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 (state) Nile State, and in the west by North Kurdufan. There are several etymologies for the name of Khartoum. The explanation suggested as "most correct" by the state government's website is that it comes from the Arabic for "elephant's trunk", which describes the shape of the site of the city at the confluence of the two Niles, where a stretch of land extends into the water. Other stories are that it is a corruption of "gurtoum", the name for seeds of the sunflower plant, supposedly used by Roman invaders at the current site of Khartoum to treat soldiers' wounds, or that