although plenty of women worked in the market of the city to the extent that they had an entire section dedicated to them, there is general ambiguity in how women lived their lives in Mahdist Omdurman. Women’s presence in the city wasn’t sufficiently documented, as the Mahdist state had policies that required them to stay at home, and these policies reflected in the residential architecture in old Omdurman. For example, we can look at “Al-Naffaj”, which is a passage that connects the houses of the families in Omdurman, as an architectural element that encouraged women stay at home, thus avoiding the need to go out in the streets.
It is interesting that at times Omdurman was considered a “Women’s City,” particularly because the men had to go to war for long periods of time, which revived the women’s role in trade and crafts in the market. After the bloody Karari Battle (Battle of Omdurman), where 11,000 men of Al-Khalifa’s army died, Omdurman was almost entirely under women’s rule. However, the british policies changed that later and only dealt with men, as they did not acknowledge women’s rule even in their homeland. These circumstances did not deter the women’s movement in Omdurman, which continued to grow and flourish.
***
After The Mahdist state was conquered by the Anglo-Egyptian invasion in 1898, many of the tribes migrated back to their lands, following the colonial policy to “empty the capital area of useless mouths.” Due to these policies, towns in Kordofan and Al-Jazirah flourished once more, as many of their inhabitants were formerly forced to stay in Omdurman by Al-Khalifa. Some were forced out of the city after the battle of Karari, while others stayed in Omdurman and made it their home. On the other bank of the Nile, Khartoum, the colonial capital city, for the second time, arose from its rubble. However, it’s new map did not include national citizens, who resided at the outskirts, which did not bother the colonizers at all.
The planning process of Khartoum was primarily concerned with foreign elites, who resided in the Nile-neighboring areas in the north and center of the city. The colonial presence was prolific in the city’s diagonal roads that were overlaid on a gridiron pattern in an imitation of the Union Jack, the national flag of the United Kingdom. These diagonal roads were created first and foremost for security, as they eased the military control over the city against any kind of resistance, meanwhile the locals were left to inhabit shantytowns beyond the railroad bridge and Al-Sunut Forest. Khartoum in this manner was designed and planned to resemble a European city, while Omdurman was ignored and disregarded by the British as a discriminatory policy and became with –its organic nature– the primitive model that broke out of control, contrasting the modernity of Khartoum, at least in the eyes of colonizers. Paradoxically, Khartoum was seen as an ugly artificial city by Europeans who were more fascinated by Omdurman in true orientalist fashion and showed interest in visiting the city because of the “authentic” and “exotic” experience it offered.
When the British finally began to think of planning Omdurman which –despite the out-migrations from the city– maintained an enormous population (43,000 in the year 1910). This proved to be quite difficult as the British couldn’t organize the meandering labyrinthine alleyways of the city. Also, Omdurmanis were adamant in holding onto their rights as owners of property, forcing the British to take a more conservative route than that of Khartoum. Henceforth, most of the city replanning concerned the road network as well as the neighborhoods that weren’t heavily populated or those that were demolished during the Anglo-Egyptian invasion. One such example is the old Mulazmeen quarter that was destroyed in the battle of Karari, which was then replanned and laid out decades later.
After assigning the British James Bramble as inspector of Omdurman, he converted the House of Al-Khalifa into a museum in 1928 and added a few exhibitions from the Mahdist era. That marked the beginning of the modernization process of the cultural identity of Omdurman. In that era, the British worked on diversifying activities as cultural, educational, health, and recreational activities were introduced to Omdurman, such as the Grand Mosque, Omdurman’s General Hospital and the Teacher’s Institute. The older location of Omdurman Radio was also constructed in 1940 in the Post Office Buildings, in addition to Bramble Cinema and National Cinema.
Since Khartoum was constructed as a colonial city during that period, Omdurman was considered the national capital, which transformed it into the nationalists refuge as well as anyone who wished to rebel against colonialist Khartoum. Therefore during the Condominium rule, the headquarters of the Graduates General Congress, and later the headquarters of most of the national political parties were established in Omdurman. Nearby, Omdurman’s Market flourished after it had undergone a process of expansion and replanned of its road network as well as the reorganization of the market itself. Omdurman’s market famously contained important cafes, such as George Mashriqi, Wad Al-Agha, Al-Zeibaq, and Yousuf Al-Faki Cafés. These cafes were considered the beating heart of the city with their literary and artistic forums that hosted artists and poets –especially Haqeeba poets– and it became the center for an intellectual and political revolution in the past century; the national movement.
Colonial policies were restrictive on mass migrations, therefore after Sudan’s independence and the lifting of these restrictions, there was considerable accerlation in the rate of migration. Omdurman continued to expand after Sudan’s independence, leading to the emergence of new neighborhoods, such as Al-Thawrat, Um Badda, Al-Muhandiseen, Al-Rawda, and Madinat Al-Neel, which with their vast extensions became cities in their own right. However, the city’s expansion became increasingly more rapid in the following decades that the planning process changed and the city entered a new era of urbanization.
Waves of migration from rural areas to Omdurman due to the attraction of the capital were motivated mostly by economic reasons. However, the largest development in the pattern of migration to the capital occurred when internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled to the capital and settled on the outskirts of the city. There are numerous drivers of displacement in Sudan that forced people to flee to the capital. The country faced many natural disasters in the beginning of the 1980s, including droughts and famines in the west and the east, which forced thousands to flee internally to the capital city. 120,000 persons have fled to Khartoum from Darfur and Kordofan alone. In parallel, the second civil war which took place between 1983 and 2005, forced many people to flee to Khartoum and Omdurman to escape war. Also the conflict in Darfur, which began in 2003, forced more people to be displaced. Because of these reasons, Sudan was ranked as the country with the highest number of IDPs in the world in the 1990s and 2000s, and in the year 2005, the number of IDPs reached its peak with 6.1 million IDPs in the country. Despite the decrease of this number through the years, Sudan’s ranking remains high in the list with 2 million IDPs.
These enormous numbers of IDPs that arrived in the capital –in what is referred to as “the black belt”– faced denial and indifference as well as outright hostility from successive governments since the 1980s. IDPs were viewed as a threat to political stability, a burden to the economy, and a source of social and cultural tension, all of which created hardships for them in securing housing and services. President Nimeri (1969-1985) went as far as enforcing the (Kesha) policy: “the displaced who trekked to Khartoum from western and southern Sudan were randomly picked up by security forces and relocated either back to their places of origin or to production sites in the districts of the central region.”
In late 1990s and early 2000s, Inqaz government (1989-2019) started some initiatives to fight poverty and marginalization, and huge numbers of low income citizens were integrated in working class districts around Khartoum, but these initiatives were interrupted by frequent random and inhumane evacuations which resulted in many human rights complaints.
Most IDPs settled in informal housing (slums) on the outskirts of cities. Planning initiatives since the 1990s were limited to the provision of lands on the outskirts of cities, and they were ostensibly designed to decrease the pressure on the overpopulated slums, so their houses were destroyed by security forces, and they were forcibly moved to new areas known as IDP camps. Such as Dar Al-Salam and Wad Al-Bashir camps in Omdurman. The urban researcher Dr. Hanaa Mutasim conducted interviews with IDPs who settled in Dar Al-Salam camp and found out that most of them used to live in Al-Gamayir neighborhood in the center of Omdurman. When Dar Al-Salam camp was built, the government destroyed their houses without providing any compensations, and Al-Gamayir was re-planned into first class land plots and was named Al-Thawra, Block 6).
Those who flee to the city are the ones who suffer the most from the lack of services and inaccessibility to livelihoods, because authorities always try to place them in the margins, out of the sight of city inhabitants. This painful reality of these camps in Omdurman was reflected in the names given by the locals who live in them. Of the examples of these names is Al-Salam camp, which is also named “Jabarona” (meaning they forced us). The government tried to change these names in an attempt to conceal the truth, for example the camp named “Zagalona” (meaning we were thrown out), was renamed to be “Al-Tharwa 15.”
While the government has tried to enable IDPs to own land when it established Al-Fatih resettlement sites 40km north of Omdurman, these sites have significantly decreased the quality of life for IDPs since they are very far from the city center and provide no access to services and livelihoods for them. Due to these difficult circumstances, IDPs were forced to leave Al-Fatih and be displaced once more.
We must view IDP camps, relocation sites, and even informal settlements in a critical eye and how the issues of the margin are transported into the city. It’s important to consider the city’s position and acknowledgement to IDPs, since through their different architectures, have become inseparable parts of the formation of our capital, Khartoum. It is without a doubt that urbanization is a global phenomenon today, and because of that, cities must be able to predict, accommodate and be resilient towards this growth particularly towards vulnerable groups who have been displaced, marginalized and forced into cruel circumstances that encloses them in a continuous cycle of poverty and displacement.
***
The ethnic and cultural homogeneity of Omdurman that was created during the colonial era was a result of painful experiences that the inhabitants of the city have experienced. The city had its fair share of tribal tensions that rattled the city between Al-Khalifa and his relatives from the western Sudan tribes, and the relatives of Al-Mahdi and the Nilotic tribes. The fall of the Mahdist state and the painful defeat in the Karari Battle, however, united the citizens of Omdurman against colonial rule, propelling the city into an era of social cohesion and integration. These factors led to launching the national movement inorder to liberate the country from under the colonizer’s rule, thus giving birth to Omdurman’s identity as Sudan’s microcosm, the nationalists’ refuge.
However, if Omdurman is indeed seen as a model of national integration and the melting pot that shaped the Sudanese national identity through the prevailing cultural movement which started during the colonial period, some consider that this statement is not accurate, and in fact misleading. The culture of Omdurman has rejected and alienated other groups and individuals with the argument that they are not true Omdurmanis. Some even claim that the many migrations in the 1970s and 1980s, was the beginning of losing the image of “national identity.”
In fact, this statement calls for questioning this image; did it truly reflect the national integration that allegedly envelopes the entirety of Sudan? Professor Idris Salim says that Omdurmanis will say yes, because the image of Omdurman as Sudan's microcosm exists only in their minds.
That national identity of Omdurman has certainly been put to the test since the 1980s and onwards. “I am Omdurman, I am Sudan” now has new meanings, as Sudan since its independence, hasn’t witnessed stability in all of its parts that were marginalized at the expense of developing the center. These displaced people have brought their grievances and destabilized Khartoum’s -and therefore, Omdurman’s- manufactured image of stability and social harmony. In fact, the image of Omdurman as microcosm of Sudan did not become a reality until it actually included people from all parts of Sudan, who were once again marginalized at city level in the midst of social elimination by native Omdurmanis.
In the face of this new challenge to the Omdurmani identity, there is no common enemy that unites Omdurmanis, as the enemy has become one another once more, similar to that of the Mahdist state. It is without a doubt that the best and ideal solution for the issue of displacement is through finding radical solutions at the root causes. However, it seems that the current complexity of the political and economic situation in Sudan makes it more challenging to achieve radical solutions in the near future. In the midst of these complexities, one may argue that one of the few options available is to address the issues of IDPs on a city level, if at the very least by changing the state’s marginalizing and discriminatory policies against them. Omdurman today is presented with a unique opportunity, since it’s image as Sudan’s microcosm has the capacity to be utilized as a realistic example to achieve social cohesion and real change, instead of utilizing its image for othering people. If Omdurman becomes able to achieve true equality on all social, cultural and economic aspects to all of its inhabitants in the future, perhaps that might carve the path towards finding actual solutions to the problems that have divided Sudan since its independence.
Street Life
Street Life
Tea ladies are a staple feature of urban street life in Sudan. Their occupation arose from the unfortunate economic situation faced by many women who were displaced to Khartoum due to war and famine. As a last resort, many women started selling hot beverages on street corners and waterfronts around the city, creating a unique culture around their kanoons, or coal stoves. People of all ages and genders gather on short stools to meet, wait near hospitals or government offices, pass the time, or simply enjoy the service. With the lack of public space infrastructure and furniture, they fulfill a specific need not met by anyone else, public or private.
The tea ladies' journey was never easy. They had to unionize to fight the continuous injustices they encountered throughout the years, playing significant roles during pivotal moments in the civic struggle in Khartoum.
In film Hyat (Arabic for life) prepares traditional coffee on the street in front of Omdurman's Khalifa Mosque; roasting and grinding the beans before cooking and serving the coffee.
This film is part of a collection of documentary films that has been filmed and produced as part of the Western Sudan Community Museums project WSCM which was originally intended to be showcased in 3 museums around Sudan, Khalifa House Museum in Omdurman, Khartoum, Sheikan Museum in Obaid, North Kordofan, and Darfur Museum in Nyala, South Darfur. These films show various explanations of the history of important historical sites related to the exhibitions of these museums. All films in this collection were produced by Mark Whatmore and Yoho Media.
Cover picture © Mark Whatmore
Tea ladies are a staple feature of urban street life in Sudan. Their occupation arose from the unfortunate economic situation faced by many women who were displaced to Khartoum due to war and famine. As a last resort, many women started selling hot beverages on street corners and waterfronts around the city, creating a unique culture around their kanoons, or coal stoves. People of all ages and genders gather on short stools to meet, wait near hospitals or government offices, pass the time, or simply enjoy the service. With the lack of public space infrastructure and furniture, they fulfill a specific need not met by anyone else, public or private.
The tea ladies' journey was never easy. They had to unionize to fight the continuous injustices they encountered throughout the years, playing significant roles during pivotal moments in the civic struggle in Khartoum.
In film Hyat (Arabic for life) prepares traditional coffee on the street in front of Omdurman's Khalifa Mosque; roasting and grinding the beans before cooking and serving the coffee.
This film is part of a collection of documentary films that has been filmed and produced as part of the Western Sudan Community Museums project WSCM which was originally intended to be showcased in 3 museums around Sudan, Khalifa House Museum in Omdurman, Khartoum, Sheikan Museum in Obaid, North Kordofan, and Darfur Museum in Nyala, South Darfur. These films show various explanations of the history of important historical sites related to the exhibitions of these museums. All films in this collection were produced by Mark Whatmore and Yoho Media.
Cover picture © Mark Whatmore
Tea ladies are a staple feature of urban street life in Sudan. Their occupation arose from the unfortunate economic situation faced by many women who were displaced to Khartoum due to war and famine. As a last resort, many women started selling hot beverages on street corners and waterfronts around the city, creating a unique culture around their kanoons, or coal stoves. People of all ages and genders gather on short stools to meet, wait near hospitals or government offices, pass the time, or simply enjoy the service. With the lack of public space infrastructure and furniture, they fulfill a specific need not met by anyone else, public or private.
The tea ladies' journey was never easy. They had to unionize to fight the continuous injustices they encountered throughout the years, playing significant roles during pivotal moments in the civic struggle in Khartoum.
In film Hyat (Arabic for life) prepares traditional coffee on the street in front of Omdurman's Khalifa Mosque; roasting and grinding the beans before cooking and serving the coffee.
This film is part of a collection of documentary films that has been filmed and produced as part of the Western Sudan Community Museums project WSCM which was originally intended to be showcased in 3 museums around Sudan, Khalifa House Museum in Omdurman, Khartoum, Sheikan Museum in Obaid, North Kordofan, and Darfur Museum in Nyala, South Darfur. These films show various explanations of the history of important historical sites related to the exhibitions of these museums. All films in this collection were produced by Mark Whatmore and Yoho Media.
Cover picture © Mark Whatmore
Suakin
Suakin
Suakin - The Place of all our Beginnings
As a place, Suakin has a special position in Sudanese culture, because of the memory of the beauty of the lost buildings and because it is identified with where Islam entered Sudan. Suakin has been described by the Sudanese as ‘the place of all our beginnings’.
Suakin was formerly Sudan’s chief port, before the construction of Port Sudan. In addition to trade, the town provided the gateway between Islamic culture and Eastern Africa as the major pilgrimage route between Africa and Mecca. During Suakin’s period of prosperous trade, most of its famous 15-20th century coral block buildings were constructed. These buildings are one of the best and now last remaining examples of the Red Sea architectural style.
Suakin Islands and the Historic Town
Suakin’s natural lagoon harbour is backed by the Red Sea Hills. The historic town consists of an island joined to the mainland by a causeway, and a mainland area known as the Geyf. The island where you see the ruins was the main town and has been continuously inhabited for at least 500 years. The island town grew like most old towns, with irregular narrow streets and blocks of houses of different shapes and sizes. The island properties consisted of houses for the wealthy merchants, many named after famous families such as Khorshid Effendi and Shennawi Bey, traders, commercial offices, stores and shops, zawias and mosques, and a number of public buildings. By the early 20th century Suakin Island had approximately two hundred houses.
Two further islands occupy the lagoon, opposite Suakin’s historic town. The first island is known as Condenser Island, occupied by British and Australian troops during the 1885-1896 Mahdist campaigns, and a tall condenser-chimney (now disappeared) that determined the island’s name. The other island is known as Quarantine Island, occupied by previous quarantine installations for pilgrims to Mecca, some early houses and a Christian cemetery.
The adjacent historic mainland town, known as the Geyf and connected to the island by a causeway, was occupied mostly by Hadendowa tribe inhabitants, containing houses, zawias and mosques, a number of public buildings, the Suakin-Berber Railway installations, shops, shanties and drinking houses. The Geyf was encircled by fortifications, while the area surrounding this was scattered with outer defences and a number of shrines and tombs.
Suakin’s Decline and Documentation
Suakin was abandoned for Port Sudan in the early 1900s. The historic town is now mostly uninhabited, much of it in ruins without the constant maintenance required. However, Suakin remains shrouded in legend and myth and contains one of Sudan’s most eventful and significant histories. Furthermore, trade and prosperity has returned to the area, following the opening of Suakin’s new port in 1991 and subsequent growth of a surrounding new town, in addition to the continuing passenger ferry route from Suakin to Jeddah.
Despite Suakin’s regrowth, much of the historic town remained in ruins and has now almost disappeared. However, Suakin’s importance and the need for this to be saved for future generations has been well recognised. This has resulted in extensive research and documentation of the site for many years, including great efforts of the Suakin Project established by Sudan’s National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums in 2000. It is this documentation and research that the following 3D reconstruction hopes to bring to light, in addition to inspiring hope and whatever plans may come for Suakin’s future.
Cover picture: Suakin mainland Al Mirgani buildings 2020 photo by Ibrahim Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed
Suakin - The Place of all our Beginnings
As a place, Suakin has a special position in Sudanese culture, because of the memory of the beauty of the lost buildings and because it is identified with where Islam entered Sudan. Suakin has been described by the Sudanese as ‘the place of all our beginnings’.
Suakin was formerly Sudan’s chief port, before the construction of Port Sudan. In addition to trade, the town provided the gateway between Islamic culture and Eastern Africa as the major pilgrimage route between Africa and Mecca. During Suakin’s period of prosperous trade, most of its famous 15-20th century coral block buildings were constructed. These buildings are one of the best and now last remaining examples of the Red Sea architectural style.
Suakin Islands and the Historic Town
Suakin’s natural lagoon harbour is backed by the Red Sea Hills. The historic town consists of an island joined to the mainland by a causeway, and a mainland area known as the Geyf. The island where you see the ruins was the main town and has been continuously inhabited for at least 500 years. The island town grew like most old towns, with irregular narrow streets and blocks of houses of different shapes and sizes. The island properties consisted of houses for the wealthy merchants, many named after famous families such as Khorshid Effendi and Shennawi Bey, traders, commercial offices, stores and shops, zawias and mosques, and a number of public buildings. By the early 20th century Suakin Island had approximately two hundred houses.
Two further islands occupy the lagoon, opposite Suakin’s historic town. The first island is known as Condenser Island, occupied by British and Australian troops during the 1885-1896 Mahdist campaigns, and a tall condenser-chimney (now disappeared) that determined the island’s name. The other island is known as Quarantine Island, occupied by previous quarantine installations for pilgrims to Mecca, some early houses and a Christian cemetery.
The adjacent historic mainland town, known as the Geyf and connected to the island by a causeway, was occupied mostly by Hadendowa tribe inhabitants, containing houses, zawias and mosques, a number of public buildings, the Suakin-Berber Railway installations, shops, shanties and drinking houses. The Geyf was encircled by fortifications, while the area surrounding this was scattered with outer defences and a number of shrines and tombs.
Suakin’s Decline and Documentation
Suakin was abandoned for Port Sudan in the early 1900s. The historic town is now mostly uninhabited, much of it in ruins without the constant maintenance required. However, Suakin remains shrouded in legend and myth and contains one of Sudan’s most eventful and significant histories. Furthermore, trade and prosperity has returned to the area, following the opening of Suakin’s new port in 1991 and subsequent growth of a surrounding new town, in addition to the continuing passenger ferry route from Suakin to Jeddah.
Despite Suakin’s regrowth, much of the historic town remained in ruins and has now almost disappeared. However, Suakin’s importance and the need for this to be saved for future generations has been well recognised. This has resulted in extensive research and documentation of the site for many years, including great efforts of the Suakin Project established by Sudan’s National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums in 2000. It is this documentation and research that the following 3D reconstruction hopes to bring to light, in addition to inspiring hope and whatever plans may come for Suakin’s future.
Cover picture: Suakin mainland Al Mirgani buildings 2020 photo by Ibrahim Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed
Suakin - The Place of all our Beginnings
As a place, Suakin has a special position in Sudanese culture, because of the memory of the beauty of the lost buildings and because it is identified with where Islam entered Sudan. Suakin has been described by the Sudanese as ‘the place of all our beginnings’.
Suakin was formerly Sudan’s chief port, before the construction of Port Sudan. In addition to trade, the town provided the gateway between Islamic culture and Eastern Africa as the major pilgrimage route between Africa and Mecca. During Suakin’s period of prosperous trade, most of its famous 15-20th century coral block buildings were constructed. These buildings are one of the best and now last remaining examples of the Red Sea architectural style.
Suakin Islands and the Historic Town
Suakin’s natural lagoon harbour is backed by the Red Sea Hills. The historic town consists of an island joined to the mainland by a causeway, and a mainland area known as the Geyf. The island where you see the ruins was the main town and has been continuously inhabited for at least 500 years. The island town grew like most old towns, with irregular narrow streets and blocks of houses of different shapes and sizes. The island properties consisted of houses for the wealthy merchants, many named after famous families such as Khorshid Effendi and Shennawi Bey, traders, commercial offices, stores and shops, zawias and mosques, and a number of public buildings. By the early 20th century Suakin Island had approximately two hundred houses.
Two further islands occupy the lagoon, opposite Suakin’s historic town. The first island is known as Condenser Island, occupied by British and Australian troops during the 1885-1896 Mahdist campaigns, and a tall condenser-chimney (now disappeared) that determined the island’s name. The other island is known as Quarantine Island, occupied by previous quarantine installations for pilgrims to Mecca, some early houses and a Christian cemetery.
The adjacent historic mainland town, known as the Geyf and connected to the island by a causeway, was occupied mostly by Hadendowa tribe inhabitants, containing houses, zawias and mosques, a number of public buildings, the Suakin-Berber Railway installations, shops, shanties and drinking houses. The Geyf was encircled by fortifications, while the area surrounding this was scattered with outer defences and a number of shrines and tombs.
Suakin’s Decline and Documentation
Suakin was abandoned for Port Sudan in the early 1900s. The historic town is now mostly uninhabited, much of it in ruins without the constant maintenance required. However, Suakin remains shrouded in legend and myth and contains one of Sudan’s most eventful and significant histories. Furthermore, trade and prosperity has returned to the area, following the opening of Suakin’s new port in 1991 and subsequent growth of a surrounding new town, in addition to the continuing passenger ferry route from Suakin to Jeddah.
Despite Suakin’s regrowth, much of the historic town remained in ruins and has now almost disappeared. However, Suakin’s importance and the need for this to be saved for future generations has been well recognised. This has resulted in extensive research and documentation of the site for many years, including great efforts of the Suakin Project established by Sudan’s National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums in 2000. It is this documentation and research that the following 3D reconstruction hopes to bring to light, in addition to inspiring hope and whatever plans may come for Suakin’s future.
Cover picture: Suakin mainland Al Mirgani buildings 2020 photo by Ibrahim Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed
Memorialization within the Deathscapes of Khartoum
Memorialization within the Deathscapes of Khartoum
Deathscapes of Khartoum by Mai Abusalih was first published in May 2021 as part of Studio Urban's contribution to the Goethe-Institut Sudan’s project, Sudan Moves.
Since then, many life-changing events and momentous developments have occurred affecting the city of Khartoum and Sudan as a whole. These events give the article a new, and more urgent significance, and present additional challenges to the way we think about the parameters for what is termed a ‘deathscape’; the ‘space’ of death and how it relates to the city.
The COVID 19 pandemic of 2020 had a devastating effect on Sudan’s elderly and vulnerable populations with many of the thousands of related deaths at quarantine facilities foregoing traditional burial rites starting with the washing of bodies at home. Cemeteries, one of the three types of deathscapes examined in the article, took on a foreboding aura and dread of the disease was greatly heightened by images of body bags being lowered into graves by health officials. These deathscapes were no longer the social gathering places of pre-pandemic days.
With the war that erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, and the violence and destruction that quickly spread to other parts of Sudan, the ‘space’ of death broke through the confines of Khartoum’s cemeteries and spilled over into the space of living. Images of dead bodies lying in the street and stories of stray dogs devouring them circulated while for those lucky enough to be buried, this was done in makeshift graves in public squares or in the yards of people’s own homes. Today these are crude monuments and memorial sites, another of the deathscapes discussed in the article, reminding Khartoum of the brutality of the war. “Khartoum was quite literally built over burial grounds,” explains Abusalih in a section on the historic origins of the city. Ironically and as a result of war, the city is reverting back to this origins.
The qubbas of sufi sheikhs is the third deathscape explored by Abusalih who explains how this is the only deathscape that edures the passage of time and resists oblivion. However, whether or not these physical structures have survived the ravages of war is unclear as many buildings and structures have been destroyed by fire or shelling. And when the fighting stops, could destroyed or damaged gubbas be reconstructed, and in what way, and how will this add another layer of history to that which they have accumulated over the centuries?
Finally, what form of memorialization will the war and its victims take in Sudan and in Khartoum? Such a critical and bloody moment in Sudan’s history seems worthy of more than the habitual memorialisation which Abusalih describes in the article, such as the naming of a few streets or public squares in memory of a person or event.
- Sara Elnagar, Editor and writer
Memorialization within the Deathscapes of Khartoum
Author: Mai Abusalih
Spaces of death are vital parts of the city, as every human culture has developed different funerary expressions that correspond with local beliefs and values, offering a deep insight into these cultures. These spaces’ importance, however, remains largely obscured from general discourse as they are often pushed to the periphery and are given little thought and reflection.
In this essay, we are interested in examining cemeteries in Khartoum, as well as other spaces of death in the city beyond them to understand the roles they play apart from burial. Therefore, in order to set the parameters of what can be considered as “space” of death and how it relates to the city, the term “Deathscape” will be used as a framework. The term itself is fairly recent and has been adopted by scholars “to invoke both the places associated with death and for the dead, and how these are imbued with meanings and associations: the site of a funeral, and the places of final disposition and of remembrance, and representations of all these.” Adopting this lens while examining the relationships and overlaps between the living and the dead allows us to see the city in different ways, since “not only are those places often emotionally fraught, they are frequently the subjects of social contest and power.”
To uncover these relationships, three types of deathscapes in Khartoum will be examined: the domed shrines of Sufi saints, cemeteries, and monuments and memorials in the city. Each type will allow us to view the influence of deathscapes across different scales: the building, the landscape, and the object. By viewing the history of these types and the nature of the realms they inhabit –whether spiritual and/or civic– this essay argues that deathscapes have the ability to act as physical archives that preserve the history of the city by the accumulation of the stories attached to them. Through this process, spaces of the dead have intersected with spaces of the living and become contested sites where the socio-political relations in the city playout. The area of Central Khartoum, for example, sits on top of an old burial site that was closed down and built over in the early 20th century, with little traces of the old cemetery remaining. A few blocks away, the site also witnessed deaths from various battles of Sudanese resistance against the Turco-Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian colonial rules. In addition, the area witnessed the violent deaths from the 1964 and 1985 national revolutions, and in more recent history, the massacre of the sit-in at army headquarters in June 2019. These various political events took place within the vicinity of Central Khartoum due to their relationship to the seat of power in the country, therefore, the deaths from these events distinguish the location from others in the capital.
By looking at the influence of deathscapes in Khartoum through the various types that we will examine, this essay tries to understand the relationship between death, remembrance, and memorialization in the city to reveal who and what is being memorialized and what history tells us about the state of memorialization in Khartoum.
Domed shrines and the power of architectural influence:
The discussion on deathscapes of Khartoum cannot begin without recognizing one of the most important and influential architectural and archeological deathscapes that have had a deep influence on Sudanese society; the Domed shrines or Qubbas which are burial places of Sufi holy men (awliya).
For the past five centuries, qubbas have defined the skyline along the banks of the Nile as prominent landmarks within the villages and towns in the central, northern, and eastern regions of Sudan. They seem to have emerged with the first Islamic dynasties in Sudan, the Abdullab and the Funj, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Throughout the following centuries, the practice of building and maintaining these qubbas has remained rooted within Sudanese society, as they are viewed as sacred “objects of visitation and places of personal supplication and collective remembrance, centers of religious life in its spiritual and social aspects.”
The area of Khartoum witnessed a concentration of Sufi holy men since its early beginnings. Shaykh Arbab Al A’gayed – who was born in Tuti Island – founded the first inhabited village in the area of Khartoum in 1691 that became a destination for many followers and students of his. Also, the Funj and Abdullab’s policies ensured that Sufi shuyoukh were granted land and exempted from taxes in order to free them to continue their religious teachings. This was how Shaykh Hamad wad Um Maryum and Shaykh Khojali came to reside in current-day Bahri, and Shaykh Idris wad Al Arbab in Al-Aylafoon, among many others. Therefore, the growth of the Khartoum area can certainly be tied to the settlement and religious activity of these holy men.
The powers of the shuyookh – referred to as karamat – are considered blessings from God which transcend even death, rendering the shuyoukh’s gravesites as powerful places that are vital for the community. Because of that, some qubbas and tombs are known for curing various illnesses, while others are famous for aiding women with fertility, in addition to other powers linked to the sheikh prior to his death. It is a belief so rooted in Sudanese society, with the names of Awliya immediately springing to followers' lips in times of illness, distress, and danger; motivating pilgrimages to their “resting” places in request for blessings (barakat). Qubbas are most likely to remain active destinations for pilgrimage when associated with khalwas and masids; the religious centers of Sufi orders (turuq) that act as institutions of religious worship, teaching, and instruction.
The strong relationship between awliyas and the community is the reason why qubbas can usually be found close to or within a cemetery, surrounded by the graves of their relatives and disciples. These cemeteries offer an interesting intersection between life and death, as they are places full of activity where religious celebrations are continuously being performed. The qubba of Shaykh Hamad El-Nil in Omdurman, for example, is one of the most important touristic destinations in the capital and it holds the “Noba” every Friday, a public ritual for Dhikr that begins with a procession across the cemetery which then transforms into a gathering where recitation, singing, and dancing take place. Numerous other celebrations are held there regularly as well, such as the Holiya; the anniversary of the death of the shaykh, and the Mulid; the birth date of the Prophet.
Weekly Celebration at Hamad ElNil Qubba in Omdurman
The Sudanese archeologist, Intisar Soghayroun, notes that the origins of the architecture of qubbas of Sufi holy men in Sudan differ from its counterparts in the Islamic world, as it was derived from local pre-Islamic architecture, such as Kushite pyramids as well as the rounded structures of conical huts of Shilluk and Nuer tribes of South Sudan. Also, she adds that the red bricks used to build many of the Funj-era qubbas were taken from the ruins of the Christian churches and domestic architecture of Alodia, concluding that “pagan, Christian and Islamic elements blended to the benefit of Islam.” The architecture of Funj-era qubbas, however, was greatly impacted by the invasion of the Turks in 1821, as the Turko-Egyptian administration introduced the new style of a square base under the qubbas.
In downtown Khartoum east of the intersection of Baladiya and Al-Qasr Avenues stand two of the last remnants of the Turco-Egyptian rule in Khartoum, known as the Turkish Qubbas. These funerary structures were erected within the Old Khartoum Cemetery, the main burial ground of the city at the time. Similar to the domed shrines of holy men in Sudan, the Turkish qubbas were surrounded by a cemetery, but instead of devotees and believers, it contained a number of subsidiary graves among which are native Sudanese soldiers who were recruited into the Turko-Egyptian army.
The eastern qubba was the first to be established for the burial of Ahmed Pasha Abu Adhan, Governor-General of the Sudan from 1839 to 1843. Ahmed Pasha died in 1843 under mysterious circumstances after his mission to raid Darfur was called-off at the last minute due to the rising suspicion of the ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali that Ahmed Pasha engaged in treasonous activities. The western qubba contains the remains of Musa Pasha Hamdi, who also became Governor-General of the Sudan from 1862 to 1865. However, Musa Hamdi was known for his cunning and ruthlessness which he employed to rise through the ranks and he had a reputation that “Murder and torture were no more to him than pastimes.” Musa Hamdi’s rule ended when he passed away in Khartoum in 1865 from smallpox.
In the following decades, the Turco-Egyptian rule was overthrown by the Mahdists in 1885 and Khartoum – the old capital of the Turks – was dismantled and destroyed to allow for Omdurman – the capital of Mahdist state – to rise. How then have these two qubbas managed to survive the wrath of Mahdists and the erasure of Khartoum while containing the remains of the hated Turko-Egyptian administration? The qubbas evasion of destruction is even more noteworthy when considering that Mahdists had no qualms about destroying qubbas of Sufi holy men, as the qubba of Al-Hassan Al-Mirghani in Kassala, for example, was destroyed by Osman Digna because of the Khatmiyya order’s opposition to Mahdism.
The reason could surprisingly have to do with the most prominent symbol of the Mahdist state, the qubba of the Mahdi himself. There is a structural similarity between the Turkish qubbas and the Mahdi qubba in Omdurman evident in the square base below the qubba, and it is suggested that the Turkish qubbas were used as architectural models for the tomb of Al-Mahdi who died shortly after the liberation of Khartoum from the Turks. The Turko-Egyptian influence in the construction of the Mahdi’s qubba exceeded that, since Abdullah, the Khalifa of the Mahdi, assigned the Egyptian architect, Ismail Hassan, to build the qubba and also utilized the doors and windows seized from the buildings of Turkish Khartoum to erect the qubba. Ironically, the greatest symbol of Mahdism would come to be heavily influenced by the architecture of the regime which it fought against.
For the duration of the Mahdist state, the qubba of the Mahdi soared over 100 feet high and was the most prominent icon of the city. Through building this magnificent qubba, unlike any other in Sudan at the time, the power of the figure of the Mahdi continued and expanded beyond his death, as his tomb became a symbol and a site of pilgrimage that followers of the Mahdi from all around the country travelled to in request for blessings.
The British were quite aware of the power of this symbol when they marched towards Omdurman in 1898 for the reconquest of Sudan. Slatin, the former Governor-General of Darfur during the Turco-Egyptian administration, accompanied the Sudan campaigns (1896-1898) and insisted that the first target in Omdurman should be the qubba of the Mahdi. Having been a captive of the Mahdists for thirteen years, Slatin personally witnessed the importance and sanctity of the site as the heart of the city. His motives might have also been influenced by the events that took place during the liberation of Khartoum in 1885, as he depicted in his book, “Fire and Sword in the Sudan,” the moment when the Mahdists brought him the decapitated head of Charles Gordon, the last Governor-General of the Turco-Egyptian administration.
The death of General Gordon in Sudan was a shock to the British and served as a great motivator to garner public support against Sudan as there was a “perceived need to recover personal, institutional, and national honour.” In parallel, Britain was wary of the intentions of other European powers such as France, Italy, and Belgium and their growing influence over Africa, which solidified the need for Sudan’s reconquest. Also, it’s important to note that the Sudan campaigns were led by Sirdar Herbert Kitchener who took part in the failed Gordon Relief Expedition in 1884-5.
To demolish the Mahdi’s qubba and other major parts of the city, the British brought the 5.5-inch Howitzers, which were supplied with high explosive lyddite shells that were fired in the battle of Omdurman for the first time in history. Omdurman fell quickly as the Khalifa’s army was no match to British firepower that slaughtered over 12,000 Mahdists. Kitchener’s troops under his orders not only shelled the qubba but totally destroyed it and they even went as far as desecrating the Mahdi’s tomb most savagely in a symbolic mirroring of the killing of Gordon, concluding with casting the Mahdi’s remains into the Nile River. This act of desecration, however, was greatly criticized by British media and an investigation was even launched by the British Parliament. Nevertheless, the Mahdi’s influence was declared vanquished with the destruction of his qubba where it remained in ruin for the majority of the Condominium rule over Sudan (1898-1956) to serve as a constant reminder of British imperial power.
Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi repeatedly appealed to the British government to allow him to rebuild his father’s tomb yet his requests were continuously turned down throughout the colonial period out of fear of a Mahdist revival. However, after 49 years the British finally permitted Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman to rebuild the qubba in 1947. The newly rebuilt qubba of the Mahdi was once again constructed in an Egyptian-influenced architectural style. Besides the square base of the qubba, Intisar Soghayroun notes that the small domes at the four corners of the Mahdi’s qubba are similar to those found in Upper Egyptian tombs.
The 20th century was marked by a surge of Sufi activity in Sudan, evident from the construction of new qubbas as well as the restoration of old ones, and the qubba of Al-Mahdi would come to be very influential in this process. These newly built qubbas were much larger and more colorful than Funj-era qubbas as their designs featured elaborate windows, doorways, and spacious interiors. This “religious revival” of Sufi brotherhoods was particularly promoted by Ja’afar Nimery, President of Sudan (1969-1985) who is credited for replacing old qubbas and building new ones, a trend that continued beyond his presidency until today. Nimery’s interest had political motives, as he turned to populism to garner the support of small Sufi brotherhoods. The construction of these new qubbas was in most cases directly influenced by the style of the Mahdi’s tomb. This trend in the construction of qubbas, however, has had a direct impact on old Funj-era qubbas, as deteriorating qubbas were demolished and replaced with new ones.
About 32 kilometers south-east of Khartoum, one of the most prominent examples of the erasure of Funj-era style qubbas lies in the tomb of Shaykh Idris Wad Al-Arbab in Al-Aylafoon. Shaykh Idris lived between 1507 and 1650 and was a scholar and advisor to Funj rulers, and is one of the most recognized Sufi holy men of Sudan with his qubba remaining a site of pilgrimage to this day. The original qubba was constructed in a terraced style –which is an old Funj-style for qubbas– but after it collapsed, it was rebuilt in the style of Turkish qubbas in 1928 according to the archeologist Salah Omer Al-Sadig. However, Soghayroun argues instead that this style was popularized through the construction of Al-Mahdi’s qubba. Either way, the influence that came with colonialism has had a direct impact on the architecture of qubbas in Sudan and as Soghayroun succinctly puts it, “the cost for society has been the loss of a part of a unique cultural and aesthetic legacy through the dismantling of old domes.”
Much like a palimpsest, qubbas can accumulate layers of histories and cultures that go back for centuries and they act as physical archives that have the ability to create a bridge between the city we live in and the past. Qubbas have been at the center of many political shifts that have happened in Sudan, as they extend beyond being mere sites of burial to becoming places full of life, prayer, hopes, celebrations, and culture. Although the style of the Funj qubbas is experiencing erasure and replacement, the type of archiving and preservation of history granted to Sufi holy men through these qubbas is so powerful that their names are remembered to this day significantly more than the names of the rulers of the Funj Sultanate.
The question then is, has the same type of memorialization and archiving moved beyond the powerful figures of holy men and defined the culture of remembrance for Sudan as a whole? To try and answer this question, we’ll try to look at other types of deathscapes that exist in Khartoum to explore their current state when it comes to memorialization.
Cemeteries: the changing landscape of burial and the burial crisis
The site where the Turkish qubbas were erected, as previously mentioned, was located within the Old Khartoum Cemetery, a burial place that occupied a large part of the current day downtown Khartoum, although the exact parameters of the cemetery are not clear. During the construction of the Grand Mosque of Khartoum in the early 1900s, numerous human remains found on the site were linked to the Old Khartoum Cemetery. To continue constructing the mosque, a fatwa on inactive cemeteries (Al-Magabir Al-Mondarsa / المقابر المندرسة) was issued by Mufti Al-Sudan Mohamed Abu Al-Gasim Hashim, thus enabling the city to reuse the land in which Old Khartoum Cemetery was previously located. According to Abu-Salim, the cemetery extended east of the Grand Mosque from Abu-Jinzeer square to the Turkish qubbas and Coliseum Cinema. The square of Abu-Jinzeer – which is primarily used as a parking lot today – holds the remains of the sufi Shaykh Imam Bin Mohamed, who was originally interred in the middle of Al-Qasr Avenue but was removed to this square when the avenue was laid out. A grave shrine was built for the shaykh within the square and was surrounded with chains (jinzeer), thus it was named “Abu-Jinzeer.”
The boundaries of the Old Khartoum Cemetery might have been even larger than that. Inside the modern-day boundaries of the Khartoum Civil Hospital, the mother of Al-Mahdi, Zainab Al-Shagalawie, was buried in the Old Khartoum Cemetery during the Turco-Egyptian rule and the Mahdi seems to have visited her grave following the liberation of Khartoum in 1885. When archeological excavations in Khartoum Civil Hospital began in the winter of 1944-45, the British archeologist A. J. Arkell removed the grave of the Mahdi’s mother, after being granted permission from Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi, to proceed with excavations.
The excavations revealed that the site had been occupied throughout different time periods, beginning from the Mesolithic period. It was also reported that “graves of Meroitic date have […] been found, and a few full length burials with no grave goods. The latter are non-Moslem, and possibly date from the period when Soba was the capital of a Christian Kingdom.” Meaning the use of this area as a cemetery could very well have begun during the Meroitic period.
Khartoum was quite literally built over burial grounds. Other cemeteries around the capital were also built over and erased by referencing the fatwa of inactive cemeteries, such as the Martyrs graveyard which became the Martyrs’ (AlShuhadda) bus station, in addition to an old cemetery in the current location of the Palace of Youth and Children, both of which are located in Omdurman.
The relationship of death to the urban fabric of Khartoum is even more intriguing when examining the numerous shrines of Sufi Awliya that have been maintained and absorbed into the public institutions and facilities of the city. Salah Omer Al-Sadig describes this fascinating relationship between the spaces of the living and the dead in his book “Al-Athar Al-Islamia Fi Mantiqat Al-Khartoum” (Islamic Antiquities in the Khartoum Region). For example, the shrine of Shaykh Ibrahim Sayem Al-Dahren is located today inside the post office near the Arabic Market (Al-Soug Al-Arabi) in Khartoum. Al-Sadig explains that the post office was built around the shrine in the early 20th century but has taken to maintaining and restoring it as one of its duties since followers of the shaykh visit the post office regularly in pilgrimage to the shrine. Two Sufi shaykhs were mistakenly killed during the 1885 liberation of Khartoum; AbdulRahman Al-Khorasany who was buried within what used to be the Central Station in Khartoum, as well as Sheikh Mohamed Fayet, who was buried within what would later become the Supreme Council for Environment and Urban Upgrading. These Sufi shrines among others nestled within governmental offices and buildings around the city have stood the test of time and are considered a part of the religious heritage of Khartoum as they are frequented by Sufi followers, giving the city a spiritual dimension. Yet, the continued existence of these shrines is also testament that cemeteries are not always memorialized and allowed to remain for generations in the same manner of the shrines Sufi holy men, which puts them at risk of erasure.
Another aspect to consider is the position of the cemetery in relation to the city. While the Old Khartoum Cemetery was at the periphery of the city while it was active, Abu-Salim reports that cemeteries during the Mahdist state were in the middle of the city. However, due to rising health concerns from proximity to cemeteries, large areas north of Omdurman were dedicated by Al-Khalifa Abdullah to new cemeteries, what we have come to know as Al-Bakry, Ahmed Sharfy, and Al-Jamryia Cemeteries. This is similar to the majority of cemeteries in Khartoum that were established on the periphery; Hamad, Khojali, Hamad El-Nil, AlSahafa, Burri, Commonwealth, etc. As the capital grew from continuous waves of migration in the decades that followed, cemeteries were surrounded once more by the city as a natural side-effect of the process of urbanization. The problem that is created from this process, however, is that cemeteries would be unable to expand and accommodate these new pressures that come with the population growth in the city. That is why the last decade has seen a flood of news articles discussing a burial crisis happening in Khartoum.
Because of cultural and religious norms, burials in Sudan have historically been carried out either by the family of the deceased or by individuals who volunteer their help as there have been no official governmental or private entity that has undertaken this responsibility. Without an entity to organize burials and plan the space of cemeteries, the burying process was done haphazardly with little consideration of space consumption. Because of these circumstances and many more, the non-profit Husn Al-Khatima Organization came to be established in 2000.
Husn Al-Khatima has been organizing burials, maintaining cemeteries, planting trees, fencing, lighting, and generally trying to improve the environment of cemeteries. Yet, despite the organization’s work, it seems that the problems facing cemeteries have persisted. Most people burying their loved ones today in Khartoum experience the very difficult task of digging a grave and finding one already there and having to repeat the process until an empty burial space is found.
Sensing a real issue with burials in the city at the time, Husn Al-Khatima organized a conference in 2009 posing the question “Where do we bury our dead while our cemeteries are full?” During this conference, different examples from around the Islamic world were presented as possible alternative solutions for dealing with the burial crisis and the solution that was agreed upon by the community was to establish new cemeteries. Husn Al-Khatima has been advocating for this solution to the extent that even the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities of Khartoum State has recognized the need for new cemeteries and accordingly planned for 52 new cemeteries in the Structural Plan of Khartoum for the year 2030. However, while a few new cemeteries were indeed established, the majority of these plans have yet to be realized since the Ministry found many of the proposed sites to be inadequate and contained multiple issues.
While in essence, the solution to establish new cemeteries stems from a city planning perspective, the relationship of Khartoum’s cemeteries to planning ends at their boundaries. In contrast to the veneration given to planning and maintaining qubbas of Sufi awliya and their intersection with living spaces, cemeteries are entirely segregated from the city and are not afforded the same level of care and treatment. Cemeteries in Khartoum, in fact, are completely disregarded from the planning and design process and most burials continue to take place haphazardly.
While the burial crisis persists, Dr. Ali Khidir Bakheet, a founding member of Husn Al-Khatima explained that Islamic burial rites essentially allow cemeteries to be sustainable since the body decomposes almost entirely, hence the grave can be “reused” after decades. He elaborated by pointing out that burials in Muslim cemeteries have been on-going for centuries, citing Al-Baqi’ cemetery in Medina, Saudi Arabia, and Hilat Hamad’s cemetery in Bahri (400 years).
Considering Dr. Bakheet’s insight in dialogue with the current trend of burials as well as the fatwa on inactive cemeteries that was referenced when building Khartoum in the early 20th century, a few discrepancies are evident. The emotional ties of Sudanese people with their family burial plots and their desire to continue burying there put great pressure on cemeteries, so much so that in 2018, the Khartoum State Legislative Council declared that the cemeteries in Khartoum have become too full and cannot receive more burials since 200 people die every day in the state. If indeed the public agrees to switch burials to new cemeteries that will be established, what will happen to the cemeteries that are at capacity today? Will they be built over, same as the Old Cemetery of Khartoum? Or will the same cemeteries be reused as Dr. Bakheet suggests?
This dilemma aside, planners and architects continue to ignore cemeteries, forcing them to remain unplanned spaces that are excluded from the built environment, despite the fact that cemeteries take up large spaces within the city. Precisely because of the large areas they occupy, there is a real threat to these overfull cemeteries from the encroachment of the city in the case that they stop accepting burials and become inactive, similar to historical precedents such as the Old Khartoum Cemetery.
The vulnerability of cemeteries could perhaps have a lot to do with their fraught relationship to the city. While cemeteries remain isolated and their lack of design renders them unable to engage the needs of visitors beyond burials, the emotional ties to the space decrease over time. This frayed relationship in the face of imminent urbanization could perhaps undermine memorializing cemeteries and preserving their histories. If indeed we were to preserve our cemeteries and avoid their erasure, a radical redesign and spatial intervention is needed to convince the public that there is a need for maintaining cemeteries within the city in the future.
The contested space of monuments and memorials:
Beyond the spaces of burial – whether cemeteries or domed shrines (qubbas) – monuments and memorials can also be considered deathscapes because of their symbolic relationship to death and memorialization, as they are sometimes used to commemorate individuals that have passed, and other times they mark sites of histories and memories of death, violence and trauma. Within the latter, erecting memorials allow deathscapes to become arenas that bridge between the private and the public realms as they “provide spaces for a combination of purposes, including personal mourning, spiritual solace, and private reflection on the one hand, as well as civic engagement and democratic dialogue on the other.” This dialogue is able to take place in memorials because they inhabit the public sphere and act as public acknowledgement to victims of violence and atrocity.
One of the most recent events that have reshaped the spatial memory of Khartoum in relation to death was the massacre of June 3rd, 2019 during the violent dispersal of the two-month-long sit-in at the army headquarters. To topple the 30-year long military regime of Al-Bashir, protestors took to the streets beginning from December 2018, with the revolution reaching a crescendo when the area of the army headquarters was occupied by protestors on April 6, 2019. The boundaries of the sit-in site extended from the surroundings of the army, navy, air force, and artillery headquarters to the central campus of the University of Khartoum. In those two months, the sit-in became a miniature city that represented the ideals of the Sudanese revolution – Freedom, Peace, and Justice – and became a place where everyone from around the country could come together and co-exist. The space/event of the sit-in saw a production of public space unlike any in the history of Sudan, leading it to become the center for all kinds of activities in the city.
Security forces on the morning of June 3rd violently dispersed the sit-in, razing tents, opening fire and killing protestors, and even going to the extent of dumping their bodies in the Nile River. It is reported that 127 people died from the violent crackdown of the army headquarters sit-in, with some estimating that the number of deaths could be much higher as over 100 people were reported missing.
On June 3rd, the ways in which people see and relate to this space radically changed, as all evidence of the occupation of the site was erased and murals were painted over, in an attempt to erase the collective memory of the sit-in. The relationship of the sit-in site to state power is the main reason why protestors occupied it in the first place, yet this same power is now exerted to ensure that the site is devoid of any sort of memorialization and remembrance to the sit-in and the victims of the massacre. Under the watchful eye of the military, passersby drive through what was once considered a Sudanese utopia, now transformed to a deathscape following the violent events of June 3rd.
Calls to memorialize the revolution and its martyrs became the center of discussions about public space in Khartoum. Streets and public spaces were renamed after martyrs and new murals commemorating them were created. However, when considering the types of memorialization that have taken place as a result of the Sudanese revolution, it quickly appears that memorials were strictly within the bounds of renaming buildings and streets or painting over existing walls. Although proposals for creating a new memorial for the martyrs of the December Revolution circulated in social media, no further steps were taken to enable such projects to come to life. In that regard, memorialization of the revolution has been very limited and involved no spatial consideration to create a new physical memorial. In fact, there has been a huge debate regarding memorials and monuments, particularly in the form of statues.
On the 24th of January 2019, Abdul-Azeem Abubakr took part in a protest in Al Arba’en Street in Omdurman and was photographed confronting the security forces moments before they opened fire on him and he was martyred. The image of his last stand went viral and his heroic act motivated the artist Hosam Osman along with Asim Zurgan and Rami Rizig to create a statue for Abdul-Azeem. The statue was supposed to be installed in the same street where he was martyred, however, there were outright rejections to erecting a statue in the neighborhood as it was seen to be against Islamic tradition. After failing to erect the statue, the artist Hosam reported that a few months later, an unknown entity broke into his home and destroyed the statue.
The destruction of the statue of the martyr Abdul-Azeem is only the most recent addition to a long history of rejecting statues in Sudan going back for decades. Today, most of the monuments found around the capital are abstract pieces and it’s a rare sight to find any that relate to Sudanese history, and of course there are no statues to be found in public spaces. To understand the root causes for this phenomenon, it’s important to look back at the history of the erasure of statues in the city.
The first statue to be erected in modern Sudanese history was that of Charles Gordon, as the resurrection of Khartoum under the Anglo-Egyptian administration was tied with the remembrance of the death of Gordon. Kitchener’s first act after defeating the Mahdists in the Battle of Omdurman was to cross over to Khartoum and hold a “second funeral of Gordon” at the exact spot where he died in his Government House in a public performance of grief. Immediately after, Kitchener commenced planning Khartoum and created the ideas for Gordon Memorial College (now University of Khartoum) and a Gordon Monument.
At one of the most prominent avenues in the city, a bronze statue of Gordon on a riding camel was inaugurated in 1903, facing southwards as if overlooking the fortifications that he defended against the Mahdists. The location of the statue in front of the Presidential Palace as well as naming the avenue where it was placed after Gordon (now University Avenue) –an avenue that linked it to the Gordon Memorial College– revealed the intentional placement of this monument at the colonial seat of power in Sudan. Another colonial statue depicting Kitchener was also installed in 1921 to commemorate his role in the Sudan conquest following his sudden death a few years earlier. This statue was “made from empty cartridge cases collected from battlefields” and was installed in front of the War Office (now Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning), facing Kitchener Avenue (now Nile Street) and the Blue Nile.
Erecting the statues of Gordon and Kitchener, as well as naming important avenues and squares in the city after them were physical representations of the British Imperial power over Sudan. As Savage explains about monuments in general:
“Public monuments are the most conservative of commemorative forms precisely because they are meant to last, unchanged, forever. While other things come and go, are lost and forgotten, the monument is supposed to remain a fixed point, stabilizing both the physical and the cognitive landscape. Monuments attempt to mold a landscape of collective memory, to conserve what is worth remembering and discard the rest.”
These monuments, however, did not remain a fixed point for Sudanese people, as they were rejected and a reckoning of colonial heritage ensued shortly after independence. Abu-Salim stresses how these monuments became sites of resistance for the National Movement, and as early as 1949 news articles were published criticizing the existence of the statues, and by extension, colonialism in Sudan as a whole. The statues became contested sites that were heavily debated for a decade but their removal only came after independence following the military coup led by General Abboud in 1958. Abboud’s newly-found military government wanted to perform a noticeable act of nationalism to give itself legitimacy and therefore shipped the statues back to the British in London. An erasure of the names attached to colonialism soon followed and Gordon and Kitchener Avenues became University Avenue and Nile Street. While the removal of Gordon and Kitchener’s statues was motivated by national decolonial sentiments, they would mark the beginning of the eradication of statues to come in Khartoum.
In the following decades, statues began to be erected in different cities in Sudan. In Port Sudan, a statue of the Mahdist military commander, Osman Digna was erected, and in Rufa’a, to commemorate Babikir Bedri – the pioneer of women’s education in Sudan – a statue depicting him was installed in the first school he established. Also, following the 1964 revolution against the military regime of Abboud, statues of Ahmed Al Qurashi and Babikir Abdul-Hafeez, who were martyred in the student protests, were erected at the University of Khartoum. The Indian community in Omdurman also erected a statue for Gandhi. However, the existence of statues in Sudanese public spaces has always been contested and with the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in the country, beginning from the early 1980s, statues were denounced as idols and most of them were destroyed. Even sculptures created by students of the College of Fine Arts faced this denunciation. The Bashir regime that came into power in 1989 further strengthened this view on monuments and memorials, to the extent that the former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities and Wildlife, Mohamed Abdul-Karim Al-Had, stated in court that he has never stepped foot in the National Museum because it contained idols, in reference to monuments of Kushite Kingdoms.
The religious debate around depicting human figures in sculptures does not in fact go against the idea of memorialization itself, as it is only a rejection of their form. The ideas, events and people being commemorated are the core of memorials and monuments rather than the form chosen to depict them. Therefore, memorialization should respond to society's values and needs, adopting the most appropriate and acceptable form of memorialization that enables the preservation of history. Within this debate, we must recognize that there is a radical difference between removing statues of colonial heritage and removing statues that relate to Sudanese national history post-independence. Colonial statues were rejected not only because of their form, but because of the imperial iconography that was imposed on Sudanese people, to the point where they became arenas for resistance against colonialism as a whole. These arenas, however, disappeared following the removal of the colonial statues, as they were not replaced with monuments that maintained the historical value and the public’s relationship with the space. Beyond the tensions surrounding their form, monuments and memorials still have the capacity to exist, yet they have continuously been removed without any replacement, despite the fact that they have the capacity to reflect ideals and values that are important to Sudanese peoples’ collective memory.
The vacuum of physical representations for memorialization in Khartoum negatively impacts projects that aim to memorialize victims of violence and atrocity, leaving their history to remain largely unacknowledged and vulnerable to erasure. In this regard, the massacre at the army headquarters sit-in can be read as a continuation of acts of violence perpetrated by the state against its people, most of which remain without sites of remembrance. We have yet to see memorials for the two civil wars in Sudan (1955-1972) and (1983-2005), the latter of which is considered one of the longest civil wars in history that resulted in two and half million casualties. The Darfur genocide as well remains without memorialization, during which 300,000 people were killed according to UN estimates. Many other atrocities and massacres have taken place in Sudan, with very little acknowledgement and justice.
While there have been some commemorative events, particularly in relation to the martyrs of the December Revolution, we have to recognize that erecting memorials –for both recent and historic events– plays an important part in the process of transitional justice, reconciliation and democracy. Memorialization allows society to come together to negotiate what should be remembered as a part of the process of constructing our national identity. It solidifies the truth and educates people about the terrible history of suffering that Sudanese people have gone through in order to come to grips with the past and avoid repeating it. The silencing of narratives of history by not allowing monuments and memorials to exist undermines this process and squanders their potential for reconciliation and healing.
Within each of the different forms of deathscapes explored in this essay, there has been some level of erasure taking place. The domed shrines (qubbas) of sufi holy men that were erected during the Funj Sultanate are being erased and replaced with modern and contemporary styles, threatening some of the most significant architectural and archeological heritage in Sudan. The landscape of cemeteries in Khartoum on the other hand has been radically changing in the past century, with some cemeteries being erased and built over to make way for the development of the city. In the past few decades, the urbanization of Khartoum has been pressuring existing urban cemeteries, leading them to overfill and face an unknown future. In the midst of these pressures, the possibility of the erasure of urban cemeteries could very well be repeated. Lastly, since independence, monuments and memorials have been continuously destroyed and erased from the city due to the political and religious tensions surrounding them.
These different dynamics of erasure at play are influenced by various drivers and governed by politics of memory and remembrance, yet they all imply that there are real problems facing memorialization of deathscapes in the city and even the country. Despite all of that, we must recognize that there is value to maintaining spaces of death and their material culture as they serve as archives to legacies of the past and have the power to radically transform our understanding of history and the city. The example of qubbas of sufi holy men illustrates the potential of memorialization to preserve history that goes back for centuries, allowing these spaces to remain relevant in people’s lives and even becoming at times, part of the socio-political landscape, all the while gaining new layers of meaning and associations. By studying the qubbas’ relationship with the city that allows them to transcend their role as places of burial and become vital destinations for the community, an opportunity can be found for extracting and implementing ideas on other types of deathscapes facing erasure. Perhaps “borrowing” some of the elements that enable the success of qubbas can be used as a gateway to allow the culture of memorialization in Sudan to expand from the religious and spiritual realms onto the civic one as a way of reflecting the collective memory of the city and country as a whole in relation to death.
Deathscapes of Khartoum by Mai Abusalih was first published in May 2021 as part of Studio Urban's contribution to the Goethe-Institut Sudan’s project, Sudan Moves.
Since then, many life-changing events and momentous developments have occurred affecting the city of Khartoum and Sudan as a whole. These events give the article a new, and more urgent significance, and present additional challenges to the way we think about the parameters for what is termed a ‘deathscape’; the ‘space’ of death and how it relates to the city.
The COVID 19 pandemic of 2020 had a devastating effect on Sudan’s elderly and vulnerable populations with many of the thousands of related deaths at quarantine facilities foregoing traditional burial rites starting with the washing of bodies at home. Cemeteries, one of the three types of deathscapes examined in the article, took on a foreboding aura and dread of the disease was greatly heightened by images of body bags being lowered into graves by health officials. These deathscapes were no longer the social gathering places of pre-pandemic days.
With the war that erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, and the violence and destruction that quickly spread to other parts of Sudan, the ‘space’ of death broke through the confines of Khartoum’s cemeteries and spilled over into the space of living. Images of dead bodies lying in the street and stories of stray dogs devouring them circulated while for those lucky enough to be buried, this was done in makeshift graves in public squares or in the yards of people’s own homes. Today these are crude monuments and memorial sites, another of the deathscapes discussed in the article, reminding Khartoum of the brutality of the war. “Khartoum was quite literally built over burial grounds,” explains Abusalih in a section on the historic origins of the city. Ironically and as a result of war, the city is reverting back to this origins.
The qubbas of sufi sheikhs is the third deathscape explored by Abusalih who explains how this is the only deathscape that edures the passage of time and resists oblivion. However, whether or not these physical structures have survived the ravages of war is unclear as many buildings and structures have been destroyed by fire or shelling. And when the fighting stops, could destroyed or damaged gubbas be reconstructed, and in what way, and how will this add another layer of history to that which they have accumulated over the centuries?
Finally, what form of memorialization will the war and its victims take in Sudan and in Khartoum? Such a critical and bloody moment in Sudan’s history seems worthy of more than the habitual memorialisation which Abusalih describes in the article, such as the naming of a few streets or public squares in memory of a person or event.
- Sara Elnagar, Editor and writer
Memorialization within the Deathscapes of Khartoum
Author: Mai Abusalih
Spaces of death are vital parts of the city, as every human culture has developed different funerary expressions that correspond with local beliefs and values, offering a deep insight into these cultures. These spaces’ importance, however, remains largely obscured from general discourse as they are often pushed to the periphery and are given little thought and reflection.
In this essay, we are interested in examining cemeteries in Khartoum, as well as other spaces of death in the city beyond them to understand the roles they play apart from burial. Therefore, in order to set the parameters of what can be considered as “space” of death and how it relates to the city, the term “Deathscape” will be used as a framework. The term itself is fairly recent and has been adopted by scholars “to invoke both the places associated with death and for the dead, and how these are imbued with meanings and associations: the site of a funeral, and the places of final disposition and of remembrance, and representations of all these.” Adopting this lens while examining the relationships and overlaps between the living and the dead allows us to see the city in different ways, since “not only are those places often emotionally fraught, they are frequently the subjects of social contest and power.”
To uncover these relationships, three types of deathscapes in Khartoum will be examined: the domed shrines of Sufi saints, cemeteries, and monuments and memorials in the city. Each type will allow us to view the influence of deathscapes across different scales: the building, the landscape, and the object. By viewing the history of these types and the nature of the realms they inhabit –whether spiritual and/or civic– this essay argues that deathscapes have the ability to act as physical archives that preserve the history of the city by the accumulation of the stories attached to them. Through this process, spaces of the dead have intersected with spaces of the living and become contested sites where the socio-political relations in the city playout. The area of Central Khartoum, for example, sits on top of an old burial site that was closed down and built over in the early 20th century, with little traces of the old cemetery remaining. A few blocks away, the site also witnessed deaths from various battles of Sudanese resistance against the Turco-Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian colonial rules. In addition, the area witnessed the violent deaths from the 1964 and 1985 national revolutions, and in more recent history, the massacre of the sit-in at army headquarters in June 2019. These various political events took place within the vicinity of Central Khartoum due to their relationship to the seat of power in the country, therefore, the deaths from these events distinguish the location from others in the capital.
By looking at the influence of deathscapes in Khartoum through the various types that we will examine, this essay tries to understand the relationship between death, remembrance, and memorialization in the city to reveal who and what is being memorialized and what history tells us about the state of memorialization in Khartoum.
Domed shrines and the power of architectural influence:
The discussion on deathscapes of Khartoum cannot begin without recognizing one of the most important and influential architectural and archeological deathscapes that have had a deep influence on Sudanese society; the Domed shrines or Qubbas which are burial places of Sufi holy men (awliya).
For the past five centuries, qubbas have defined the skyline along the banks of the Nile as prominent landmarks within the villages and towns in the central, northern, and eastern regions of Sudan. They seem to have emerged with the first Islamic dynasties in Sudan, the Abdullab and the Funj, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Throughout the following centuries, the practice of building and maintaining these qubbas has remained rooted within Sudanese society, as they are viewed as sacred “objects of visitation and places of personal supplication and collective remembrance, centers of religious life in its spiritual and social aspects.”
The area of Khartoum witnessed a concentration of Sufi holy men since its early beginnings. Shaykh Arbab Al A’gayed – who was born in Tuti Island – founded the first inhabited village in the area of Khartoum in 1691 that became a destination for many followers and students of his. Also, the Funj and Abdullab’s policies ensured that Sufi shuyoukh were granted land and exempted from taxes in order to free them to continue their religious teachings. This was how Shaykh Hamad wad Um Maryum and Shaykh Khojali came to reside in current-day Bahri, and Shaykh Idris wad Al Arbab in Al-Aylafoon, among many others. Therefore, the growth of the Khartoum area can certainly be tied to the settlement and religious activity of these holy men.
The powers of the shuyookh – referred to as karamat – are considered blessings from God which transcend even death, rendering the shuyoukh’s gravesites as powerful places that are vital for the community. Because of that, some qubbas and tombs are known for curing various illnesses, while others are famous for aiding women with fertility, in addition to other powers linked to the sheikh prior to his death. It is a belief so rooted in Sudanese society, with the names of Awliya immediately springing to followers' lips in times of illness, distress, and danger; motivating pilgrimages to their “resting” places in request for blessings (barakat). Qubbas are most likely to remain active destinations for pilgrimage when associated with khalwas and masids; the religious centers of Sufi orders (turuq) that act as institutions of religious worship, teaching, and instruction.
The strong relationship between awliyas and the community is the reason why qubbas can usually be found close to or within a cemetery, surrounded by the graves of their relatives and disciples. These cemeteries offer an interesting intersection between life and death, as they are places full of activity where religious celebrations are continuously being performed. The qubba of Shaykh Hamad El-Nil in Omdurman, for example, is one of the most important touristic destinations in the capital and it holds the “Noba” every Friday, a public ritual for Dhikr that begins with a procession across the cemetery which then transforms into a gathering where recitation, singing, and dancing take place. Numerous other celebrations are held there regularly as well, such as the Holiya; the anniversary of the death of the shaykh, and the Mulid; the birth date of the Prophet.
Weekly Celebration at Hamad ElNil Qubba in Omdurman
The Sudanese archeologist, Intisar Soghayroun, notes that the origins of the architecture of qubbas of Sufi holy men in Sudan differ from its counterparts in the Islamic world, as it was derived from local pre-Islamic architecture, such as Kushite pyramids as well as the rounded structures of conical huts of Shilluk and Nuer tribes of South Sudan. Also, she adds that the red bricks used to build many of the Funj-era qubbas were taken from the ruins of the Christian churches and domestic architecture of Alodia, concluding that “pagan, Christian and Islamic elements blended to the benefit of Islam.” The architecture of Funj-era qubbas, however, was greatly impacted by the invasion of the Turks in 1821, as the Turko-Egyptian administration introduced the new style of a square base under the qubbas.
In downtown Khartoum east of the intersection of Baladiya and Al-Qasr Avenues stand two of the last remnants of the Turco-Egyptian rule in Khartoum, known as the Turkish Qubbas. These funerary structures were erected within the Old Khartoum Cemetery, the main burial ground of the city at the time. Similar to the domed shrines of holy men in Sudan, the Turkish qubbas were surrounded by a cemetery, but instead of devotees and believers, it contained a number of subsidiary graves among which are native Sudanese soldiers who were recruited into the Turko-Egyptian army.
The eastern qubba was the first to be established for the burial of Ahmed Pasha Abu Adhan, Governor-General of the Sudan from 1839 to 1843. Ahmed Pasha died in 1843 under mysterious circumstances after his mission to raid Darfur was called-off at the last minute due to the rising suspicion of the ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali that Ahmed Pasha engaged in treasonous activities. The western qubba contains the remains of Musa Pasha Hamdi, who also became Governor-General of the Sudan from 1862 to 1865. However, Musa Hamdi was known for his cunning and ruthlessness which he employed to rise through the ranks and he had a reputation that “Murder and torture were no more to him than pastimes.” Musa Hamdi’s rule ended when he passed away in Khartoum in 1865 from smallpox.
In the following decades, the Turco-Egyptian rule was overthrown by the Mahdists in 1885 and Khartoum – the old capital of the Turks – was dismantled and destroyed to allow for Omdurman – the capital of Mahdist state – to rise. How then have these two qubbas managed to survive the wrath of Mahdists and the erasure of Khartoum while containing the remains of the hated Turko-Egyptian administration? The qubbas evasion of destruction is even more noteworthy when considering that Mahdists had no qualms about destroying qubbas of Sufi holy men, as the qubba of Al-Hassan Al-Mirghani in Kassala, for example, was destroyed by Osman Digna because of the Khatmiyya order’s opposition to Mahdism.
The reason could surprisingly have to do with the most prominent symbol of the Mahdist state, the qubba of the Mahdi himself. There is a structural similarity between the Turkish qubbas and the Mahdi qubba in Omdurman evident in the square base below the qubba, and it is suggested that the Turkish qubbas were used as architectural models for the tomb of Al-Mahdi who died shortly after the liberation of Khartoum from the Turks. The Turko-Egyptian influence in the construction of the Mahdi’s qubba exceeded that, since Abdullah, the Khalifa of the Mahdi, assigned the Egyptian architect, Ismail Hassan, to build the qubba and also utilized the doors and windows seized from the buildings of Turkish Khartoum to erect the qubba. Ironically, the greatest symbol of Mahdism would come to be heavily influenced by the architecture of the regime which it fought against.
For the duration of the Mahdist state, the qubba of the Mahdi soared over 100 feet high and was the most prominent icon of the city. Through building this magnificent qubba, unlike any other in Sudan at the time, the power of the figure of the Mahdi continued and expanded beyond his death, as his tomb became a symbol and a site of pilgrimage that followers of the Mahdi from all around the country travelled to in request for blessings.
The British were quite aware of the power of this symbol when they marched towards Omdurman in 1898 for the reconquest of Sudan. Slatin, the former Governor-General of Darfur during the Turco-Egyptian administration, accompanied the Sudan campaigns (1896-1898) and insisted that the first target in Omdurman should be the qubba of the Mahdi. Having been a captive of the Mahdists for thirteen years, Slatin personally witnessed the importance and sanctity of the site as the heart of the city. His motives might have also been influenced by the events that took place during the liberation of Khartoum in 1885, as he depicted in his book, “Fire and Sword in the Sudan,” the moment when the Mahdists brought him the decapitated head of Charles Gordon, the last Governor-General of the Turco-Egyptian administration.
The death of General Gordon in Sudan was a shock to the British and served as a great motivator to garner public support against Sudan as there was a “perceived need to recover personal, institutional, and national honour.” In parallel, Britain was wary of the intentions of other European powers such as France, Italy, and Belgium and their growing influence over Africa, which solidified the need for Sudan’s reconquest. Also, it’s important to note that the Sudan campaigns were led by Sirdar Herbert Kitchener who took part in the failed Gordon Relief Expedition in 1884-5.
To demolish the Mahdi’s qubba and other major parts of the city, the British brought the 5.5-inch Howitzers, which were supplied with high explosive lyddite shells that were fired in the battle of Omdurman for the first time in history. Omdurman fell quickly as the Khalifa’s army was no match to British firepower that slaughtered over 12,000 Mahdists. Kitchener’s troops under his orders not only shelled the qubba but totally destroyed it and they even went as far as desecrating the Mahdi’s tomb most savagely in a symbolic mirroring of the killing of Gordon, concluding with casting the Mahdi’s remains into the Nile River. This act of desecration, however, was greatly criticized by British media and an investigation was even launched by the British Parliament. Nevertheless, the Mahdi’s influence was declared vanquished with the destruction of his qubba where it remained in ruin for the majority of the Condominium rule over Sudan (1898-1956) to serve as a constant reminder of British imperial power.
Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi repeatedly appealed to the British government to allow him to rebuild his father’s tomb yet his requests were continuously turned down throughout the colonial period out of fear of a Mahdist revival. However, after 49 years the British finally permitted Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman to rebuild the qubba in 1947. The newly rebuilt qubba of the Mahdi was once again constructed in an Egyptian-influenced architectural style. Besides the square base of the qubba, Intisar Soghayroun notes that the small domes at the four corners of the Mahdi’s qubba are similar to those found in Upper Egyptian tombs.
The 20th century was marked by a surge of Sufi activity in Sudan, evident from the construction of new qubbas as well as the restoration of old ones, and the qubba of Al-Mahdi would come to be very influential in this process. These newly built qubbas were much larger and more colorful than Funj-era qubbas as their designs featured elaborate windows, doorways, and spacious interiors. This “religious revival” of Sufi brotherhoods was particularly promoted by Ja’afar Nimery, President of Sudan (1969-1985) who is credited for replacing old qubbas and building new ones, a trend that continued beyond his presidency until today. Nimery’s interest had political motives, as he turned to populism to garner the support of small Sufi brotherhoods. The construction of these new qubbas was in most cases directly influenced by the style of the Mahdi’s tomb. This trend in the construction of qubbas, however, has had a direct impact on old Funj-era qubbas, as deteriorating qubbas were demolished and replaced with new ones.
About 32 kilometers south-east of Khartoum, one of the most prominent examples of the erasure of Funj-era style qubbas lies in the tomb of Shaykh Idris Wad Al-Arbab in Al-Aylafoon. Shaykh Idris lived between 1507 and 1650 and was a scholar and advisor to Funj rulers, and is one of the most recognized Sufi holy men of Sudan with his qubba remaining a site of pilgrimage to this day. The original qubba was constructed in a terraced style –which is an old Funj-style for qubbas– but after it collapsed, it was rebuilt in the style of Turkish qubbas in 1928 according to the archeologist Salah Omer Al-Sadig. However, Soghayroun argues instead that this style was popularized through the construction of Al-Mahdi’s qubba. Either way, the influence that came with colonialism has had a direct impact on the architecture of qubbas in Sudan and as Soghayroun succinctly puts it, “the cost for society has been the loss of a part of a unique cultural and aesthetic legacy through the dismantling of old domes.”
Much like a palimpsest, qubbas can accumulate layers of histories and cultures that go back for centuries and they act as physical archives that have the ability to create a bridge between the city we live in and the past. Qubbas have been at the center of many political shifts that have happened in Sudan, as they extend beyond being mere sites of burial to becoming places full of life, prayer, hopes, celebrations, and culture. Although the style of the Funj qubbas is experiencing erasure and replacement, the type of archiving and preservation of history granted to Sufi holy men through these qubbas is so powerful that their names are remembered to this day significantly more than the names of the rulers of the Funj Sultanate.
The question then is, has the same type of memorialization and archiving moved beyond the powerful figures of holy men and defined the culture of remembrance for Sudan as a whole? To try and answer this question, we’ll try to look at other types of deathscapes that exist in Khartoum to explore their current state when it comes to memorialization.
Cemeteries: the changing landscape of burial and the burial crisis
The site where the Turkish qubbas were erected, as previously mentioned, was located within the Old Khartoum Cemetery, a burial place that occupied a large part of the current day downtown Khartoum, although the exact parameters of the cemetery are not clear. During the construction of the Grand Mosque of Khartoum in the early 1900s, numerous human remains found on the site were linked to the Old Khartoum Cemetery. To continue constructing the mosque, a fatwa on inactive cemeteries (Al-Magabir Al-Mondarsa / المقابر المندرسة) was issued by Mufti Al-Sudan Mohamed Abu Al-Gasim Hashim, thus enabling the city to reuse the land in which Old Khartoum Cemetery was previously located. According to Abu-Salim, the cemetery extended east of the Grand Mosque from Abu-Jinzeer square to the Turkish qubbas and Coliseum Cinema. The square of Abu-Jinzeer – which is primarily used as a parking lot today – holds the remains of the sufi Shaykh Imam Bin Mohamed, who was originally interred in the middle of Al-Qasr Avenue but was removed to this square when the avenue was laid out. A grave shrine was built for the shaykh within the square and was surrounded with chains (jinzeer), thus it was named “Abu-Jinzeer.”
The boundaries of the Old Khartoum Cemetery might have been even larger than that. Inside the modern-day boundaries of the Khartoum Civil Hospital, the mother of Al-Mahdi, Zainab Al-Shagalawie, was buried in the Old Khartoum Cemetery during the Turco-Egyptian rule and the Mahdi seems to have visited her grave following the liberation of Khartoum in 1885. When archeological excavations in Khartoum Civil Hospital began in the winter of 1944-45, the British archeologist A. J. Arkell removed the grave of the Mahdi’s mother, after being granted permission from Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi, to proceed with excavations.
The excavations revealed that the site had been occupied throughout different time periods, beginning from the Mesolithic period. It was also reported that “graves of Meroitic date have […] been found, and a few full length burials with no grave goods. The latter are non-Moslem, and possibly date from the period when Soba was the capital of a Christian Kingdom.” Meaning the use of this area as a cemetery could very well have begun during the Meroitic period.
Khartoum was quite literally built over burial grounds. Other cemeteries around the capital were also built over and erased by referencing the fatwa of inactive cemeteries, such as the Martyrs graveyard which became the Martyrs’ (AlShuhadda) bus station, in addition to an old cemetery in the current location of the Palace of Youth and Children, both of which are located in Omdurman.
The relationship of death to the urban fabric of Khartoum is even more intriguing when examining the numerous shrines of Sufi Awliya that have been maintained and absorbed into the public institutions and facilities of the city. Salah Omer Al-Sadig describes this fascinating relationship between the spaces of the living and the dead in his book “Al-Athar Al-Islamia Fi Mantiqat Al-Khartoum” (Islamic Antiquities in the Khartoum Region). For example, the shrine of Shaykh Ibrahim Sayem Al-Dahren is located today inside the post office near the Arabic Market (Al-Soug Al-Arabi) in Khartoum. Al-Sadig explains that the post office was built around the shrine in the early 20th century but has taken to maintaining and restoring it as one of its duties since followers of the shaykh visit the post office regularly in pilgrimage to the shrine. Two Sufi shaykhs were mistakenly killed during the 1885 liberation of Khartoum; AbdulRahman Al-Khorasany who was buried within what used to be the Central Station in Khartoum, as well as Sheikh Mohamed Fayet, who was buried within what would later become the Supreme Council for Environment and Urban Upgrading. These Sufi shrines among others nestled within governmental offices and buildings around the city have stood the test of time and are considered a part of the religious heritage of Khartoum as they are frequented by Sufi followers, giving the city a spiritual dimension. Yet, the continued existence of these shrines is also testament that cemeteries are not always memorialized and allowed to remain for generations in the same manner of the shrines Sufi holy men, which puts them at risk of erasure.
Another aspect to consider is the position of the cemetery in relation to the city. While the Old Khartoum Cemetery was at the periphery of the city while it was active, Abu-Salim reports that cemeteries during the Mahdist state were in the middle of the city. However, due to rising health concerns from proximity to cemeteries, large areas north of Omdurman were dedicated by Al-Khalifa Abdullah to new cemeteries, what we have come to know as Al-Bakry, Ahmed Sharfy, and Al-Jamryia Cemeteries. This is similar to the majority of cemeteries in Khartoum that were established on the periphery; Hamad, Khojali, Hamad El-Nil, AlSahafa, Burri, Commonwealth, etc. As the capital grew from continuous waves of migration in the decades that followed, cemeteries were surrounded once more by the city as a natural side-effect of the process of urbanization. The problem that is created from this process, however, is that cemeteries would be unable to expand and accommodate these new pressures that come with the population growth in the city. That is why the last decade has seen a flood of news articles discussing a burial crisis happening in Khartoum.
Because of cultural and religious norms, burials in Sudan have historically been carried out either by the family of the deceased or by individuals who volunteer their help as there have been no official governmental or private entity that has undertaken this responsibility. Without an entity to organize burials and plan the space of cemeteries, the burying process was done haphazardly with little consideration of space consumption. Because of these circumstances and many more, the non-profit Husn Al-Khatima Organization came to be established in 2000.
Husn Al-Khatima has been organizing burials, maintaining cemeteries, planting trees, fencing, lighting, and generally trying to improve the environment of cemeteries. Yet, despite the organization’s work, it seems that the problems facing cemeteries have persisted. Most people burying their loved ones today in Khartoum experience the very difficult task of digging a grave and finding one already there and having to repeat the process until an empty burial space is found.
Sensing a real issue with burials in the city at the time, Husn Al-Khatima organized a conference in 2009 posing the question “Where do we bury our dead while our cemeteries are full?” During this conference, different examples from around the Islamic world were presented as possible alternative solutions for dealing with the burial crisis and the solution that was agreed upon by the community was to establish new cemeteries. Husn Al-Khatima has been advocating for this solution to the extent that even the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities of Khartoum State has recognized the need for new cemeteries and accordingly planned for 52 new cemeteries in the Structural Plan of Khartoum for the year 2030. However, while a few new cemeteries were indeed established, the majority of these plans have yet to be realized since the Ministry found many of the proposed sites to be inadequate and contained multiple issues.
While in essence, the solution to establish new cemeteries stems from a city planning perspective, the relationship of Khartoum’s cemeteries to planning ends at their boundaries. In contrast to the veneration given to planning and maintaining qubbas of Sufi awliya and their intersection with living spaces, cemeteries are entirely segregated from the city and are not afforded the same level of care and treatment. Cemeteries in Khartoum, in fact, are completely disregarded from the planning and design process and most burials continue to take place haphazardly.
While the burial crisis persists, Dr. Ali Khidir Bakheet, a founding member of Husn Al-Khatima explained that Islamic burial rites essentially allow cemeteries to be sustainable since the body decomposes almost entirely, hence the grave can be “reused” after decades. He elaborated by pointing out that burials in Muslim cemeteries have been on-going for centuries, citing Al-Baqi’ cemetery in Medina, Saudi Arabia, and Hilat Hamad’s cemetery in Bahri (400 years).
Considering Dr. Bakheet’s insight in dialogue with the current trend of burials as well as the fatwa on inactive cemeteries that was referenced when building Khartoum in the early 20th century, a few discrepancies are evident. The emotional ties of Sudanese people with their family burial plots and their desire to continue burying there put great pressure on cemeteries, so much so that in 2018, the Khartoum State Legislative Council declared that the cemeteries in Khartoum have become too full and cannot receive more burials since 200 people die every day in the state. If indeed the public agrees to switch burials to new cemeteries that will be established, what will happen to the cemeteries that are at capacity today? Will they be built over, same as the Old Cemetery of Khartoum? Or will the same cemeteries be reused as Dr. Bakheet suggests?
This dilemma aside, planners and architects continue to ignore cemeteries, forcing them to remain unplanned spaces that are excluded from the built environment, despite the fact that cemeteries take up large spaces within the city. Precisely because of the large areas they occupy, there is a real threat to these overfull cemeteries from the encroachment of the city in the case that they stop accepting burials and become inactive, similar to historical precedents such as the Old Khartoum Cemetery.
The vulnerability of cemeteries could perhaps have a lot to do with their fraught relationship to the city. While cemeteries remain isolated and their lack of design renders them unable to engage the needs of visitors beyond burials, the emotional ties to the space decrease over time. This frayed relationship in the face of imminent urbanization could perhaps undermine memorializing cemeteries and preserving their histories. If indeed we were to preserve our cemeteries and avoid their erasure, a radical redesign and spatial intervention is needed to convince the public that there is a need for maintaining cemeteries within the city in the future.
The contested space of monuments and memorials:
Beyond the spaces of burial – whether cemeteries or domed shrines (qubbas) – monuments and memorials can also be considered deathscapes because of their symbolic relationship to death and memorialization, as they are sometimes used to commemorate individuals that have passed, and other times they mark sites of histories and memories of death, violence and trauma. Within the latter, erecting memorials allow deathscapes to become arenas that bridge between the private and the public realms as they “provide spaces for a combination of purposes, including personal mourning, spiritual solace, and private reflection on the one hand, as well as civic engagement and democratic dialogue on the other.” This dialogue is able to take place in memorials because they inhabit the public sphere and act as public acknowledgement to victims of violence and atrocity.
One of the most recent events that have reshaped the spatial memory of Khartoum in relation to death was the massacre of June 3rd, 2019 during the violent dispersal of the two-month-long sit-in at the army headquarters. To topple the 30-year long military regime of Al-Bashir, protestors took to the streets beginning from December 2018, with the revolution reaching a crescendo when the area of the army headquarters was occupied by protestors on April 6, 2019. The boundaries of the sit-in site extended from the surroundings of the army, navy, air force, and artillery headquarters to the central campus of the University of Khartoum. In those two months, the sit-in became a miniature city that represented the ideals of the Sudanese revolution – Freedom, Peace, and Justice – and became a place where everyone from around the country could come together and co-exist. The space/event of the sit-in saw a production of public space unlike any in the history of Sudan, leading it to become the center for all kinds of activities in the city.
Security forces on the morning of June 3rd violently dispersed the sit-in, razing tents, opening fire and killing protestors, and even going to the extent of dumping their bodies in the Nile River. It is reported that 127 people died from the violent crackdown of the army headquarters sit-in, with some estimating that the number of deaths could be much higher as over 100 people were reported missing.
On June 3rd, the ways in which people see and relate to this space radically changed, as all evidence of the occupation of the site was erased and murals were painted over, in an attempt to erase the collective memory of the sit-in. The relationship of the sit-in site to state power is the main reason why protestors occupied it in the first place, yet this same power is now exerted to ensure that the site is devoid of any sort of memorialization and remembrance to the sit-in and the victims of the massacre. Under the watchful eye of the military, passersby drive through what was once considered a Sudanese utopia, now transformed to a deathscape following the violent events of June 3rd.
Calls to memorialize the revolution and its martyrs became the center of discussions about public space in Khartoum. Streets and public spaces were renamed after martyrs and new murals commemorating them were created. However, when considering the types of memorialization that have taken place as a result of the Sudanese revolution, it quickly appears that memorials were strictly within the bounds of renaming buildings and streets or painting over existing walls. Although proposals for creating a new memorial for the martyrs of the December Revolution circulated in social media, no further steps were taken to enable such projects to come to life. In that regard, memorialization of the revolution has been very limited and involved no spatial consideration to create a new physical memorial. In fact, there has been a huge debate regarding memorials and monuments, particularly in the form of statues.
On the 24th of January 2019, Abdul-Azeem Abubakr took part in a protest in Al Arba’en Street in Omdurman and was photographed confronting the security forces moments before they opened fire on him and he was martyred. The image of his last stand went viral and his heroic act motivated the artist Hosam Osman along with Asim Zurgan and Rami Rizig to create a statue for Abdul-Azeem. The statue was supposed to be installed in the same street where he was martyred, however, there were outright rejections to erecting a statue in the neighborhood as it was seen to be against Islamic tradition. After failing to erect the statue, the artist Hosam reported that a few months later, an unknown entity broke into his home and destroyed the statue.
The destruction of the statue of the martyr Abdul-Azeem is only the most recent addition to a long history of rejecting statues in Sudan going back for decades. Today, most of the monuments found around the capital are abstract pieces and it’s a rare sight to find any that relate to Sudanese history, and of course there are no statues to be found in public spaces. To understand the root causes for this phenomenon, it’s important to look back at the history of the erasure of statues in the city.
The first statue to be erected in modern Sudanese history was that of Charles Gordon, as the resurrection of Khartoum under the Anglo-Egyptian administration was tied with the remembrance of the death of Gordon. Kitchener’s first act after defeating the Mahdists in the Battle of Omdurman was to cross over to Khartoum and hold a “second funeral of Gordon” at the exact spot where he died in his Government House in a public performance of grief. Immediately after, Kitchener commenced planning Khartoum and created the ideas for Gordon Memorial College (now University of Khartoum) and a Gordon Monument.
At one of the most prominent avenues in the city, a bronze statue of Gordon on a riding camel was inaugurated in 1903, facing southwards as if overlooking the fortifications that he defended against the Mahdists. The location of the statue in front of the Presidential Palace as well as naming the avenue where it was placed after Gordon (now University Avenue) –an avenue that linked it to the Gordon Memorial College– revealed the intentional placement of this monument at the colonial seat of power in Sudan. Another colonial statue depicting Kitchener was also installed in 1921 to commemorate his role in the Sudan conquest following his sudden death a few years earlier. This statue was “made from empty cartridge cases collected from battlefields” and was installed in front of the War Office (now Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning), facing Kitchener Avenue (now Nile Street) and the Blue Nile.
Erecting the statues of Gordon and Kitchener, as well as naming important avenues and squares in the city after them were physical representations of the British Imperial power over Sudan. As Savage explains about monuments in general:
“Public monuments are the most conservative of commemorative forms precisely because they are meant to last, unchanged, forever. While other things come and go, are lost and forgotten, the monument is supposed to remain a fixed point, stabilizing both the physical and the cognitive landscape. Monuments attempt to mold a landscape of collective memory, to conserve what is worth remembering and discard the rest.”
These monuments, however, did not remain a fixed point for Sudanese people, as they were rejected and a reckoning of colonial heritage ensued shortly after independence. Abu-Salim stresses how these monuments became sites of resistance for the National Movement, and as early as 1949 news articles were published criticizing the existence of the statues, and by extension, colonialism in Sudan as a whole. The statues became contested sites that were heavily debated for a decade but their removal only came after independence following the military coup led by General Abboud in 1958. Abboud’s newly-found military government wanted to perform a noticeable act of nationalism to give itself legitimacy and therefore shipped the statues back to the British in London. An erasure of the names attached to colonialism soon followed and Gordon and Kitchener Avenues became University Avenue and Nile Street. While the removal of Gordon and Kitchener’s statues was motivated by national decolonial sentiments, they would mark the beginning of the eradication of statues to come in Khartoum.
In the following decades, statues began to be erected in different cities in Sudan. In Port Sudan, a statue of the Mahdist military commander, Osman Digna was erected, and in Rufa’a, to commemorate Babikir Bedri – the pioneer of women’s education in Sudan – a statue depicting him was installed in the first school he established. Also, following the 1964 revolution against the military regime of Abboud, statues of Ahmed Al Qurashi and Babikir Abdul-Hafeez, who were martyred in the student protests, were erected at the University of Khartoum. The Indian community in Omdurman also erected a statue for Gandhi. However, the existence of statues in Sudanese public spaces has always been contested and with the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in the country, beginning from the early 1980s, statues were denounced as idols and most of them were destroyed. Even sculptures created by students of the College of Fine Arts faced this denunciation. The Bashir regime that came into power in 1989 further strengthened this view on monuments and memorials, to the extent that the former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities and Wildlife, Mohamed Abdul-Karim Al-Had, stated in court that he has never stepped foot in the National Museum because it contained idols, in reference to monuments of Kushite Kingdoms.
The religious debate around depicting human figures in sculptures does not in fact go against the idea of memorialization itself, as it is only a rejection of their form. The ideas, events and people being commemorated are the core of memorials and monuments rather than the form chosen to depict them. Therefore, memorialization should respond to society's values and needs, adopting the most appropriate and acceptable form of memorialization that enables the preservation of history. Within this debate, we must recognize that there is a radical difference between removing statues of colonial heritage and removing statues that relate to Sudanese national history post-independence. Colonial statues were rejected not only because of their form, but because of the imperial iconography that was imposed on Sudanese people, to the point where they became arenas for resistance against colonialism as a whole. These arenas, however, disappeared following the removal of the colonial statues, as they were not replaced with monuments that maintained the historical value and the public’s relationship with the space. Beyond the tensions surrounding their form, monuments and memorials still have the capacity to exist, yet they have continuously been removed without any replacement, despite the fact that they have the capacity to reflect ideals and values that are important to Sudanese peoples’ collective memory.
The vacuum of physical representations for memorialization in Khartoum negatively impacts projects that aim to memorialize victims of violence and atrocity, leaving their history to remain largely unacknowledged and vulnerable to erasure. In this regard, the massacre at the army headquarters sit-in can be read as a continuation of acts of violence perpetrated by the state against its people, most of which remain without sites of remembrance. We have yet to see memorials for the two civil wars in Sudan (1955-1972) and (1983-2005), the latter of which is considered one of the longest civil wars in history that resulted in two and half million casualties. The Darfur genocide as well remains without memorialization, during which 300,000 people were killed according to UN estimates. Many other atrocities and massacres have taken place in Sudan, with very little acknowledgement and justice.
While there have been some commemorative events, particularly in relation to the martyrs of the December Revolution, we have to recognize that erecting memorials –for both recent and historic events– plays an important part in the process of transitional justice, reconciliation and democracy. Memorialization allows society to come together to negotiate what should be remembered as a part of the process of constructing our national identity. It solidifies the truth and educates people about the terrible history of suffering that Sudanese people have gone through in order to come to grips with the past and avoid repeating it. The silencing of narratives of history by not allowing monuments and memorials to exist undermines this process and squanders their potential for reconciliation and healing.
Within each of the different forms of deathscapes explored in this essay, there has been some level of erasure taking place. The domed shrines (qubbas) of sufi holy men that were erected during the Funj Sultanate are being erased and replaced with modern and contemporary styles, threatening some of the most significant architectural and archeological heritage in Sudan. The landscape of cemeteries in Khartoum on the other hand has been radically changing in the past century, with some cemeteries being erased and built over to make way for the development of the city. In the past few decades, the urbanization of Khartoum has been pressuring existing urban cemeteries, leading them to overfill and face an unknown future. In the midst of these pressures, the possibility of the erasure of urban cemeteries could very well be repeated. Lastly, since independence, monuments and memorials have been continuously destroyed and erased from the city due to the political and religious tensions surrounding them.
These different dynamics of erasure at play are influenced by various drivers and governed by politics of memory and remembrance, yet they all imply that there are real problems facing memorialization of deathscapes in the city and even the country. Despite all of that, we must recognize that there is value to maintaining spaces of death and their material culture as they serve as archives to legacies of the past and have the power to radically transform our understanding of history and the city. The example of qubbas of sufi holy men illustrates the potential of memorialization to preserve history that goes back for centuries, allowing these spaces to remain relevant in people’s lives and even becoming at times, part of the socio-political landscape, all the while gaining new layers of meaning and associations. By studying the qubbas’ relationship with the city that allows them to transcend their role as places of burial and become vital destinations for the community, an opportunity can be found for extracting and implementing ideas on other types of deathscapes facing erasure. Perhaps “borrowing” some of the elements that enable the success of qubbas can be used as a gateway to allow the culture of memorialization in Sudan to expand from the religious and spiritual realms onto the civic one as a way of reflecting the collective memory of the city and country as a whole in relation to death.
Deathscapes of Khartoum by Mai Abusalih was first published in May 2021 as part of Studio Urban's contribution to the Goethe-Institut Sudan’s project, Sudan Moves.
Since then, many life-changing events and momentous developments have occurred affecting the city of Khartoum and Sudan as a whole. These events give the article a new, and more urgent significance, and present additional challenges to the way we think about the parameters for what is termed a ‘deathscape’; the ‘space’ of death and how it relates to the city.
The COVID 19 pandemic of 2020 had a devastating effect on Sudan’s elderly and vulnerable populations with many of the thousands of related deaths at quarantine facilities foregoing traditional burial rites starting with the washing of bodies at home. Cemeteries, one of the three types of deathscapes examined in the article, took on a foreboding aura and dread of the disease was greatly heightened by images of body bags being lowered into graves by health officials. These deathscapes were no longer the social gathering places of pre-pandemic days.
With the war that erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, and the violence and destruction that quickly spread to other parts of Sudan, the ‘space’ of death broke through the confines of Khartoum’s cemeteries and spilled over into the space of living. Images of dead bodies lying in the street and stories of stray dogs devouring them circulated while for those lucky enough to be buried, this was done in makeshift graves in public squares or in the yards of people’s own homes. Today these are crude monuments and memorial sites, another of the deathscapes discussed in the article, reminding Khartoum of the brutality of the war. “Khartoum was quite literally built over burial grounds,” explains Abusalih in a section on the historic origins of the city. Ironically and as a result of war, the city is reverting back to this origins.
The qubbas of sufi sheikhs is the third deathscape explored by Abusalih who explains how this is the only deathscape that edures the passage of time and resists oblivion. However, whether or not these physical structures have survived the ravages of war is unclear as many buildings and structures have been destroyed by fire or shelling. And when the fighting stops, could destroyed or damaged gubbas be reconstructed, and in what way, and how will this add another layer of history to that which they have accumulated over the centuries?
Finally, what form of memorialization will the war and its victims take in Sudan and in Khartoum? Such a critical and bloody moment in Sudan’s history seems worthy of more than the habitual memorialisation which Abusalih describes in the article, such as the naming of a few streets or public squares in memory of a person or event.
- Sara Elnagar, Editor and writer
Memorialization within the Deathscapes of Khartoum
Author: Mai Abusalih
Spaces of death are vital parts of the city, as every human culture has developed different funerary expressions that correspond with local beliefs and values, offering a deep insight into these cultures. These spaces’ importance, however, remains largely obscured from general discourse as they are often pushed to the periphery and are given little thought and reflection.
In this essay, we are interested in examining cemeteries in Khartoum, as well as other spaces of death in the city beyond them to understand the roles they play apart from burial. Therefore, in order to set the parameters of what can be considered as “space” of death and how it relates to the city, the term “Deathscape” will be used as a framework. The term itself is fairly recent and has been adopted by scholars “to invoke both the places associated with death and for the dead, and how these are imbued with meanings and associations: the site of a funeral, and the places of final disposition and of remembrance, and representations of all these.” Adopting this lens while examining the relationships and overlaps between the living and the dead allows us to see the city in different ways, since “not only are those places often emotionally fraught, they are frequently the subjects of social contest and power.”
To uncover these relationships, three types of deathscapes in Khartoum will be examined: the domed shrines of Sufi saints, cemeteries, and monuments and memorials in the city. Each type will allow us to view the influence of deathscapes across different scales: the building, the landscape, and the object. By viewing the history of these types and the nature of the realms they inhabit –whether spiritual and/or civic– this essay argues that deathscapes have the ability to act as physical archives that preserve the history of the city by the accumulation of the stories attached to them. Through this process, spaces of the dead have intersected with spaces of the living and become contested sites where the socio-political relations in the city playout. The area of Central Khartoum, for example, sits on top of an old burial site that was closed down and built over in the early 20th century, with little traces of the old cemetery remaining. A few blocks away, the site also witnessed deaths from various battles of Sudanese resistance against the Turco-Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian colonial rules. In addition, the area witnessed the violent deaths from the 1964 and 1985 national revolutions, and in more recent history, the massacre of the sit-in at army headquarters in June 2019. These various political events took place within the vicinity of Central Khartoum due to their relationship to the seat of power in the country, therefore, the deaths from these events distinguish the location from others in the capital.
By looking at the influence of deathscapes in Khartoum through the various types that we will examine, this essay tries to understand the relationship between death, remembrance, and memorialization in the city to reveal who and what is being memorialized and what history tells us about the state of memorialization in Khartoum.
Domed shrines and the power of architectural influence:
The discussion on deathscapes of Khartoum cannot begin without recognizing one of the most important and influential architectural and archeological deathscapes that have had a deep influence on Sudanese society; the Domed shrines or Qubbas which are burial places of Sufi holy men (awliya).
For the past five centuries, qubbas have defined the skyline along the banks of the Nile as prominent landmarks within the villages and towns in the central, northern, and eastern regions of Sudan. They seem to have emerged with the first Islamic dynasties in Sudan, the Abdullab and the Funj, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Throughout the following centuries, the practice of building and maintaining these qubbas has remained rooted within Sudanese society, as they are viewed as sacred “objects of visitation and places of personal supplication and collective remembrance, centers of religious life in its spiritual and social aspects.”
The area of Khartoum witnessed a concentration of Sufi holy men since its early beginnings. Shaykh Arbab Al A’gayed – who was born in Tuti Island – founded the first inhabited village in the area of Khartoum in 1691 that became a destination for many followers and students of his. Also, the Funj and Abdullab’s policies ensured that Sufi shuyoukh were granted land and exempted from taxes in order to free them to continue their religious teachings. This was how Shaykh Hamad wad Um Maryum and Shaykh Khojali came to reside in current-day Bahri, and Shaykh Idris wad Al Arbab in Al-Aylafoon, among many others. Therefore, the growth of the Khartoum area can certainly be tied to the settlement and religious activity of these holy men.
The powers of the shuyookh – referred to as karamat – are considered blessings from God which transcend even death, rendering the shuyoukh’s gravesites as powerful places that are vital for the community. Because of that, some qubbas and tombs are known for curing various illnesses, while others are famous for aiding women with fertility, in addition to other powers linked to the sheikh prior to his death. It is a belief so rooted in Sudanese society, with the names of Awliya immediately springing to followers' lips in times of illness, distress, and danger; motivating pilgrimages to their “resting” places in request for blessings (barakat). Qubbas are most likely to remain active destinations for pilgrimage when associated with khalwas and masids; the religious centers of Sufi orders (turuq) that act as institutions of religious worship, teaching, and instruction.
The strong relationship between awliyas and the community is the reason why qubbas can usually be found close to or within a cemetery, surrounded by the graves of their relatives and disciples. These cemeteries offer an interesting intersection between life and death, as they are places full of activity where religious celebrations are continuously being performed. The qubba of Shaykh Hamad El-Nil in Omdurman, for example, is one of the most important touristic destinations in the capital and it holds the “Noba” every Friday, a public ritual for Dhikr that begins with a procession across the cemetery which then transforms into a gathering where recitation, singing, and dancing take place. Numerous other celebrations are held there regularly as well, such as the Holiya; the anniversary of the death of the shaykh, and the Mulid; the birth date of the Prophet.
Weekly Celebration at Hamad ElNil Qubba in Omdurman
The Sudanese archeologist, Intisar Soghayroun, notes that the origins of the architecture of qubbas of Sufi holy men in Sudan differ from its counterparts in the Islamic world, as it was derived from local pre-Islamic architecture, such as Kushite pyramids as well as the rounded structures of conical huts of Shilluk and Nuer tribes of South Sudan. Also, she adds that the red bricks used to build many of the Funj-era qubbas were taken from the ruins of the Christian churches and domestic architecture of Alodia, concluding that “pagan, Christian and Islamic elements blended to the benefit of Islam.” The architecture of Funj-era qubbas, however, was greatly impacted by the invasion of the Turks in 1821, as the Turko-Egyptian administration introduced the new style of a square base under the qubbas.
In downtown Khartoum east of the intersection of Baladiya and Al-Qasr Avenues stand two of the last remnants of the Turco-Egyptian rule in Khartoum, known as the Turkish Qubbas. These funerary structures were erected within the Old Khartoum Cemetery, the main burial ground of the city at the time. Similar to the domed shrines of holy men in Sudan, the Turkish qubbas were surrounded by a cemetery, but instead of devotees and believers, it contained a number of subsidiary graves among which are native Sudanese soldiers who were recruited into the Turko-Egyptian army.
The eastern qubba was the first to be established for the burial of Ahmed Pasha Abu Adhan, Governor-General of the Sudan from 1839 to 1843. Ahmed Pasha died in 1843 under mysterious circumstances after his mission to raid Darfur was called-off at the last minute due to the rising suspicion of the ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali that Ahmed Pasha engaged in treasonous activities. The western qubba contains the remains of Musa Pasha Hamdi, who also became Governor-General of the Sudan from 1862 to 1865. However, Musa Hamdi was known for his cunning and ruthlessness which he employed to rise through the ranks and he had a reputation that “Murder and torture were no more to him than pastimes.” Musa Hamdi’s rule ended when he passed away in Khartoum in 1865 from smallpox.
In the following decades, the Turco-Egyptian rule was overthrown by the Mahdists in 1885 and Khartoum – the old capital of the Turks – was dismantled and destroyed to allow for Omdurman – the capital of Mahdist state – to rise. How then have these two qubbas managed to survive the wrath of Mahdists and the erasure of Khartoum while containing the remains of the hated Turko-Egyptian administration? The qubbas evasion of destruction is even more noteworthy when considering that Mahdists had no qualms about destroying qubbas of Sufi holy men, as the qubba of Al-Hassan Al-Mirghani in Kassala, for example, was destroyed by Osman Digna because of the Khatmiyya order’s opposition to Mahdism.
The reason could surprisingly have to do with the most prominent symbol of the Mahdist state, the qubba of the Mahdi himself. There is a structural similarity between the Turkish qubbas and the Mahdi qubba in Omdurman evident in the square base below the qubba, and it is suggested that the Turkish qubbas were used as architectural models for the tomb of Al-Mahdi who died shortly after the liberation of Khartoum from the Turks. The Turko-Egyptian influence in the construction of the Mahdi’s qubba exceeded that, since Abdullah, the Khalifa of the Mahdi, assigned the Egyptian architect, Ismail Hassan, to build the qubba and also utilized the doors and windows seized from the buildings of Turkish Khartoum to erect the qubba. Ironically, the greatest symbol of Mahdism would come to be heavily influenced by the architecture of the regime which it fought against.
For the duration of the Mahdist state, the qubba of the Mahdi soared over 100 feet high and was the most prominent icon of the city. Through building this magnificent qubba, unlike any other in Sudan at the time, the power of the figure of the Mahdi continued and expanded beyond his death, as his tomb became a symbol and a site of pilgrimage that followers of the Mahdi from all around the country travelled to in request for blessings.
The British were quite aware of the power of this symbol when they marched towards Omdurman in 1898 for the reconquest of Sudan. Slatin, the former Governor-General of Darfur during the Turco-Egyptian administration, accompanied the Sudan campaigns (1896-1898) and insisted that the first target in Omdurman should be the qubba of the Mahdi. Having been a captive of the Mahdists for thirteen years, Slatin personally witnessed the importance and sanctity of the site as the heart of the city. His motives might have also been influenced by the events that took place during the liberation of Khartoum in 1885, as he depicted in his book, “Fire and Sword in the Sudan,” the moment when the Mahdists brought him the decapitated head of Charles Gordon, the last Governor-General of the Turco-Egyptian administration.
The death of General Gordon in Sudan was a shock to the British and served as a great motivator to garner public support against Sudan as there was a “perceived need to recover personal, institutional, and national honour.” In parallel, Britain was wary of the intentions of other European powers such as France, Italy, and Belgium and their growing influence over Africa, which solidified the need for Sudan’s reconquest. Also, it’s important to note that the Sudan campaigns were led by Sirdar Herbert Kitchener who took part in the failed Gordon Relief Expedition in 1884-5.
To demolish the Mahdi’s qubba and other major parts of the city, the British brought the 5.5-inch Howitzers, which were supplied with high explosive lyddite shells that were fired in the battle of Omdurman for the first time in history. Omdurman fell quickly as the Khalifa’s army was no match to British firepower that slaughtered over 12,000 Mahdists. Kitchener’s troops under his orders not only shelled the qubba but totally destroyed it and they even went as far as desecrating the Mahdi’s tomb most savagely in a symbolic mirroring of the killing of Gordon, concluding with casting the Mahdi’s remains into the Nile River. This act of desecration, however, was greatly criticized by British media and an investigation was even launched by the British Parliament. Nevertheless, the Mahdi’s influence was declared vanquished with the destruction of his qubba where it remained in ruin for the majority of the Condominium rule over Sudan (1898-1956) to serve as a constant reminder of British imperial power.
Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi repeatedly appealed to the British government to allow him to rebuild his father’s tomb yet his requests were continuously turned down throughout the colonial period out of fear of a Mahdist revival. However, after 49 years the British finally permitted Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman to rebuild the qubba in 1947. The newly rebuilt qubba of the Mahdi was once again constructed in an Egyptian-influenced architectural style. Besides the square base of the qubba, Intisar Soghayroun notes that the small domes at the four corners of the Mahdi’s qubba are similar to those found in Upper Egyptian tombs.
The 20th century was marked by a surge of Sufi activity in Sudan, evident from the construction of new qubbas as well as the restoration of old ones, and the qubba of Al-Mahdi would come to be very influential in this process. These newly built qubbas were much larger and more colorful than Funj-era qubbas as their designs featured elaborate windows, doorways, and spacious interiors. This “religious revival” of Sufi brotherhoods was particularly promoted by Ja’afar Nimery, President of Sudan (1969-1985) who is credited for replacing old qubbas and building new ones, a trend that continued beyond his presidency until today. Nimery’s interest had political motives, as he turned to populism to garner the support of small Sufi brotherhoods. The construction of these new qubbas was in most cases directly influenced by the style of the Mahdi’s tomb. This trend in the construction of qubbas, however, has had a direct impact on old Funj-era qubbas, as deteriorating qubbas were demolished and replaced with new ones.
About 32 kilometers south-east of Khartoum, one of the most prominent examples of the erasure of Funj-era style qubbas lies in the tomb of Shaykh Idris Wad Al-Arbab in Al-Aylafoon. Shaykh Idris lived between 1507 and 1650 and was a scholar and advisor to Funj rulers, and is one of the most recognized Sufi holy men of Sudan with his qubba remaining a site of pilgrimage to this day. The original qubba was constructed in a terraced style –which is an old Funj-style for qubbas– but after it collapsed, it was rebuilt in the style of Turkish qubbas in 1928 according to the archeologist Salah Omer Al-Sadig. However, Soghayroun argues instead that this style was popularized through the construction of Al-Mahdi’s qubba. Either way, the influence that came with colonialism has had a direct impact on the architecture of qubbas in Sudan and as Soghayroun succinctly puts it, “the cost for society has been the loss of a part of a unique cultural and aesthetic legacy through the dismantling of old domes.”
Much like a palimpsest, qubbas can accumulate layers of histories and cultures that go back for centuries and they act as physical archives that have the ability to create a bridge between the city we live in and the past. Qubbas have been at the center of many political shifts that have happened in Sudan, as they extend beyond being mere sites of burial to becoming places full of life, prayer, hopes, celebrations, and culture. Although the style of the Funj qubbas is experiencing erasure and replacement, the type of archiving and preservation of history granted to Sufi holy men through these qubbas is so powerful that their names are remembered to this day significantly more than the names of the rulers of the Funj Sultanate.
The question then is, has the same type of memorialization and archiving moved beyond the powerful figures of holy men and defined the culture of remembrance for Sudan as a whole? To try and answer this question, we’ll try to look at other types of deathscapes that exist in Khartoum to explore their current state when it comes to memorialization.
Cemeteries: the changing landscape of burial and the burial crisis
The site where the Turkish qubbas were erected, as previously mentioned, was located within the Old Khartoum Cemetery, a burial place that occupied a large part of the current day downtown Khartoum, although the exact parameters of the cemetery are not clear. During the construction of the Grand Mosque of Khartoum in the early 1900s, numerous human remains found on the site were linked to the Old Khartoum Cemetery. To continue constructing the mosque, a fatwa on inactive cemeteries (Al-Magabir Al-Mondarsa / المقابر المندرسة) was issued by Mufti Al-Sudan Mohamed Abu Al-Gasim Hashim, thus enabling the city to reuse the land in which Old Khartoum Cemetery was previously located. According to Abu-Salim, the cemetery extended east of the Grand Mosque from Abu-Jinzeer square to the Turkish qubbas and Coliseum Cinema. The square of Abu-Jinzeer – which is primarily used as a parking lot today – holds the remains of the sufi Shaykh Imam Bin Mohamed, who was originally interred in the middle of Al-Qasr Avenue but was removed to this square when the avenue was laid out. A grave shrine was built for the shaykh within the square and was surrounded with chains (jinzeer), thus it was named “Abu-Jinzeer.”
The boundaries of the Old Khartoum Cemetery might have been even larger than that. Inside the modern-day boundaries of the Khartoum Civil Hospital, the mother of Al-Mahdi, Zainab Al-Shagalawie, was buried in the Old Khartoum Cemetery during the Turco-Egyptian rule and the Mahdi seems to have visited her grave following the liberation of Khartoum in 1885. When archeological excavations in Khartoum Civil Hospital began in the winter of 1944-45, the British archeologist A. J. Arkell removed the grave of the Mahdi’s mother, after being granted permission from Al-Sayid Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi, to proceed with excavations.
The excavations revealed that the site had been occupied throughout different time periods, beginning from the Mesolithic period. It was also reported that “graves of Meroitic date have […] been found, and a few full length burials with no grave goods. The latter are non-Moslem, and possibly date from the period when Soba was the capital of a Christian Kingdom.” Meaning the use of this area as a cemetery could very well have begun during the Meroitic period.
Khartoum was quite literally built over burial grounds. Other cemeteries around the capital were also built over and erased by referencing the fatwa of inactive cemeteries, such as the Martyrs graveyard which became the Martyrs’ (AlShuhadda) bus station, in addition to an old cemetery in the current location of the Palace of Youth and Children, both of which are located in Omdurman.
The relationship of death to the urban fabric of Khartoum is even more intriguing when examining the numerous shrines of Sufi Awliya that have been maintained and absorbed into the public institutions and facilities of the city. Salah Omer Al-Sadig describes this fascinating relationship between the spaces of the living and the dead in his book “Al-Athar Al-Islamia Fi Mantiqat Al-Khartoum” (Islamic Antiquities in the Khartoum Region). For example, the shrine of Shaykh Ibrahim Sayem Al-Dahren is located today inside the post office near the Arabic Market (Al-Soug Al-Arabi) in Khartoum. Al-Sadig explains that the post office was built around the shrine in the early 20th century but has taken to maintaining and restoring it as one of its duties since followers of the shaykh visit the post office regularly in pilgrimage to the shrine. Two Sufi shaykhs were mistakenly killed during the 1885 liberation of Khartoum; AbdulRahman Al-Khorasany who was buried within what used to be the Central Station in Khartoum, as well as Sheikh Mohamed Fayet, who was buried within what would later become the Supreme Council for Environment and Urban Upgrading. These Sufi shrines among others nestled within governmental offices and buildings around the city have stood the test of time and are considered a part of the religious heritage of Khartoum as they are frequented by Sufi followers, giving the city a spiritual dimension. Yet, the continued existence of these shrines is also testament that cemeteries are not always memorialized and allowed to remain for generations in the same manner of the shrines Sufi holy men, which puts them at risk of erasure.
Another aspect to consider is the position of the cemetery in relation to the city. While the Old Khartoum Cemetery was at the periphery of the city while it was active, Abu-Salim reports that cemeteries during the Mahdist state were in the middle of the city. However, due to rising health concerns from proximity to cemeteries, large areas north of Omdurman were dedicated by Al-Khalifa Abdullah to new cemeteries, what we have come to know as Al-Bakry, Ahmed Sharfy, and Al-Jamryia Cemeteries. This is similar to the majority of cemeteries in Khartoum that were established on the periphery; Hamad, Khojali, Hamad El-Nil, AlSahafa, Burri, Commonwealth, etc. As the capital grew from continuous waves of migration in the decades that followed, cemeteries were surrounded once more by the city as a natural side-effect of the process of urbanization. The problem that is created from this process, however, is that cemeteries would be unable to expand and accommodate these new pressures that come with the population growth in the city. That is why the last decade has seen a flood of news articles discussing a burial crisis happening in Khartoum.
Because of cultural and religious norms, burials in Sudan have historically been carried out either by the family of the deceased or by individuals who volunteer their help as there have been no official governmental or private entity that has undertaken this responsibility. Without an entity to organize burials and plan the space of cemeteries, the burying process was done haphazardly with little consideration of space consumption. Because of these circumstances and many more, the non-profit Husn Al-Khatima Organization came to be established in 2000.
Husn Al-Khatima has been organizing burials, maintaining cemeteries, planting trees, fencing, lighting, and generally trying to improve the environment of cemeteries. Yet, despite the organization’s work, it seems that the problems facing cemeteries have persisted. Most people burying their loved ones today in Khartoum experience the very difficult task of digging a grave and finding one already there and having to repeat the process until an empty burial space is found.
Sensing a real issue with burials in the city at the time, Husn Al-Khatima organized a conference in 2009 posing the question “Where do we bury our dead while our cemeteries are full?” During this conference, different examples from around the Islamic world were presented as possible alternative solutions for dealing with the burial crisis and the solution that was agreed upon by the community was to establish new cemeteries. Husn Al-Khatima has been advocating for this solution to the extent that even the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities of Khartoum State has recognized the need for new cemeteries and accordingly planned for 52 new cemeteries in the Structural Plan of Khartoum for the year 2030. However, while a few new cemeteries were indeed established, the majority of these plans have yet to be realized since the Ministry found many of the proposed sites to be inadequate and contained multiple issues.
While in essence, the solution to establish new cemeteries stems from a city planning perspective, the relationship of Khartoum’s cemeteries to planning ends at their boundaries. In contrast to the veneration given to planning and maintaining qubbas of Sufi awliya and their intersection with living spaces, cemeteries are entirely segregated from the city and are not afforded the same level of care and treatment. Cemeteries in Khartoum, in fact, are completely disregarded from the planning and design process and most burials continue to take place haphazardly.
While the burial crisis persists, Dr. Ali Khidir Bakheet, a founding member of Husn Al-Khatima explained that Islamic burial rites essentially allow cemeteries to be sustainable since the body decomposes almost entirely, hence the grave can be “reused” after decades. He elaborated by pointing out that burials in Muslim cemeteries have been on-going for centuries, citing Al-Baqi’ cemetery in Medina, Saudi Arabia, and Hilat Hamad’s cemetery in Bahri (400 years).
Considering Dr. Bakheet’s insight in dialogue with the current trend of burials as well as the fatwa on inactive cemeteries that was referenced when building Khartoum in the early 20th century, a few discrepancies are evident. The emotional ties of Sudanese people with their family burial plots and their desire to continue burying there put great pressure on cemeteries, so much so that in 2018, the Khartoum State Legislative Council declared that the cemeteries in Khartoum have become too full and cannot receive more burials since 200 people die every day in the state. If indeed the public agrees to switch burials to new cemeteries that will be established, what will happen to the cemeteries that are at capacity today? Will they be built over, same as the Old Cemetery of Khartoum? Or will the same cemeteries be reused as Dr. Bakheet suggests?
This dilemma aside, planners and architects continue to ignore cemeteries, forcing them to remain unplanned spaces that are excluded from the built environment, despite the fact that cemeteries take up large spaces within the city. Precisely because of the large areas they occupy, there is a real threat to these overfull cemeteries from the encroachment of the city in the case that they stop accepting burials and become inactive, similar to historical precedents such as the Old Khartoum Cemetery.
The vulnerability of cemeteries could perhaps have a lot to do with their fraught relationship to the city. While cemeteries remain isolated and their lack of design renders them unable to engage the needs of visitors beyond burials, the emotional ties to the space decrease over time. This frayed relationship in the face of imminent urbanization could perhaps undermine memorializing cemeteries and preserving their histories. If indeed we were to preserve our cemeteries and avoid their erasure, a radical redesign and spatial intervention is needed to convince the public that there is a need for maintaining cemeteries within the city in the future.
The contested space of monuments and memorials:
Beyond the spaces of burial – whether cemeteries or domed shrines (qubbas) – monuments and memorials can also be considered deathscapes because of their symbolic relationship to death and memorialization, as they are sometimes used to commemorate individuals that have passed, and other times they mark sites of histories and memories of death, violence and trauma. Within the latter, erecting memorials allow deathscapes to become arenas that bridge between the private and the public realms as they “provide spaces for a combination of purposes, including personal mourning, spiritual solace, and private reflection on the one hand, as well as civic engagement and democratic dialogue on the other.” This dialogue is able to take place in memorials because they inhabit the public sphere and act as public acknowledgement to victims of violence and atrocity.
One of the most recent events that have reshaped the spatial memory of Khartoum in relation to death was the massacre of June 3rd, 2019 during the violent dispersal of the two-month-long sit-in at the army headquarters. To topple the 30-year long military regime of Al-Bashir, protestors took to the streets beginning from December 2018, with the revolution reaching a crescendo when the area of the army headquarters was occupied by protestors on April 6, 2019. The boundaries of the sit-in site extended from the surroundings of the army, navy, air force, and artillery headquarters to the central campus of the University of Khartoum. In those two months, the sit-in became a miniature city that represented the ideals of the Sudanese revolution – Freedom, Peace, and Justice – and became a place where everyone from around the country could come together and co-exist. The space/event of the sit-in saw a production of public space unlike any in the history of Sudan, leading it to become the center for all kinds of activities in the city.
Security forces on the morning of June 3rd violently dispersed the sit-in, razing tents, opening fire and killing protestors, and even going to the extent of dumping their bodies in the Nile River. It is reported that 127 people died from the violent crackdown of the army headquarters sit-in, with some estimating that the number of deaths could be much higher as over 100 people were reported missing.
On June 3rd, the ways in which people see and relate to this space radically changed, as all evidence of the occupation of the site was erased and murals were painted over, in an attempt to erase the collective memory of the sit-in. The relationship of the sit-in site to state power is the main reason why protestors occupied it in the first place, yet this same power is now exerted to ensure that the site is devoid of any sort of memorialization and remembrance to the sit-in and the victims of the massacre. Under the watchful eye of the military, passersby drive through what was once considered a Sudanese utopia, now transformed to a deathscape following the violent events of June 3rd.
Calls to memorialize the revolution and its martyrs became the center of discussions about public space in Khartoum. Streets and public spaces were renamed after martyrs and new murals commemorating them were created. However, when considering the types of memorialization that have taken place as a result of the Sudanese revolution, it quickly appears that memorials were strictly within the bounds of renaming buildings and streets or painting over existing walls. Although proposals for creating a new memorial for the martyrs of the December Revolution circulated in social media, no further steps were taken to enable such projects to come to life. In that regard, memorialization of the revolution has been very limited and involved no spatial consideration to create a new physical memorial. In fact, there has been a huge debate regarding memorials and monuments, particularly in the form of statues.
On the 24th of January 2019, Abdul-Azeem Abubakr took part in a protest in Al Arba’en Street in Omdurman and was photographed confronting the security forces moments before they opened fire on him and he was martyred. The image of his last stand went viral and his heroic act motivated the artist Hosam Osman along with Asim Zurgan and Rami Rizig to create a statue for Abdul-Azeem. The statue was supposed to be installed in the same street where he was martyred, however, there were outright rejections to erecting a statue in the neighborhood as it was seen to be against Islamic tradition. After failing to erect the statue, the artist Hosam reported that a few months later, an unknown entity broke into his home and destroyed the statue.
The destruction of the statue of the martyr Abdul-Azeem is only the most recent addition to a long history of rejecting statues in Sudan going back for decades. Today, most of the monuments found around the capital are abstract pieces and it’s a rare sight to find any that relate to Sudanese history, and of course there are no statues to be found in public spaces. To understand the root causes for this phenomenon, it’s important to look back at the history of the erasure of statues in the city.
The first statue to be erected in modern Sudanese history was that of Charles Gordon, as the resurrection of Khartoum under the Anglo-Egyptian administration was tied with the remembrance of the death of Gordon. Kitchener’s first act after defeating the Mahdists in the Battle of Omdurman was to cross over to Khartoum and hold a “second funeral of Gordon” at the exact spot where he died in his Government House in a public performance of grief. Immediately after, Kitchener commenced planning Khartoum and created the ideas for Gordon Memorial College (now University of Khartoum) and a Gordon Monument.
At one of the most prominent avenues in the city, a bronze statue of Gordon on a riding camel was inaugurated in 1903, facing southwards as if overlooking the fortifications that he defended against the Mahdists. The location of the statue in front of the Presidential Palace as well as naming the avenue where it was placed after Gordon (now University Avenue) –an avenue that linked it to the Gordon Memorial College– revealed the intentional placement of this monument at the colonial seat of power in Sudan. Another colonial statue depicting Kitchener was also installed in 1921 to commemorate his role in the Sudan conquest following his sudden death a few years earlier. This statue was “made from empty cartridge cases collected from battlefields” and was installed in front of the War Office (now Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning), facing Kitchener Avenue (now Nile Street) and the Blue Nile.
Erecting the statues of Gordon and Kitchener, as well as naming important avenues and squares in the city after them were physical representations of the British Imperial power over Sudan. As Savage explains about monuments in general:
“Public monuments are the most conservative of commemorative forms precisely because they are meant to last, unchanged, forever. While other things come and go, are lost and forgotten, the monument is supposed to remain a fixed point, stabilizing both the physical and the cognitive landscape. Monuments attempt to mold a landscape of collective memory, to conserve what is worth remembering and discard the rest.”
These monuments, however, did not remain a fixed point for Sudanese people, as they were rejected and a reckoning of colonial heritage ensued shortly after independence. Abu-Salim stresses how these monuments became sites of resistance for the National Movement, and as early as 1949 news articles were published criticizing the existence of the statues, and by extension, colonialism in Sudan as a whole. The statues became contested sites that were heavily debated for a decade but their removal only came after independence following the military coup led by General Abboud in 1958. Abboud’s newly-found military government wanted to perform a noticeable act of nationalism to give itself legitimacy and therefore shipped the statues back to the British in London. An erasure of the names attached to colonialism soon followed and Gordon and Kitchener Avenues became University Avenue and Nile Street. While the removal of Gordon and Kitchener’s statues was motivated by national decolonial sentiments, they would mark the beginning of the eradication of statues to come in Khartoum.
In the following decades, statues began to be erected in different cities in Sudan. In Port Sudan, a statue of the Mahdist military commander, Osman Digna was erected, and in Rufa’a, to commemorate Babikir Bedri – the pioneer of women’s education in Sudan – a statue depicting him was installed in the first school he established. Also, following the 1964 revolution against the military regime of Abboud, statues of Ahmed Al Qurashi and Babikir Abdul-Hafeez, who were martyred in the student protests, were erected at the University of Khartoum. The Indian community in Omdurman also erected a statue for Gandhi. However, the existence of statues in Sudanese public spaces has always been contested and with the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in the country, beginning from the early 1980s, statues were denounced as idols and most of them were destroyed. Even sculptures created by students of the College of Fine Arts faced this denunciation. The Bashir regime that came into power in 1989 further strengthened this view on monuments and memorials, to the extent that the former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities and Wildlife, Mohamed Abdul-Karim Al-Had, stated in court that he has never stepped foot in the National Museum because it contained idols, in reference to monuments of Kushite Kingdoms.
The religious debate around depicting human figures in sculptures does not in fact go against the idea of memorialization itself, as it is only a rejection of their form. The ideas, events and people being commemorated are the core of memorials and monuments rather than the form chosen to depict them. Therefore, memorialization should respond to society's values and needs, adopting the most appropriate and acceptable form of memorialization that enables the preservation of history. Within this debate, we must recognize that there is a radical difference between removing statues of colonial heritage and removing statues that relate to Sudanese national history post-independence. Colonial statues were rejected not only because of their form, but because of the imperial iconography that was imposed on Sudanese people, to the point where they became arenas for resistance against colonialism as a whole. These arenas, however, disappeared following the removal of the colonial statues, as they were not replaced with monuments that maintained the historical value and the public’s relationship with the space. Beyond the tensions surrounding their form, monuments and memorials still have the capacity to exist, yet they have continuously been removed without any replacement, despite the fact that they have the capacity to reflect ideals and values that are important to Sudanese peoples’ collective memory.
The vacuum of physical representations for memorialization in Khartoum negatively impacts projects that aim to memorialize victims of violence and atrocity, leaving their history to remain largely unacknowledged and vulnerable to erasure. In this regard, the massacre at the army headquarters sit-in can be read as a continuation of acts of violence perpetrated by the state against its people, most of which remain without sites of remembrance. We have yet to see memorials for the two civil wars in Sudan (1955-1972) and (1983-2005), the latter of which is considered one of the longest civil wars in history that resulted in two and half million casualties. The Darfur genocide as well remains without memorialization, during which 300,000 people were killed according to UN estimates. Many other atrocities and massacres have taken place in Sudan, with very little acknowledgement and justice.
While there have been some commemorative events, particularly in relation to the martyrs of the December Revolution, we have to recognize that erecting memorials –for both recent and historic events– plays an important part in the process of transitional justice, reconciliation and democracy. Memorialization allows society to come together to negotiate what should be remembered as a part of the process of constructing our national identity. It solidifies the truth and educates people about the terrible history of suffering that Sudanese people have gone through in order to come to grips with the past and avoid repeating it. The silencing of narratives of history by not allowing monuments and memorials to exist undermines this process and squanders their potential for reconciliation and healing.
Within each of the different forms of deathscapes explored in this essay, there has been some level of erasure taking place. The domed shrines (qubbas) of sufi holy men that were erected during the Funj Sultanate are being erased and replaced with modern and contemporary styles, threatening some of the most significant architectural and archeological heritage in Sudan. The landscape of cemeteries in Khartoum on the other hand has been radically changing in the past century, with some cemeteries being erased and built over to make way for the development of the city. In the past few decades, the urbanization of Khartoum has been pressuring existing urban cemeteries, leading them to overfill and face an unknown future. In the midst of these pressures, the possibility of the erasure of urban cemeteries could very well be repeated. Lastly, since independence, monuments and memorials have been continuously destroyed and erased from the city due to the political and religious tensions surrounding them.
These different dynamics of erasure at play are influenced by various drivers and governed by politics of memory and remembrance, yet they all imply that there are real problems facing memorialization of deathscapes in the city and even the country. Despite all of that, we must recognize that there is value to maintaining spaces of death and their material culture as they serve as archives to legacies of the past and have the power to radically transform our understanding of history and the city. The example of qubbas of sufi holy men illustrates the potential of memorialization to preserve history that goes back for centuries, allowing these spaces to remain relevant in people’s lives and even becoming at times, part of the socio-political landscape, all the while gaining new layers of meaning and associations. By studying the qubbas’ relationship with the city that allows them to transcend their role as places of burial and become vital destinations for the community, an opportunity can be found for extracting and implementing ideas on other types of deathscapes facing erasure. Perhaps “borrowing” some of the elements that enable the success of qubbas can be used as a gateway to allow the culture of memorialization in Sudan to expand from the religious and spiritual realms onto the civic one as a way of reflecting the collective memory of the city and country as a whole in relation to death.
Water preservation in Kordofan
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Water preservation in Kordofan
Water is the source of life for everything, including cities. With it, they are born, they die and disappear. In North Kordofan, there are a variety of water bodies, both surface and groundwater, such as permanent and seasonal rivers. With different seasons and ways of living, methods of preserving and obtaining water vary. The pictures in this gallery show water extraction from wells with buckets, hafir “water storage”, and “wabour” water pumps.
The baobab tree is also one of the well-known water stores, as the tree is dug from the inside to resemble a well and is closed from the top with a thick cover such as zinc sheets. The baobab tree purifies water from sediments, and the bucket is used to scoop water during periods of scarce rain and drought.
The emergence of the first capital of North Kordofan Al Obeid was linked to the presence of water, so much so that the name of the city is associated with several stories passed down through generations, shedding a lot of light on this emergence and the influence of the natural environment in choosing the current location. The first story goes that the residents of the neighboring villages used to unleash their livestock and animals in search of the grass that grows in the space extending around these villages and around the swamps and valleys in which water collects after rain. In one of these villages, there was an old woman called (Manfoura) who owned a white donkey that she released in search of food and drink. One time, he was gone for a long time and after his return, the woman noticed that the whites of her donkey were stained with mud mixed with green grass. This matter aroused her curiosity, so the woman followed her donkey the next day to find it grazing in a large depression filled with water and growing on its edges some dense trees and vegetation.
Water is the source of life for everything, including cities. With it, they are born, they die and disappear. In North Kordofan, there are a variety of water bodies, both surface and groundwater, such as permanent and seasonal rivers. With different seasons and ways of living, methods of preserving and obtaining water vary. The pictures in this gallery show water extraction from wells with buckets, hafir “water storage”, and “wabour” water pumps.
The baobab tree is also one of the well-known water stores, as the tree is dug from the inside to resemble a well and is closed from the top with a thick cover such as zinc sheets. The baobab tree purifies water from sediments, and the bucket is used to scoop water during periods of scarce rain and drought.
The emergence of the first capital of North Kordofan Al Obeid was linked to the presence of water, so much so that the name of the city is associated with several stories passed down through generations, shedding a lot of light on this emergence and the influence of the natural environment in choosing the current location. The first story goes that the residents of the neighboring villages used to unleash their livestock and animals in search of the grass that grows in the space extending around these villages and around the swamps and valleys in which water collects after rain. In one of these villages, there was an old woman called (Manfoura) who owned a white donkey that she released in search of food and drink. One time, he was gone for a long time and after his return, the woman noticed that the whites of her donkey were stained with mud mixed with green grass. This matter aroused her curiosity, so the woman followed her donkey the next day to find it grazing in a large depression filled with water and growing on its edges some dense trees and vegetation.
Water is the source of life for everything, including cities. With it, they are born, they die and disappear. In North Kordofan, there are a variety of water bodies, both surface and groundwater, such as permanent and seasonal rivers. With different seasons and ways of living, methods of preserving and obtaining water vary. The pictures in this gallery show water extraction from wells with buckets, hafir “water storage”, and “wabour” water pumps.
The baobab tree is also one of the well-known water stores, as the tree is dug from the inside to resemble a well and is closed from the top with a thick cover such as zinc sheets. The baobab tree purifies water from sediments, and the bucket is used to scoop water during periods of scarce rain and drought.
The emergence of the first capital of North Kordofan Al Obeid was linked to the presence of water, so much so that the name of the city is associated with several stories passed down through generations, shedding a lot of light on this emergence and the influence of the natural environment in choosing the current location. The first story goes that the residents of the neighboring villages used to unleash their livestock and animals in search of the grass that grows in the space extending around these villages and around the swamps and valleys in which water collects after rain. In one of these villages, there was an old woman called (Manfoura) who owned a white donkey that she released in search of food and drink. One time, he was gone for a long time and after his return, the woman noticed that the whites of her donkey were stained with mud mixed with green grass. This matter aroused her curiosity, so the woman followed her donkey the next day to find it grazing in a large depression filled with water and growing on its edges some dense trees and vegetation.
Maps as an archive
Maps as an archive
Maps are powerful tools that are influenced by political considerations and document specific moments in time and space. They selectively include information to serve particular purposes, reflecting the mapmaker's objectives and biases. This selectivity means that some human settlements may be omitted due to their political importance or insignificance.
Despite their limitations, maps capture historical contexts and can retell the story of the places they depict, revealing insights into the era's geography, politics, and culture. They also serve as storytelling tools, highlighting certain aspects while omitting others, which can shape perceptions and influence narratives.
Understanding the curated nature of maps helps us critically engage with how the world is represented and the underlying power dynamics involved in map-making.
The maps in this gallery show the changes in Khartoum under the different governments and in different periods of time, not just showing the events but also the viewpoints and interests of these governments. Take note of the fortifications in these maps, the fort on the western side of the river is the only structure that is recorded in maps dated back to the 19th century even though there were several human settlements at the time, same with the Khartoum wall that since its construction was a key feature even after it was destroyed as you can see in current planning of the city.
Image credits:
Khartum in 1840 showing the trading route from Omdurman, Published in Henri Dehérain: Le Soudan égyptien sous Mehemet Ali, Paris, Georges Carré et C. Naud, Éditeurs, 1898.
Khartoum in 1876 Plan von Chartum und Umgebung. Published in Dr. Wilh. Junkers Reisen in Afrika, 1875-1886 ... nach seinen tagebüchern unter der mitwirkung / von Wilhelm Junker, unter der Mitwirkung von Richard Buchta, Wien: Ed. Hölzel, 1889-1891. Band I, Tafel 4. Gallica.
Khartoum in 1884 drawn from rough sketches made by General Gordon, Published in The journals of Major-Gen. C. G. Gordon, C. B., at Khartoum. Printed from the original mss. Introduction and Notes by A. Egmont Hake. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885.
Khartoum in 1890, Confluence of the two Niles showing old Omdurman town and key geographic monuments, 1890, published in the book Africa by Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905.
The siege of Khartoum, “La chute de Khartoum”. Plan compiled by the "defense" in the court-martial held in June 1887 from the statements of witnesses of the siege in 1884-1885. Published in Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan, by F. R. Wingate. London, MacMillian and Co., 1891.
Khartoum 1896 Image extracted from page 701 of Fire and Sword in the Sudan. A personal narrative of life during Mahdiya. 1879-1895, by SLATIN, Rudolf Carl - Sir, K.C.M.G. Originally held and digitised by the British Library.
Khartoum 1906 (post-conquest) Provisional map of Khartoum city compiled for use of the Khartoum Mudiria by Lieut. Colonel E.A. Stanton, Governor Khartoum Province. Via: American Geographical Society Library.
Khartoum 1952 published by the Sudan Survey Department. Via: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford Libraries - Stanford, California, USA.
Khartoum 1970s, 1:5000 published by the Sudan Survey Department.
Khartum 1974, Sudan, provint︠s︡ii︠a︡ Khartum / Generalʹnyĭ shtab, published by the Soviet Union. Sovetskai︠a︡ Armii︠a︡. Generalʹnyĭ shtab, Moscow. Via: National Library of Australia - Canberra, Australia.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Maps are powerful tools that are influenced by political considerations and document specific moments in time and space. They selectively include information to serve particular purposes, reflecting the mapmaker's objectives and biases. This selectivity means that some human settlements may be omitted due to their political importance or insignificance.
Despite their limitations, maps capture historical contexts and can retell the story of the places they depict, revealing insights into the era's geography, politics, and culture. They also serve as storytelling tools, highlighting certain aspects while omitting others, which can shape perceptions and influence narratives.
Understanding the curated nature of maps helps us critically engage with how the world is represented and the underlying power dynamics involved in map-making.
The maps in this gallery show the changes in Khartoum under the different governments and in different periods of time, not just showing the events but also the viewpoints and interests of these governments. Take note of the fortifications in these maps, the fort on the western side of the river is the only structure that is recorded in maps dated back to the 19th century even though there were several human settlements at the time, same with the Khartoum wall that since its construction was a key feature even after it was destroyed as you can see in current planning of the city.
Image credits:
Khartum in 1840 showing the trading route from Omdurman, Published in Henri Dehérain: Le Soudan égyptien sous Mehemet Ali, Paris, Georges Carré et C. Naud, Éditeurs, 1898.
Khartoum in 1876 Plan von Chartum und Umgebung. Published in Dr. Wilh. Junkers Reisen in Afrika, 1875-1886 ... nach seinen tagebüchern unter der mitwirkung / von Wilhelm Junker, unter der Mitwirkung von Richard Buchta, Wien: Ed. Hölzel, 1889-1891. Band I, Tafel 4. Gallica.
Khartoum in 1884 drawn from rough sketches made by General Gordon, Published in The journals of Major-Gen. C. G. Gordon, C. B., at Khartoum. Printed from the original mss. Introduction and Notes by A. Egmont Hake. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885.
Khartoum in 1890, Confluence of the two Niles showing old Omdurman town and key geographic monuments, 1890, published in the book Africa by Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905.
The siege of Khartoum, “La chute de Khartoum”. Plan compiled by the "defense" in the court-martial held in June 1887 from the statements of witnesses of the siege in 1884-1885. Published in Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan, by F. R. Wingate. London, MacMillian and Co., 1891.
Khartoum 1896 Image extracted from page 701 of Fire and Sword in the Sudan. A personal narrative of life during Mahdiya. 1879-1895, by SLATIN, Rudolf Carl - Sir, K.C.M.G. Originally held and digitised by the British Library.
Khartoum 1906 (post-conquest) Provisional map of Khartoum city compiled for use of the Khartoum Mudiria by Lieut. Colonel E.A. Stanton, Governor Khartoum Province. Via: American Geographical Society Library.
Khartoum 1952 published by the Sudan Survey Department. Via: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford Libraries - Stanford, California, USA.
Khartoum 1970s, 1:5000 published by the Sudan Survey Department.
Khartum 1974, Sudan, provint︠s︡ii︠a︡ Khartum / Generalʹnyĭ shtab, published by the Soviet Union. Sovetskai︠a︡ Armii︠a︡. Generalʹnyĭ shtab, Moscow. Via: National Library of Australia - Canberra, Australia.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar
Maps are powerful tools that are influenced by political considerations and document specific moments in time and space. They selectively include information to serve particular purposes, reflecting the mapmaker's objectives and biases. This selectivity means that some human settlements may be omitted due to their political importance or insignificance.
Despite their limitations, maps capture historical contexts and can retell the story of the places they depict, revealing insights into the era's geography, politics, and culture. They also serve as storytelling tools, highlighting certain aspects while omitting others, which can shape perceptions and influence narratives.
Understanding the curated nature of maps helps us critically engage with how the world is represented and the underlying power dynamics involved in map-making.
The maps in this gallery show the changes in Khartoum under the different governments and in different periods of time, not just showing the events but also the viewpoints and interests of these governments. Take note of the fortifications in these maps, the fort on the western side of the river is the only structure that is recorded in maps dated back to the 19th century even though there were several human settlements at the time, same with the Khartoum wall that since its construction was a key feature even after it was destroyed as you can see in current planning of the city.
Image credits:
Khartum in 1840 showing the trading route from Omdurman, Published in Henri Dehérain: Le Soudan égyptien sous Mehemet Ali, Paris, Georges Carré et C. Naud, Éditeurs, 1898.
Khartoum in 1876 Plan von Chartum und Umgebung. Published in Dr. Wilh. Junkers Reisen in Afrika, 1875-1886 ... nach seinen tagebüchern unter der mitwirkung / von Wilhelm Junker, unter der Mitwirkung von Richard Buchta, Wien: Ed. Hölzel, 1889-1891. Band I, Tafel 4. Gallica.
Khartoum in 1884 drawn from rough sketches made by General Gordon, Published in The journals of Major-Gen. C. G. Gordon, C. B., at Khartoum. Printed from the original mss. Introduction and Notes by A. Egmont Hake. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885.
Khartoum in 1890, Confluence of the two Niles showing old Omdurman town and key geographic monuments, 1890, published in the book Africa by Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905.
The siege of Khartoum, “La chute de Khartoum”. Plan compiled by the "defense" in the court-martial held in June 1887 from the statements of witnesses of the siege in 1884-1885. Published in Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan, by F. R. Wingate. London, MacMillian and Co., 1891.
Khartoum 1896 Image extracted from page 701 of Fire and Sword in the Sudan. A personal narrative of life during Mahdiya. 1879-1895, by SLATIN, Rudolf Carl - Sir, K.C.M.G. Originally held and digitised by the British Library.
Khartoum 1906 (post-conquest) Provisional map of Khartoum city compiled for use of the Khartoum Mudiria by Lieut. Colonel E.A. Stanton, Governor Khartoum Province. Via: American Geographical Society Library.
Khartoum 1952 published by the Sudan Survey Department. Via: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Stanford Libraries - Stanford, California, USA.
Khartoum 1970s, 1:5000 published by the Sudan Survey Department.
Khartum 1974, Sudan, provint︠s︡ii︠a︡ Khartum / Generalʹnyĭ shtab, published by the Soviet Union. Sovetskai︠a︡ Armii︠a︡. Generalʹnyĭ shtab, Moscow. Via: National Library of Australia - Canberra, Australia.
Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar