A Unique Account of the Battle of Omdurman

Photo: Andrew Hilliard Atteridge, Battles of the Nineteenth Century. Vol. v, Campaigns of the Nineties (London: Cassell and Company, 1901), 83.

Recalling al-Sayyid ʿAbd al-Raḥman wad al-Mahdī's 1959 funeral, Amīn al-Tūm tells in his memoirs how one attendee related the late-Sayyid's own account of the battle of Kararī. Having since checked this retelling against ʿAbd al-Raḥman's memoirs (Mudhakirrāt al-imām ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Mahdī, published in 1995), I feel quite confident that the attendee spoke truthfully in relating this event. Perhaps at a later date I will make a translation of the relevant section of ʿAbd al-Raḥman's memoir for comparison. Regardless, one should find this account intriguing considering that it is the only one that I am aware of that portrays the shelling of Omdurman from a civillian point of view.

One of us said - and the conversation was continuous in the shadow of the ihlīlaj [balanites aegyptiaca] tree: 


The boy ʿAbd al-Raḥman wad al-Mahdī could have been killed the day before Kararī, on the [185] day of Kararī, or afterwards. Imām ʿAbd al-Raḥman told me one day: I and the young boys of the Mahdī’s sons and others were in the courtyard of the Mahdī’s house in al-buqʿa [i.e. Omdurman] the day before Kararī when the Khalīfa ʿAbdallāhi went out to the battlefield at the head of his banners after he had ordered us to stay behind because of our young age. By God, despite my youth, I longed to carry a rifle with which to kill the infidels. Then the imām continued, saying: While we were sitting in the shade of the ihlīlaj tree, which remains fresh and alive today in the courtyard of the house, the day before Kararī, we felt an unusual movement around our house and the jāmiʿ imām al-mahdī. The amīr of the city [i.e. Yaʿqūb Abū Zaynab] was placing battalions [al-katāʾib] of anṣār in various locations near the walls of the jāmiʿ to protect it and the imām al-Mahdī’s tomb and his house from any enemy that might infiltrate it. In a terrifying instant, we heard the thunder of artillery nearby. We had hardly recovered for a few seconds when dozens of shells fell around us from the enemy’s ships and artillery which they had stationed on the eastern bank of the Nile. The shells hit al-qubba al-imām al-mahdī, penetrating its upper half and demolishing it before our eyes. Then the shelling continued, uprooting dozens of shady ihlīlaj and sidr [ziziphus spina-christi] trees that were about the house. We, us children, remained in the shade of what remained of the trees, not knowing what God would do to us. The shells could have killed everyone who remained in the house of the Mahdī’s family, but God kept them from harm because his wisdom willed it.


Amīn al-Tūm, Dhikrayāt wa-mawāqif fī ṭarīq al-ḥaraka al-waṭaniyya al-Sūdāniyya, 1914–1969, 2nd edn. (Khartoum: al-Dār al-Sūdāniyya al-Kitab, 2004), 184–185. My translation.

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