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  • Holy City on the Nile: Omdurman during the Mahdiyya, 1885–1898
  • Anders Bjørkelo (bio)
Holy City on the Nile: Omdurman during the Mahdiyya, 1885–1898, by Robert S. Kramer Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2010; pp. 214. $28.95 paper.

Omdurman was founded in 1884 on the west bank of the White Nile opposite Khartoum. It grew out of the camp where the Mahdist forces organized their siege of Khartoum. After the fall of Khartoum in January 1885, it was out of the question for the Mahdist leadership to leave the buq’a, or place of the Mahdi, in favor of the “contaminated” Turkish capital, Khartoum. Omdurman became therefore the logical capital. The people of Khartoum were forced to move to Omdurman, and Khartoum was looted of all its valuables. After the death of the Mahdi in June 1885, it was left to Khalifa Abdullahi to turn the camp into a proper capital and a holy city.

This book is a milestone in the study of the Sudanese Mahdiyya. By focusing on the Mahdist capital, Robert Kramer is able to describe and analyze the functions of the central state institutions and the relationship between the authorities and the people. He paints vivid pictures of the imprint of the Mahdiyya on the city’s structure and on the population and gives us an idea of how people experienced life under this new regime. We also get to understand the problems facing the authorities in their efforts to impose Mahdist laws and regulations on a multiethnic population, most of whom had perhaps never lived in a town before.

The book begins with a historical overview of Muslim towns in the Sudan, based mainly on the accounts of European travelers, with a nearly four-page history of Khartoum prior to the Mahdiyya. This background leads directly to the history of Omdurman. Five months after the fall of Khartoum, the Mahdi died. It was therefore left to the khalifa to create a capital city out of disorganized assemblies of mud houses and straw huts. For a long time, it looked more like a huge village than a town. The public buildings were of a more solid nature, built of mudbricks. The author outlines the location of the treasury, the court, the grave and tomb of the Mahdi, the parade ground, the Kara garrison for the Jihadiyya, the prison, the main mosque, the market, and other public institutions. The population of Omdurman has been estimated as having been around 30,000 at the time of its foundation in 1885, increasing to over 200,000 in the 1890s.

After describing the creation of the city, the author goes on (in chapter [End Page 314] 3) to discuss how Omdurman was governed. He shows that the administration of Omdurman was modeled on a military command structure, and he quotes an informant who notes that “urban organization was tantamount to military organization” (58). Administrative/political leaders were also military commanders. First there were what the author calls settlement zones divided into ethnically or group based quarters or fariqs. Clans and ethnic groups were assigned separate quarters to ease civil and military administration. These quarters also had military functions, being led by appointed amirs and attached to a flag (military division). Each amir was held accountable to Ya’qub (the khalifa’s brother) for the well-being of his soldiers. To put it differently, “This military command structure in most instances derived from already-existing social hierarchies” (59). The author is concerned with the significance of the layout (127) for the “social climate,” which he discusses in chapter 5.

Chapter 4 deals with Mahdist social order, that is, how to define and enforce the social order envisaged by the Mahdi. The foundations of the social order were laid by the Mahdi in his many proclamations and political decisions, but it was left to the khalifa to turn Mahdist ideals into practice. Public behavior was strictly regulated: women were to be veiled and avoid mixing with men; drinking and smoking were strictly forbidden. It was the duty of the police and the heads of quarters to keep an eye on public morals and to apprehend those...

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