Word: omdurman
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...free. At best it was the hopeful byproduct of a diplomats' compromise, reached between Sudan's master, Imperial Britain, and its expansion-minded neighbor, Egypt. The British annexed Sudan in 1899, after an Anglo-Egyptian army defeated Mahdi's followers at the battle of Omdurman. At first both London and Cairo shared the administration, but in 1925 the British kicked their partner out. Egyptian independence left Sudan as the northern bulwark of Britain's East African Empire. Sudan was Cairo's fief in the days before the Mahdi; more important, it controls the headstreams...
Thirteen years later, in 1898, General Horatio Kitchener avenged Gordon. He led a combined Anglo-Egyptian force of 25,000 (one of whom was Subaltern Winston Churchill) up the Nile, shattered 40,000 dervishes and Fuzzy-Wuzzies at Omdurman, razed the Mahdi's tomb and regained the Sudan. But for whom...
...Posthumous son of the great Mahdi (messiah) whose desert dervishes laid siege to the undermanned British garrison of Khartoum in 1884, hacked to death its famed commander, General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon. Thirteen years later Kitchener avenged Gordon's death by smashing the dervishes at Omdurman. The Mahdi was already dead, but Kitchener ordered his tomb razed, his bones thrown into the Nile...
...attracted by your vivid Feb. 4 description of the riots in Ismailia and Cairo. Referring to the destruction of the historic Shepheard's Hotel, you mention eminent men who have visited this hostel. I can readily understand that "Kitchener stopped in after the Battle of Omdurman," since that battle occurred in 1898. You state, however, that "Explorer Stanley dropped in after finding Dr. Livingstone." Since that memorable event in the jungles of Africa occurred in 1871, and, according to your own statement, Shepheard's Hotel was not built until 1891, a score of years must have intervened . . . THEODORE...
...curious mixture of Moorish and Western in design, in the heart of Cairo's European district. Newsmen and businessmen, actors, archdukes, sultans, admirals, subalterns and field marshals thronged its corridors, its dining rooms, bar." Kitchener stopped in at Shepheard's after the Battle of Omdurman. Explorer Stanley dropped in after finding Dr. Livingstone. John Pierpont Morgan the Elder ate his last meal in Shepheard's. To readers of adventure stories the world over, Shepheard's was a pulsing heart of romance and intrigue. To most Britons, Shepheard's was Egypt. By last week...