Khartoum, siege of (1884-5). This took place during the Mahdist uprising. Gordon, despatched by the Gladstone cabinet and serving as governor-general of the Sudan, arrived in Khartoum on 18 February 1884. Having evacuated some 2, 600 civilians and soldiers, he found the city blockaded by 12 March. He strengthened the landward defences of his triangular perimeter, bounded on two sides by the White and Blue Niles, and employed ten steamers and some barges to carry communications, make foraging raids, and attack enemy positions. Until September the Mahdists did not invest the city closely, but they tightened the siege thereafter, defeating Muhammad Ali, one of Gordon's best generals, killing 1, 000 men (5 September), and murdering Lt Col J. D. H. Stewart and the British and French consuls, who had been sent downriver. On 5 January, they seized Fort Omdurman. After the Gordon relief column failed to appear, and the receding Nile waters weakened Khartoum's defences, as confirmed by a deserter, the city was successfully stormed on 26 January and Gordon was killed.
Bibliography
- Holt, P. M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan (Oxford, 1958).
- Marlow, John, Mission to Khartum: The Apotheosis of General Gordon (London, 1969)
— Edward M. Spiers
