Khartoum

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Khartoum. Capital city of the Sudan. Khartoum became Egypt's foremost military base in the Sudan in the mid-19th cent., but when Britain occupied Egypt in 1882 the British government was reluctant to become involved in the area, where the mahdi had proclaimed a religious war against Egypt a year earlier. It did, reluctantly, allow General Charles Gordon to take charge of the evacuation of the city but was slow to respond to his request for reinforcements. The city fell in January 1885 when Gordon was killed but was reoccupied by Kitchener in 1898 and became the seat of the Anglo-Egyptian government of the Sudan until 1956.

Kenneth Ingham

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