Siege of Khartoum was given a credit of £100,000 and was promised by the British and Egyptian authorities "all support and cooperation in their power.". On his way to Khartoum with his assistant, Colonel Stewart, Gordon stopped in Berber to address an assembly of tribal chiefs. Here he committed a cardinal mistake by revealing that the Egyptian government wished to withdraw from Sudan. The tribesmen became worried by this news, and their loyalty wavered. Gordon arrived at Khartoum on 18 February 1884, but instead of organising the evacuation of the garrisons, set about administering the city. His first decisions were to reduce the
Khartoum Egypt). There is some speculation that they learned their craft at an academy in the south of Egypt from which the city takes its name. In 1821, Khartoum was established north of the ancient city of Soba, by Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Egypt's ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, who had just incorporated Sudan into his realm. Originally, Khartoum served as an outpost for the Egyptian Army, but the settlement quickly grew into a regional centre of trade. It also became a focal point for the slave trade. Later, it became the administrative center of Sudan and official capital. On 13