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 North the area of the Nile confluence before the Egyptians established Khartoum as their military garrison and administrative center in the 1820s. It was thereafter eclipsed by the Egyptian Khartoum, its Mahdist replacement Omdurman, and the British refounding of Khartoum following their reconquest of the country in 1898. Khartoum North began to grow again, however, as the southern terminus of the Sudan Military Railroad, which was completed in 1899. (The Blue Nile was bridged in 1910 and the line extended to Sennar, but Khartoum North continued to serve as the main railroad station and yard.) On August 20, 1998 the Al-Shifa