Mahdist Omdurman fell to Maxims—and still faces Khartoum across the Nile
Omdurman, Sudan’s second city in Khartoum State, lies on the Nile’s west bank opposite Khartoum. After Khartoum’s siege, the Mahdi’s tomb drew rapid growth; in 1898 Kitchener’s roughly twenty thousand modern-armed troops crushed over fifty-two thousand Mahdist fighters near Kerreri.
Omdurman stands on the western bank of the Nile in Khartoum State, facing the national capital from the northwest, and ranks as Sudan's second most populous city. It works as a major road junction, and the river adds further transport links. Its Arabic name, Umm Durmān, means "Mother of Durmān", though nobody knows who that woman was.
The town expanded quickly after the siege of Khartoum and after a tomb was raised for the Mahdi, who died of typhus. In September 1898 Horatio Herbert Kitchener led some twenty thousand drilled troops armed with Maxim guns and Martini-Henry rifles into Sudan. The clash known as the Battle of Omdurman actually unfolded at nearby Kerreri, where more than 52,000 lightly armed defenders were beaten within five hours. At least 10,000 Sudanese died, against fewer than four hundred British casualties and forty-eight British dead. Kitchener then had the Mahdi's tomb desecrated; Winston Churchill wrote that the head was taken away in a kerosene can.
A year later British troops overcame the Khalifa, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, at Umm Diwaykarat, securing control of Sudan. Khartoum became capital again, and Britain and Egypt governed jointly from 1899 to 1956. Although the fighting wrecked most of Omdurman, the Mahdi's tomb was eventually rebuilt. Conflict returned on 10 May 2008, when Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement battled government troops inside the city in a bid to overthrow Omar al-Bashir, and the Rapid Support Forces held it from April 2023 to May 2025.
The climate is hot and arid, with rain mostly in summer and a yearly total just over 155 mm, making Omdurman one of the hottest large cities anywhere. Midsummer afternoons regularly pass 40 °C, the average annual high is 37.1 °C, six months average highs of at least 38 °C, and no month's mean high drops below 30 °C. January and February nights cool to lows just above 15 °C. A new airport was proposed in 2005 about 50 km to the south, with an estimated budget of $530 million.
Source: Omdurman
